Many corporate training professionals are adopting shorter learning sessions and courses over the longer, traditional full-length courses. This is to help learners engage and retain information. This is referred to as the “bite sized” approach to learning. This can be transferred to classroom teaching and learning. The “bite-sized” learning concept helps teachers and facilitators to pass important information to learners. The information/concepts are broken down into smaller segments, reducing the load on the cognitive memory. Bite size information makes learners less overwhelmed and helps increase knowledge retention. This way the information delivery becomes easier to digest, and even shorter periods of teaching/learning can be best utilized.
Advantages of bite-size teaching sessions:
- Creates a better teaching learning environment
- Improves retention of difficult concepts
- Gets more done efficiently in less time
- Deals with distractions and interruptions
- Allows easy goal setting and meeting expectations
- Deals with procrastination
- Encourages more effective and productive teaching sessions
- Leads to better results
- Improves overall performance
Use some or all of the following techniques to plan bite-sized teaching sessions:
- Shorter PowerPoint presentation: Long presentations and monotonous PowerPoint sessions tend to distract learners. Keep them short, highlight the important information and involve learners during the presentation.
- Use videos more often: Short videos of length 5-7 minutes help learners visualize the concept and retain the information.
- Infographics: Present data and numerical information with useful graphics. This can be used for a variety of subjects.
- Keep sessions shorter and spread it out: Give “one bite at a time” i.e. present one topic during a session and cut short a longer session into a few shorter ones.
- Make it more informal: Carry out teaching sessions in a convenient, fun, informal and timely manner.