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EPISODE 94: Microlearning in Professional Development

Dusty Burton, Ed Tech Coordinator, Aurora Public Schools

After decades of debate about its pros and cons, microlearning is now widely accepted as a viable instructional method. Increasingly, I see it applied across all sorts of extended enterprise use cases — channel partner and customer education , commercial and association certification training , and beyond.

Today, I’m turning to the academic world for ideas and insights the rest of us can use. That’s why I’ve invited Dusty Burton to share his story. Dusty is Ed Tech Coordinator at Colorado’s Aurora Public Schools , where teachers and staff are rapidly embracing microlearning for onboarding and ongoing professional development.

With 22 years of teaching and administrative experience, Dusty understands how beneficial the right kind of just-in-time learning can be. So, no matter what your objectives are, I know you’ll find helpful information as we dig deeper on this episode of the Talented Learning Show …

MICROLEARNING IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT —KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Too often, employee onboarding is an overwhelming experience. Microlearning journeys avoid this by helping new hires focus on essential aspects of their jobs, while providing on-demand access to less critical details, resources and support.
• With microlearning-based professional development, it’s easy to offer motivational “carrots” that get people involved and help them build a habit of continuous learning. For teachers and other professionals, certification and recertification credits are particularly attractive incentives.
• If you review each microlearning module to ensure it meets your standards, expanding your content catalog becomes complex and time-consuming. But scaling your professional development program is much easier if you qualify each content creator, instead.

MICROLEARNING IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT – Q&A HIGHLIGHTS

Welcome, Dusty. To start, could you share some background information about your school district?

Sure. Aurora Public Schools is a very unique but heavily diverse public school system. In fact, it’s one of the most diverse, with over 100 different languages spoken by families throughout the district.

Last year, our community in Aurora, Colorado faced a fairly significant immigration influx, which was a bit of a challenge for our team. But we figured out ways to work through it and keep pushing forward.

Find out how other companies are achieving more with learning systems that create business value. Get inspiration from dozens of success stories in our free LMS Case Study Directory …

When you became Ed Tech Coordinator in 2019, what issues did the district face?

Communication was a big challenge. Also, we needed to help people with onboarding , so they understand what to do in their jobs and other work-related information.

The communication problems aren’t yet fully solved, but we have found ways to get just-in-time learning to our staff.

We chose microlearning as a method for creating and delivering onboarding. Now, we’re seeing fairly heavy use of our platform, Learnie . And we’re excited because we’re prepared to grow exponentially.

Excellent. Are you focused on onboarding because there is a lot of turnover?

Great question. When we conduct surveys, one of the most common pieces of feedback we receive focuses on how to retain talent.

Many districts face the same problem with retaining talented teachers and staff members. For us, part of the problem is that we never had a real onboarding system.

Typically, districts tell new teachers, “Hey, at the beginning of August, come in for a day.” We open up a fire hose, point it at them and expect them to drink-in all the information they’ll need for an entire year. Then, we turn off the firehose.

That’s why we’re trying to flip the script with a microlearning platform. Instead of bombarding people all at once with a fire hose, we give people a way to tap into learning anytime.

Now, we offer onboarding materials that empower people to be effective in their jobs from Day One. They can also become more effective on a continuous basis because they have access to training and reinforcement whenever they need it.

It’s more like our experience as kids drinking from a garden hose, where we take a sip at our own pace and in our own time. So, whenever you need a bit of knowledge, you can take a 5-second burst to get what you need.

To be sure we’re on the same page, how does your organization define microlearning?

We define it as a burst of learning that’s 30 seconds to 7 minutes in length.

But here’s some historical context. When this began, our CAO asked, “Can we build an app where we can find the information we need, when we need it, how we need it? We want to be able to access it from the couch, on a phone, or on the go, so it’s easy and convenient for people to use.”

Of course, being in ed tech, that’s exactly what I had been wanting for years. I call it Micro PD . In fact, when I was discussing this with our interim CAO, I said, “Micro PDs are short PDs.”

And he asked, “Shouldn’t all PDs be short PDs?”

He’s not wrong. We need to get away from 3-hour-long trainings. Teachers need professional development with more meaning and impact.

So, the idea of a micro PD is twofold:

1) It is short: 30 seconds to 7 minutes.

2) But the way our platform works, each PD is a chunk of only 30 seconds or less. This gives people a brain break.

In contrast, if you watch a 5-minute YouTube video on a topic you pick, you’d watch it continuously and be done with it. But here, there is a break every 30 seconds or less. This lets your brain consider engagement elements . That might be a link, or a pause, or a poll, or a question. But the point is to continue engaging the learner.

Also, during those breaks, we build-in lots of knowledge checks. Those are super informative and helpful for us, so we can see where people stand in terms of their learning status and progress.

And what does the content look like? Is it slide-based, video-based, audio-based, all the above?

Yes, it could be any of those. People from every department contribute content to this system. The only thing we want to avoid is hour-long trainings. We have a different, more traditional program for that.

Instead, we want short, just-in-time training. The point is that we now have a one-stop where people have access anytime to learning in a relaxed format.

And here is the carrot: Learnie built a transcript for us, so we can give salary advancement credit to anybody who watches these videos. That’s why most people are really excited about this.

Nice. How does this salary advancement credit work?

Whenever you earn a specific number of credits, you get bumped up to a different salary level. I think it’s every 15 or 30 credits.

So, lots of people want to use this system to accumulate professional development credits that will bump up their salary. From that standpoint, it is super successful.

Nothing like a good carrot to motivate people. And that’s not your only carrot, right?

Absolutely. Every so often, to renew their certification with Colorado Department of Education, teachers need to prove they’re essentially lifelong learners. And because our professional learning platform accepts Learnie transcripts, it can apply those credits toward CDE renewal.

So, we give people the option to get recertified in the comfort of their home, on their phone, on the go — wherever they want to be.

See how other continuing education providers are succeeding. For ideas and inspiration, browse our collection of stories in our LMS Case Study Directory…

That’s exciting. I see a strong parallel between your system and other professional development providers. For instance, associations and commercial training companies could also benefit from this kind of microlearning strategy.

Yes.

But with so much diverse content from so many sources, how do you teach creators to stay within your microlearning standards?

I wrestled with that for a long time. My best advice is not to think about vetting content. Instead, focus on vetting the content creator.

We took that route because, with thousands of Micro PDs, it’s much easier to vet each contributor than every single piece of content. Nobody has time to review it all. So, we made a micro-credential for content creators with 10 hours of professional learning credit or CDE renewal time.

That’s where we teach creators how to be effective. It’s a step-by-step on how to design and build a Micro PD in the platform. It includes things like microlearning best practices, how to use images and how to make the learning experience engaging so users want to comment and interact as a community .

Good idea. Along the way, you’ve mentioned a couple of metrics. What are the most important ways you measure professional development success with this approach?…

Want more specifics about how the Learnie app works hand-in-hand with an LMS — or as a standalone solution — to propel community-oriented microlearning? Check theLearnie listing in our learning systems directory. Or watch my Hot Take Review on our YouTube channel…

Need a Platform for Professional Development? Let’s Talk

As an independent learning tech expert, I’m prepared to help you choose the best solution for your organization’s professional development needs. For a free 30-minute consult with me, John Leh , Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, schedule a call below…

John Leh is Founder, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning . He is a fiercely independent consultant, blogger, podcaster, speaker and educator who helps organizations select and implement learning technology strategies, primarily for extended enterprise applications. His advice is based upon 25+ years of learning industry experience, serving as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to hundreds of organizations with a total technology spend of $100+ million and growing. John is active on social media and is happy to connect with you on X/Twitter or on LinkedIn .