Let’s say you’ve got 10 minutes in between meetings. What can you get done?

You could answer a couple of emails. You could reprioritize your to-do list. You could review a short document for a colleague.

Or, like some of us, you could open one of those emails, then look at your to-do list, start reading that document, and finally come back to your emails – and then it’s time for your next meeting. You’ve started a lot and finished nothing. 

The truth is, you’ll get a lot more done if you have a clear and realistic plan. 

The same is true for training. You can get a lot done in a 10-minute course, if you know precisely what you want to achieve. 

In the Rethink library, 65% of our courses are 10 minutes or less in length, including 100+ microlearning courses, all of which are under 5 minutes! These are perennially our most popular category of courses. Why? Because nearly every client tells us that learning time is limited. And because these courses focus on what learners really need to know. 

Our first step when we create any course – whether for our library or for a bespoke client – is to agree on clear, achievable, pertinent, and useful learning objectives. 

Instructional designers use learning objectives as both a compass and a measuring stick. They point the way for the writer who will write the course and they provide a way to measure the effectiveness of the course (either within the course itself or, ideally, based on outcomes within the workplace).

Good learning objectives are all about results. They use active verbs like “identify,” “demonstrate,” “apply,” “distinguish,” and “plan.”

Great learning objectives are immediately applicable in the real world – specifically, your learner’s real world. Asking yourself one simple question (and answering it in plain, honest language) can be the key to this step: “What do my learners really need to know in order to do their jobs well and reduce our organizational risk?”

Or, as I like to put it, “The genie gives you just three wishes. Choose wisely.”

Once you’ve agreed on your learning objectives, you can not only start creating the content, you can start culling. If your objectives are for learners to correctly identify personal data and employ four critical steps in good data handling practices, do they need to know that the GDPR went into effect in May of 2018? No, they really do not. (And you’ve just shaved a minute off your course.) 

When we write the learning objectives for our Rethink library courses, we are laser-focused on applicability in the real world for real learners. We use that to make a clear and realistic plan. Then we write the content in plain language that the learner can easily absorb.

What can you get done in 10-minutes? With a course from the Rethink library, quite a lot.

Have 10-minutes to spare?

Email us at [email protected] and we'll set up a time to discuss your training goals.