I remember my oldest daughter asking me a question when she was just 4 years old. I don’t remember the actual question but I do remember that after I responded, “I don’t know,” she walked over to our desktop computer and asked Google. I remember being surprised that she thought to do this, and amazed because when I was that age, if my parent didn’t know, I might have looked in our Junior Encyclopedia Brittanica, but I probably would have just accepted that I wouldn’t know the answer.
I remember a time, years later, when I would ask a question of my social media network first, rather than Google. Not for a general knowledge question, but for things like how to use a certain tool, such as accessing a feature on a wiki or blogging platform. People were better that generalized Q&A pages at pinpointing the information I was looking for, and I good hashtag on Twitter would put my question in front of the right people.
And now there are times when I would go to YouTube first, before Google, for things like car repair. Don’t know how to get the cover off of a car light to replace it? Simply put your car name and year into YouTube with the information about what bulb you are replacing, and a video will pop up to show you how to do it.
AI is changing this. More and more, questions are being answered right inside of search. Make a query and the answer is not just links to sites that might know the answer, but an actual answer based on information that is on the sites you would normally have to click to. That’s pretty awesome in and of itself… having instant answers to simple questions, without needing to search any further. But what about more complex questions that might require learning something before you can understand all the concepts being shared? What happens when you ask questions with complex learning required?
This is where I see the power of micro-learning. And this term is being redefined by AI. Want to learn a complex concept? AI will do two things for you. First it will curate your learning for you. And secondly it will be adaptive to your learning needs. Want to learn a complex mathematical concept? AI will be your teacher. Got stuck on one particular concept? AI will realize what mistake you are making and change how it teaches you that concept to better meet your leaning needs, and pace.
It’s like having content area specialists at your finger tips. And soon intelligent agents will get to know us. Like a personalized AI tutor, we can pick just about any topic and become knowledgeable by creating small (micro) learning modules that are based on what we know, what we want to know, and how we learn best.
The AI can deliver a lecture, but also ask questions. It can provide the information in a conversation, or it can point us to videos and experts that would normally have taken considerable research to find. And the idea that it can adapt to how quickly you pick something up or if you struggle with a concept, means that you are getting the learning you need, when you need it. Micro-learning with AI is the new search of 2025, and it’s just going to get better and better.
How will this change schools? What will AI assisted lessons look like in classrooms? How will the learning be individualized by teachers? By students? How will this change the way we look at content? How important will the process be compared to the content?
I think this will be a year of experimentation and adaptation. Micro-learning won’t just be something our students do, but our educators as well. Furthermore, what micro-learning means a year from now will look a lot different than it does now. And frankly, I’m excited about the way micro-learning is adapting to the powerful AI tools that are currently being developed. We are headed into a new frontier of adaptive, just-in-time, micro-learning.