Abstract:

With the increasing shift towards online professional development, there is a growing need to adapt teaching and learning for virtual environments. Microlearning, which involves short, focused learning activities across various formats, especially in e-learning, is emerging as a potential solution. It is well-suited for online environments and educator professional development due to a few key reasons. Firstly, managing digital tools and learning solutions online can create an additional cognitive load, hindering engagement in longer sessions. Secondly, the absence of commuting considerations in online events makes shorter learning activities more practical compared to in-person events. Furthermore when coupled with the typically substantial workloads of educators, shorter, focused learning events appear to present a sensible solution.

To assess the feasibility of such learning events, we posed two research questions:
(1) Do brief online microlearning events focused on practice exchange capture educators' interest?
(2) Do educators subsequently apply the acquired learning content in their professional practice?

Over two years, we organized four consecutive online practice exchange microlearning events and analyzed the results. Our findings revealed that educators' interest varied depending on the event's topic, but substantial interest was evident across all four events, with participation ranging from 69 to 344 educators. We also conducted learning event follow-up surveys to gauge the extent to which educators integrated insights from these events into their professional contexts. While not all participants responded, our results indicate that a significant number of educators had embraced one or more concepts from these learning events, either immediately or with future implementation plans.

Keywords:

Microlearning, e-learning, in-service training, experience exchange, educator professional development.