Interview with Dr. Lucia Weiger: How self-directed microlearning is shaping the future of your company
Be able to do more every day" - sparks is the Haufe Akademie's microlearning tool that teaches future skills on topics such as customer orientation, digital transformation, AI in business and hybrid working. Dr. Lucia Weiger provides insights into the didactic principle and explains why companies should take action now.
Lucia, time is pressing, the new world of work demands new skills. But nobody has time to learn these skills. How do employees and companies deal with this?
Many companies already offer numerous further training courses, but the sheer volume of learning opportunities can be overwhelming. Employees then withdraw because they lack orientation. Or they resign because they repeatedly encounter hurdles, for example when further training is not approved or the time for seminars is not granted. This can be frustrating.
What should further training in the company look like instead?
Above all, corporate learning must become more flexible and individualized. The requirements on the labor market are becoming increasingly complex. A single e-learning course on digitalization will not bring about the big transformation. Instead, companies need to rely on their employees' willingness to develop and provide them with offers that are truly relevant to them and their area of work. Strong skills management that responds to the individual needs of employees is crucial here. After all, the training or learning offer was only successful when a concrete learning effect can be felt in everyday working life. We also pursue this approach with sparks and use microlearning to work specifically on future skills.
What is behind sparks?
sparks is a mobile microlearning tool that specializes in short learning units. We see the "sparks" as small sparks that inspire employees in their everyday lives and help them move forward. The great thing about it is that our users decide for themselves when, where, how and what they learn. For some, this could be a five-minute expert video on the train on the way to the office. For others, it's a short quiz during an espresso break.
Doesn't this type of learning blur the line between professional and private? After all, it sounds as if employees should also invest their free time in their further education.
We are aware of this challenge and know the views of both employers and employees. While the former are concerned that work will be left undone because of "so much training", employees are worried that training has to take place "on top". However, current figures show us that most employees learn primarily during regular working hours with sparks. On average, they spend around 5 minutes a day in sparks. This is an amount of time that does not leave work undone, but is extremely effective in terms of further development.
How does sparks motivate learners?
In sparks, everyone can find the right content for them. The variety of formats is huge and ranges from audio snippets to expert videos. Moreover, all content is never longer than 7 minutes and is designed in such a way that users can take something away with them directly - even at the moment of need if necessary. Does a project group need ideas for a new product? In sparks, users can find tips for developing new ideas in meetings. Want to improve collaboration in hybrid teams? sparks also provides many ideas, suggestions and practical tasks that can be used directly in everyday working life. We therefore see sparks as a kind of learning companion, a kind of coach in your pocket that employees can take out when they need it. In other words, they learn in a self-directed way, but receive the necessary guidance from us.
Want to find out more about this topic? In the free white paper, you will find all the information you need on how the didactic principle behind sparks works.
And this self-directed learning is the learning of the future?
To a certain extent, yes. Because our working world is becoming more complex - as a company, wanting to control further training centrally is simply too short-sighted. As the world of work becomes more complex, the demands are also becoming ever greater and more individual. If companies hand over some of the responsibility for development to employees and provide a range of offerings that adapt to the various needs, employees receive much more tailored development measures and can develop precisely the skills that they really need for their job and their company. The right skills management, supported by microlearning, plays a key role in effectively developing future skills.
How exactly does it work?
We combine different teaching and learning approaches in sparks. In our free white paper, you can find out everything about our didactic principle (AVAR principle) and how learning in sparks becomes a daily routine for your employees.
Does sparks also measure the users' learning success?
Absolutely! When learning, it is also important to measure progress and make successes visible. It's like being on a journey. There are different stages and intermediate goals that show how much distance I have already covered and where I am at the moment. This is important for orientation in your own further training. At sparks, we therefore focus on individual learning progress. To stay with the image of the journey: Not everyone starts at the same point; instead, the goals and the stages are different. At sparks, Learners choose their own destination and pace. But of course, all this only works with the right growth mindset.
At the same time, sparks provides a detailed dashboard that is aimed at efficient skills management and gives you as a personnel development department a comprehensive insight into your learning culture. This allows you to quickly recognize which topics are relevant, where there is a need for further training and how committed your teams are to learning.
What does that mean?
By a growth mindset, we mean the firm belief in being able to continuously change and develop oneself and one's own abilities. This mindset exists both at an individual level and at a company level, for example when a culture of learning is actively practiced. Those with a growth mindset see learning and further training as a continuous process that accompanies them throughout their professional and private lives. We want to help shape this process with sparks by creating an offer that provides small impulses every day to develop oneself further. And as employees develop, the entire company also continues to develop.
To person:
Dr. Lucia Weiger has been Instructional Designer at sparks since 2022. As an educator, she is interested in providing employees with learning opportunities that really help them progress. To this end, she likes to think "out of the box" in the context of New Work and always keeps an eye on the challenges of everyday working life - and sometimes jumps in front of the sparks camera herself.
The interview was conducted by Marnie Hensler.
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