Abstract:

The higher education sector appears to be changing, but its rate of change is perceived as 'no change' as the pace of change outside the sector is much faster than what Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) seem able to absorb, while Metaverse and nano-learning, learning in less than one minute, are just around the corner. Consumers, increasingly connected, clearly express their preference for consuming educational content in short videos, via mobile, pulling the knowledge and information they need when they need it.
TikTok, with more than 1 billion monthly active users, and 167 million videos viewed per minute across more than 150 countries, has extended the duration of its videos up to 10 minutes, compared to the initial 15 seconds. This extension, in part, responds to the explosion of edutainment on TikTok, with #LearnOnTikTok achieving over 282.8 billion views. In this way, Generation Z, currently between 7-25 years old, are inadvertently contributing to the enormous growth of microlearning.
These huge magnitudes on daily use of microlearning validates the great interest it arouses among its users, although its effectiveness as an instruction method needs further exploration and research.
The higher education sector demonstrated a great capacity to respond to the COVID-19 emergency, despite there were concerns if these changes would remain permanent and drive future transformations. In this line, a recent report published by UNESCO has found that the COVID-19 shock and experiences lived in 2020-2021 will not fundamentally transform the understanding of higher education as a basically face-to-face activity, even if HEIs are expected to maintain some digitalization initiatives in the long term, such as offering more online and distance courses. A missed opportunity?
EdTechs, but also generalist players such as TikTok, LinkedIn or Google, are entering the digital education sector, changing the competitive landscape. 950 universities have been part of this transformation, by actively developing micro-credentials and MOOCs, a sector that had reached 220M learners in 2021. In microlearning instruction, credentials are not necessary, while in other types of “micro” instruction, such in micro-credentials the “open badges” or proofs of completion are necessary. What microlearning and micro-credentials share is the digital mode of delivery, they are skills-focused and provide learner-directed personalized learning.
Faced with this undeniable trend of microlearning, the questions raised are how should the higher education sector react? Will microlearning also be a missed opportunity?
The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which the higher education sector could take advantage of the microlearning trend.
The empirical evidence has been collected by conducting 12 in-depth interviews with students who have participated in a micro-learning program of around 300 videos, developed by an EdTech player.
The results reveal that HEIs must adapt in order not to lose relevance, and certain strategies that could be developed to integrate microlearning in the experience offered by universities are explored.

Keywords:

Microlearning, post-COVID-19 scenarios, digitalization, digital transformation, HEI.