Hi, my name is Damon Marquis. I'm an education consultant for the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. I'm here with Vince Lafredo. As a doctorate in education, he is the chief learning officer for the American Society of Anesthesiology. And Vince and I are going to be talking a little bit today about microlearning. This is a conversation Vince and I have been having for years about the importance of microlearning and understanding that a lot of people don't really totally understand what microlearning is and how it can be useful in medical education. So I'm just going to ask Vince a few questions to just get the conversation going in our education community. Thanks for doing this, Vince. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Damon. I'm excited to be here. Great. So I'm going to start off right from the very beginning and ask you, what is microlearning? Can you describe what it is, what it isn't? And most importantly, does it fit in medical education from your perspective? Yeah, Damon, thank you. That is a great question and one that we get asked often, not just about what it is, but also what it is not. So let's kind of break that down for ourselves. Microlearning really refers to delivering bite-sized, focused content that learners can engage with in a short burst between about two to 10 minutes. What we know is that about a really good sweet spot for microlearning is about eight minutes. These modules can take many different forms. And so the reason we like to leverage microlearning in the various different formats is to meet the learner where they best need that education. It could be in a video format. It could be in the form of infographic, a podcast, a quiz, or interactive scenarios, for example. So what we know about learning is that learners do best when it's personalized. And so microlearning allows us to give that personalized education in that bite-sized, focused way. We also know that it's very good for people who have condensed times. And when we talk about physicians, time is really important. So microlearning can tend to fit into the physician's schedule much better than some longer modalities that we've leveraged in the past. It also can enhance retention because it allows folks to go back and not for a long period of time re-listen or re-look at the information. Think about if you had an hour lecture and you had to go back and re-watch the whole lecture to get to that one nugget that you want to get to versus having something that's between two and 10 minutes to go back and look at again and again and again if you needed to to reinforce what you learned. So I think there's so many positives to leveraging microlearning in that format. Now what we know it's not is when we take something that is an hour long and decide to just chunk it up and just cut it into 10-minute increments. That is not what microlearning is. That's just chunking up an hour-long conversation. So we want to make sure that it's very focused, it is very to-the-point. It's something in a time frame and in a format that meets the learner's needs. Right. So I can't take an hour-long presentation and just chop it up. Good point. I've had people say, well, what if I index that hour session? Is that now microlearning? And I kind of go back to the concept of microlearning is more take that hour, give me one point and focus on that one point. Is that a good way to describe it as far as you're concerned? Yeah. It's really trying to give them that nugget, that thing that they can walk away with. Because when we have content, I ask people all the time, take a think about when you go to a conference and you have an hour-long session. How much of that content did you actually retain from that hour-long session? And if I just instead gave you a nugget of that, that I could reinforce through the work that you do, or that you could go back and listen to or watch or read again and again to reinforce that information, it's much better for folks. And so absolutely, getting it into that small chunk is a more effective way to do it. I think an important thing that you pointed out that I think needs to be stressed is that it's really learner-driven. So as a learner, I may see a lecture that's going to take an hour to take place, or even a microlearning program that if you put all the modules together, it takes an hour. But I already know three quarters of it, and I want to skip that. In a microlearning program, I get to say, okay, this is the module I want, and this is the module I want. And I'm not going to listen to the rest of it because I don't need it, and I don't have the time for it. So I think that's another selling point. Now, I have had people talk to me and say, well, this is really best just for young physicians. But I push back on that a little bit because I don't think that older physicians have a lot of free time either. What are your thoughts? You know, I think that's such a great point because too many times people think that technology is only for the young. And one of the points I always try to make is it is a lot easier for me to teach somebody who is mid to late career how to leverage technology, the artful use of technology in their education versus taking somebody who is new, who has only leveraged that technology, and then put them in a room that's in a conference center with no windows and try to keep them to learn for an hour. Age does not really have a boundary when it comes to leveraging technology because they're using it every day in their life, whether it's their smartwatch, their smartphone, the entertainment they tend to use on their television or phone or tablet, being in leveraging the technology that gets them there. It's an everyday practice. And so I don't think there's barriers between age and technology and leveraging it for education and information that we're presenting in a micro learning format. Great. So I can hear people say, well, this will work really good in medicine. I get that. Where most of your education is didactic or through an enduring material or something like that. But how would you use leverage this for procedural education? Because there are a lot of surgical specialties where there's some hands on work that has to be done. Can you leverage micro learning for procedural education? Absolutely. Procedural education is evolving as it is anyway, and I'll talk about that in a second. But as far as leveraging micro learning, there are a lot of ways we can leverage it for procedural, especially when we think about things like pre reads, even post evaluations and understanding of what happened in that procedure. We can take micro learning and have that be part of the didactic learning and even part of the assessment on top of that afterwards to make sure that folks have gained and get pieces to take with them after the procedural to retain that knowledge and to test themselves frequently after. I've leveraged things like gamification as part of the procedural workshop afterwards to keep people engaged with what they did in their procedures, to keep playing kind of that virtual aspect of the procedure that they did. And what I was bringing up earlier is that also think about the procedural workshops and things that we do are going to continue to evolve leveraging technology. We are only a short time away from being able to leverage things like VR goggles and others where people can do procedures in the comfort of their own home. So having micro learning help do the didactic pieces before and continuing that knowledge after are so crucial to procedural education for medical learners. It sounds like it's the classic blended learning that we've been talking about for decades, but sometimes forget to do. So that's great. Do you have examples of micro learning programs that you're familiar with or things that societies have done that you could talk about? Yeah. One of my favorite examples is leveraging the artful use of social media to get micro learning going. One of the things I've done in the past is to take YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook and go live for five to 10 minutes with a golden nugget that we want people to come away with that then will lead them with an opportunity to go and get even more, that they can go and watch a micro learning series that we've created. So we go live with that, record it. And then that nugget leads them to other forms of education that will allow them digitally to get even further into the topic area that we're trying to work with. An example was during COVID. We went live and did a new session every week on social media. From that, we had a QR code that was at the end of that session that led them to the research and the videos and other content that dove deeper into that topic for them. But every week we ended up with a new video and that led them to more information, more research, and more content. Right. And I would draw attention to something the CMSS developed just last year, a program called Disagreeing Better, helping healthcare providers have conversations with patients that may not agree with them or are very hesitant to do something. And we took the content that could have turned into an hour lecture and we identified specific topics and broke it down and created a micro learning program that actually is CME accredited, but it's available on the CMSS Learning Center and I would encourage people to look at it because it is an example of micro learning that where people might've thought you can't do this, but you can. And if you need to go back or you need to learn just one part of the skillset taught, you just have to go to one module if you want. So that's another example. Do you have any other wisdom to provide to people about micro learning, like how to get started if they've never done it? Yeah, I think that's, first of all, I want to say, don't be afraid of micro learning. Don't think that it's an arduous task to even get started. You know, podcasts, podcasting, modular content, where you break it down into those small chunks when you're creating it. And if you start by going into the creation phase, knowing that you're going to create these small modules, it helps a lot. So take that content, figure out a way to have these really good endpoints that will lead learners to want to continue the series if you're creating a series or give them that nugget that they can go and practice with. If you can keep it in that, you know, five to 10 minute timeframe, that's great. If you do enough of those, if you're looking for credit, if it's five minutes, as small as five minutes, three of those would equal one quarter credit for ACCME. So there's a way to create series. There's a way to create individual, if it's 15 minutes, maybe at the max in which you want to do it at. That could also be a credit if you're looking for credit. But most importantly, when it comes to creation, is to really have your outcomes in mind first. What are you trying to achieve? What point are you trying to get across to the learner? That is probably the most important thing. And then set your content up to meet those needs in those short formats. It helps with, you know, those who have short attention spans. It can also help people because it will be mobile friendly and people who are on the go, if somebody wants to listen to it in their car or watch it on their train ride in, it's a very mobile friendly way to get content across to people. And if you're building that way, because you know that's how they're going to consume it, then it makes it a lot easier in the construction of it. And the other part that I always want to point out to folks is I always like to start with a video. Because if I start with a video, I can actually create three formats from one, meaning I can create that five minute video, I've got a five minute audio, and now through the artful use of AI, I've got an e-manuscript that people can read as well. So think about how you might be able to leverage that in multiple ways, meeting learners where they want to learn. That's great information, Vince. That's a great idea. I want to thank you for taking the time to do this. Keeping true to micro learning, I want to keep this short. I hope if we get questions from our listeners, that we can come together again so we can answer questions if people have them. And I just encourage people to submit your questions to CMSS and we will grab Vince again and have another conversation. Thanks a lot for taking the time, Vince. I appreciate it. Damon, thanks for having me. And I look forward to answering any questions people have and helping anybody any way I can to get started with e-learning through micro learning and be successful in doing so. So thanks for having me. Happy to help any way I can. Thanks.

microlearning

medical education

multimedia formats

procedural education

social media