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Information Overload?



With the abundance of information coming from LinkedIn, Twitter, and my email, it can be hard to determine what messages to listen to and which ones to skip. It is impossible to be well-versed in every topic within our field and so I know it is better for me to focus on a few areas of interest. This is a story of how I determine which topics to delve further into.


A few weeks ago the eLearning Guild had an online Summit focused on Micro-Learning They have a few Summits a year and I’d like to attend them all, but depending on my workload, sometimes I just don’t have the time. Well, this past week, I saw a string of messages related to Carla Torgerson’s presentation at the ATD national conference. And, Carla actually posted about her presentation and asked if anyone wanted a copy. I responded and she sent me a copy. When I reviewed the material, I immediately thought of the online Summit and when I looked at the Summit materials, they were quite similar. I immediately watched Torgerson’s presentation on the eLearning Guild site, which gave additional context to the presentation handout. 

My thought process is that if my peers are reviewing the material, then I needed to review it as well. I regularly check in with my peers on LinkedIn to see what authoring tools they are using, what articles they are reading and who they are following to ensure that I stay current. I have an interest in micro-learning and when I saw that not only was Carla was sharing her materials, but that my peers were talking about how great her presentation was, I had to make sure I gained that knowledge.

One of the take-aways from Torgerson’s presentation was her Microlearning Design Model called the MILE method. Her model consists of five stages, which could really apply to any learning program.
  1. Identify the performance objectives
  2. Determine the Program Technology and Structure
  3. Create or Select Resources
  4. Promote
  5. Monitor, Modify and Evaluate

But, the most important take-aways were the online examples that she gave during her presentation. She included live examples of a micro-learning game and a micro-learning curriculum geared towards sales training. I will be incorporating her model and examples into my work projects this summer. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Is anyone else overwhelmed with all of the information that can be garnered from multiple sources? Do you have a process for filtering out the messages and determining which ones to read?

Carla Torgerson is the Director of Instructional Design at Bull City Learning and her presentation “Microlearning in the Real World” was featured in the Microlearning Summit 2019 on February 20, 2019. For more information, check out the Online Events Archive on www.elearninguild.com.
Carla Torgerson also has a book available on Amazon called the Microlearning Guide to Microlearning. You can check out her book here. 




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