In a moment of boredom during lockdown, I bought a coconut with a vague plan to make a curry or piña colada. The only problem was, I had no idea how to open it. A big hammer? A saw? I was too impatient to wade through my recipe books but, thanks to a 15-second video from @pierre.le.chef, a three-Michelin-starred chef on TikTok, I found the answer. It involves using a corkscrew to open the softest eye of the coconut, draining the water then breaking the shell with the back edge of a knife.
Tumbling into a world of TikTop tips, I discovered how to make beautifully scented sage sticks thanks to @earthtopia, learned the German words for four different animals courtesy of @duolingo, and found out why a Victorian child might receive a doll made out of a shoe for Christmas via @blackcountrymuseum. These revelations came in the time it took me to make a cup of tea.
And that’s the key to bite-size learning. As much as I would love to spend six weeks on a cookery course or a long weekend in Italy studying the language, like most of us, I don’t have the time. What I do have is five minutes while I’m waiting for a Zoom meeting to start, or 10 minutes while I’m running a bath for the children. Indeed, for many people, the past year has made it the norm to flip between work tasks, domestic errands and leisure as our work and home lives have converged.
However, according to the latest thinking on “snackable content” – straightforward, short-form, easily digestible information – these stolen snatches of time are more than enough to learn something new.
“The very act of learning is evolving,” says Shivvy Jervis, founder of the forecasting lab FutureScape 248. “Research has shown that there is a limit to how much our brains can take in and make sense of at one time. It’s why you hear of information overload. In many ways, our brains cope better with bite-size learning rather than longer form education.”
But can we really absorb new skills and information if we only have a few minutes to spare? If so, have we been wasting our time slogging through dense books and listening to lectures and presentations?
“It can be easier to remember one quick tip than sifting through a 25-page report,” says Jervis. “Our brains as adults work in a similar way to children’s. You wouldn’t give a seven-year-old a massive tome of 80 pages to learn, so why do we expect adults to deal with endless spreadsheets and PDFs?”
When encountering shorter bursts of new information, the novelty factor can make us more receptive to learning. Likewise, bite-size nuggets lend themselves better to repeat watching or repeat reading – another powerful learning aid.
Of course, you wouldn’t want a brain surgeon operating on you if they’d learned their craft solely through video hacks. “It’s difficult to convey complexities through microlearning,” says Jervis. “It needs to complement in-depth learning, otherwise details can get missed.”
Still, learning in bite-size chunks is transforming the way we take on information, something that the advertising industry has already recognised. Now that skippable adverts mean we can click past an online advert after a short time of viewing, advertisers have had to learn how to get their message across quickly. Indeed, a study by Comscore found that the adverts that have the biggest impact on millennials are only five to six seconds long.
It’s a message that has filtered through to some unlikely places. Last year, English Heritage, traditionally associated with conserving historic sites, debuted on TikTok and gained almost 150,000 followers with video snippets about the different ways people have eaten jelly through the ages, and the story of Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, the West African princess Sarah Forbes Bonetta.
“It’s all about bringing history to life,” says Martin Jefferies, social media marketing manager at English Heritage. “Gone are the days when you had to sit and read a history book to understand what happened in the past. Today, people can take 15, 30 seconds out of their day, learn one really interesting historical fact, and that might be enough to inspire them to look deeper into that subject.”
Bite-size historical content has been an unexpected success online. “When the period drama Bridgerton first became available, we made a video on ‘the secret language of fans’”, says Jefferies. “It showed the different messages women in Georgian times could send using their fans and it went down incredibly well.”
This idea of using short formats to ensure that things survive in the long term certainly resonates in the crafting and making communities. Creators such as @daisybow_craft are highlighting crafts such as rug tufting and kishie basket making to help stop them from becoming extinct.
Another benefit of shorter formats is that, by definition, they get straight to the point, bringing all the benefits of clarity and concision. A week on from my first look into microlearning and I’ve realised that being busy is no barrier to learning new skills. I’ve mastered chopping a butternut squash like a pro thanks to @poppycooks, learned about the mystery of Richard III’s DNA via @cambridgeuniversity, and I can still remember that the German word for bird is vogel. Not bad for less than a minute’s work.
Why not try something new? Discover the benefits of just having a go #LearnOnTikTok
