Smart Instructional Design - Bite 4: Nano-design.

A Smart Instructional Designer has perfectly understood that she/he can not win the attention of the users by designing e-learning courses that last for hours.

The attention span has collapsed: perhaps it does not last 8 seconds as the controversial theory of Goldfish says, but it certainly lasts a few minutes, maybe 10-12 minutes, the time a neuron takes to disconnect. 

In those few minutes, meaningful content must be concentrated. This is the paradoxical challenge.

When is learning "meaningful"? When it allows the users to understand and improve their own performance deficit. So:

• Why always start from the premises? From the learning objectives, the presentation of the topics, the pre-test? What a bore! 
• Why start from the general (that everyone already knows), and then move slowly to the particular, which is almost always the most valuable and useful learning? 

Let's start from the center! That means: 

1. Separate the "need-to-know" from the "nice-to-know"! And concentrate on the first one! 
2. Design learning sprints, 4-5 minutes. Based on real-life examples and microsimulations.

Your contents have to enter in 1% of the weekly time (less than half an hour) people have at their disposal to update themselves.

By the way: it took about two minutes to read this article! Thanks for your attention!

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