Microlearning in the Digital Age: The Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippets (2021), edited by Joseph Rene Corbeil, Badrul H. Khan, & Maria Elena Corbeil

Abstract

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, it is evident that digital technology is ubiquitous in the lives of individuals throughout the world. Many of us depend on technological devices to receive our morning news reports, transport us to schools or places of employment, engage with colleagues in a diverse range of geographic workplaces, and entertain us during our leisure hours. These technological devices can vary from digital alarm clocks to semi-autonomous vehicles. Included within this broad scope of technological devices are smartphones, touchscreen tablets, smartwatches, and portable laptop computers. It can be argued that these personal mobile devices have had the most impact on our daily lives in the digital age. If we accept the premise that personal mobile devices, specifically smartphones, have become essential to our way of living, then it is no great leap to propose that these objects can also influence how humans consume and transfer knowledge. In Microlearning in the Digital Age: The Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippets, editors Joseph Rene Corbeil, Badrul H. Khan, and Maria Elena Corbeil set out to create a volume that enables instructional designers and developers to integrate microlearning opportunities into a variety of learning environments through the use of these personal technological devices. The editors of the volume also contended that present-day individuals require "short, manageable bursts" (p. 2) of information, first referred to as learning snippets by Badrul Khan in 2007, that can match the way in which learners receive and send information in the digital age. Moreover, with the advent of these mobile technological devices, a fluidity has developed that enables instructors and learners to disseminate and consume knowledge both inside and outside of traditional classroom settings. The proliferation of the term microlearning, or the process of learning during small periods of time, emerged in the lexicon of teaching and learning specialists in 2002. Although the term was first adopted by Theo Hug at Stanford University in the 1960s, the development of personal mobile devices, social connectedness via high-speed internet access, and a sense of time scarcity in the 21st century have created an ideal environment where microlearning opportunities abound in academic, corporate, and personal settings. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the chapters that make up this volume were written prior to the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, the shift to online work and e-learning environments has further deconstructed the division between formal and informal work and learning spaces. As a result, the pandemic has undeniably advanced the importance of microlearning in our digital age.