Microlessons from chunkx aim to transform continuous learning

By Mauro Mereu

Since his early days working in the corporate learning sector, Florian Stieler had noticed how limited the role data played in improving digital education. That idea stayed with him at the back of his mind for years, while he went on to work in different companies and saw how the problem still persisted. Earlier this year, chunkx was born. It is a micro-learning platform that connects corporate learning courses in one environment. Its artificial intelligence algorithm tailors educational material to each user, by managing data on previous training and providing users with relevant follow-up content to support them further. Instead of long lectures or seminars, learning takes place through microlearning units – or chunks. Stieler spoke to Innovation Origins for this instalment of the start-up of the day series.

What does chunkx do?

“Chunkx is a platform that organizes corporate learning, and tailors educational material to employees. It does this with microlearning units that help them study, revise, or delve deeper into a given topic. Firms can arrange the learning resources they have as a way to make sure that the money and time that they have invested in training tools have an impact.”

Why opt for microlearning?

“Clustering content into micro units allows us to select them in a dynamic way, according to the user’s needs. We will never show eighty slides of PowerPoint presentations. However, we will try to understand which ones among those slides the user needs the most to support them in what they seek to learn. After a webinar or an e-learning course, attendees receive materials about that lecture, but hardly anybody really ever opens them. This is because the topics might not be as interesting to employees or because the content is not that appealing.

The problem for companies is that they tend to provide a huge amount of content to their employees. What we can do is enhance their existing resources, so that those courses are given in a more meaningful way than, for example, attending a seminar once and then forgetting about it. Microlearning changes that paradigm. The algorithm provides adaptive follow-ups to create a learning path that takes any available resources and previous education into account, as a way to retain and build up knowledge.”

What about the user experience?

“After offline training or an e-learning course, employees receive a link to subscribe to the relevant course on chunkx. There, once they create a profile, users will be provided with a tailored feed based on the topics that they are following. From time to time, we notify them with summaries and recaps of the topics that they choose to follow – without overwhelming them. Additionally, we select content based on what they need to do in practice. In fact, users are assessed at the end of each microlesson. They can also decide to share the results with other users and be part of a ranking, so as to encourage them to learn more and challenge their co-workers. In this, the user interface design continuously evolves to provide the best experience possible.”

How does a microlesson work?

“Each microlesson is built up of two parts. In the first part, the user is presented with an idea – it could be displayed via text, video, etc. – while the second one is interactive. The user is asked to answer a question or to evaluate their level of acquired knowledge on that topic. From our perspective, a learning unit should not last more than two minutes, but that’s not a strict recommendation. When there’s a link to a YouTube video, it’s easy to exceed that limit and we wouldn’t want to stop our customers from sharing great content that lasts longer than that.”

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How do you manage content on the platform?

“Chunkx basically enhances the existing learning infrastructure. We can provide companies with a full service. By paying a regular user license fee, our artificial intelligence starts creating follow-up content for them, drawing from the materials that they have uploaded. Furthermore, companies can create their own courses on our platform and use the website and the connected app to do that.”

What’s next for you?

“Our vision is to work on making the learning experience as integrative as possible. Step by step, we are making the integration of continuous learning even more seamless. Beyond that, we are also constantly improving our AI and further upgrading our content generation.”