The University of Bologna, or as its motto boasts – the Nourishing Mother of the Studies – is the oldest university in the world, having delivered an education to eager students for more than a millennium.

Its model of aggregating the greatest teachers with the smartest minds and delivering years of tutelage to prepare candidates for a life-long career propagated around the world. As the wealth and good fortune of societies evolved, education was a pathway to social advancement.

The model proved remarkably resilient for hundreds of years

In the last 20 years, we have seen a change in consumer preferences with the emergence of online learning. Learners, both young and old are seeking platforms offering convenience and immediacy of outcomes.

“Look out for the cliff!”

The education sector is hardly the first to see its products and services atomised by technology since the emergence of the internet. News media and music are two other sectors who have seen business models unpacked and their products reimagined by the digitization of their content.

The emergence of e-learning, and lately, micro-learning, is a response to the desire of consumers to take control of how and when they learn and for that consumption to fit into all the other aspects of their increasingly busy and online lives. Micro-learning allows education consumers to improve their skills a few minutes at a time, when the learning fits into their way of working or living, rather than at the convenience of an institution.

New skills and knowledge are packaged up into small bite sized parcels, and made available across many digital formats – from videos and articles to infographics and animations, and increasingly face time with tutors distributed around the world.

The global COVID-19 disruption has accelerated micro-learning just as it further accelerated the overall digitalisation of education beyond traditional classroom settings. That trend is just as pronounced, perhaps even more so, in corporate environments and in the world of professional skills development.

And while the micro-learning sector might still be emerging, the forces driving it were set in train more than two decades ago with the arrival of the commercial Internet and ubiquitous connectivity.

An e-learning expansion

According to Guide2Research, “Even before the pandemic, the global e-learning market was already seeing a massive annual global growth. It is expected to reach $337 billion by 2026 (9.1% CAGR since 2018) (Syngene Research, 2019).” 

A 2018 study by Snyder, Brey, & Dillow found that by the middle of the last decade 43 per cent of undergraduates were already taking at least one online course, representing a 300% increase since 2004.

Other studies suggest the majority of students found this to be a better learning experience, and the reason is simple – utility.

In a paper for the World Economic Forum, Cathy Li and Farah Lalani wrote “There is evidence that learning online can be more effective in a number of ways. Some research shows that on average, students retain 25-60% more material when learning online compared to only 8-10% in a classroom. This is mostly due to the students being able to learn faster online; e-learning requires 40-60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting because students can learn at their own pace, going back and re-reading, skipping, or accelerating through concepts as they choose.”

So while politicians – and hard put upon parents – may crave the certainty of classroom environments, this current generation of education consumers has clearly developed a distinct taste for digital learning, matching their enthusiasm for digital entertainment and digital shopping. It is a trend that will likely extend long beyond the school classroom. The original millennials turned 40 this year and as they approach middle age, their digital consumption preferences now inform mainstream work practices.

Little wonder then that entrepreneurs and investors see lucrative opportunities in the sector.

2019 saw over $US18 billion invested in EdTech, while the overall online education market is expected to hit $350 billion by the middle of this decade.

At a platform level, businesses like Udemy, Skillshare, Masterclass, Udacity and Coursera are already carving out positions as early leaders, often by targeting particular education niches. Skillshare, for instance, specialises in creative courses such as photography and animation, while Coursera focuses largely on academic course

Coursera’s March 2021 IPO closed 36% above its listing price and driving its valuation up over $7bn, demonstrating the confidence investors have in these new education channels. That confidence is driven in part by the scale it has already achieved. In 2020 it has delivered 178M learning hours, across 3800 courses to 70 million learners. Its customers seem convinced – with 84 per cent of unemployed users reporting career benefits from using the platform.

Micro-learning emerges

Micro-learning is an emerging category within e-learning, and is set to benefit as the digitally savvy yet time-poor generation of students emerges from school and university with a higher comfort level and preference for online learning.

For professional development businesses, this digital savvy cohort is a target rich environment, especially if, as McKinsey & Co argue, the future of learning is about life-long employability and the need to adapt to an ever evolving economy.

By concentrating on specific tasks or skills in a way that can be consumed in a very short time frame, micro-learning can help staff continuously improve their skills without significant interruption to their regular workflow. Just as importantly, these interactions can be measured and tested to ensure the programs are delivering the best bang for the corporate education buck.

Micro-learning providers include companies such as: 

• Canadian headquartered Axonify, a ten year old firm with customers in 150 countries which provides a training and communication platform for front line workers. Private equity firm Luminate Capital Partners bought a controlling interest in the business in April this year for US$250m.

• EdApp, a mobile learning management system specialising in retail and corporate training. It was acquired last year by Australian based SafetyCulture in a deal that valued the business last year at AU$40m.

• Singapore based Gnowbe, which was originally set up in 2010 to digitise and scale experiential workshops, coaching and soft skills training, and which now describes its goal as moving learning from just ‘knowing’, to ‘learn-by-doing’ and ‘learn-by-teaching’.

Writing in Forbes, Stephen Baer, Head of Creative Strategy and Innovation at The Game Agency and The Training Arcade, argues that micro-learning is built on cognitive science. According to Baer, “This learning technique accesses the learner’s working memory bank, which makes micro-learning worth consideration for any employer seeking to teach candidates hard skills.”

He says it uses spaced repetition to boost retention by breaking down learning topics into more manageable pieces and repeating them with adequate spacing between lessons. 

The certainties of sandstone grandeur that have attended education all the way back to the earliest days of the University of Bologna are now being disrupted by the digitalization of learning and the shift to immediacy and simplicity that consumers now demand. And that trend is not restricted to the classroom but can now be found in any environment where people want to improve their skills – and their chances to get ahead.

For the TikTok generation, born into a world of Angry Birds, Instagram influencers and Discord chat groups, the reasons why micro-learning is appealing are less prosaic. Their parents may have believed life wasn’t meant to be easy, but their children have learned a more palatable truth – anyone who wants their attention better make things simple, fast and easy.

Fiona Robertson is North Ridge Partners’ sector lead for EdTech. Please do reach out to fr@northridgepartners.com for more details!