I am looking at Microlearning from the unique perspective of a teacher whose student population struggles with learning disabilities and/or behavioural difficulties, and as such, think that Microlearning is, and will continue to become an even more effective way of teaching our students.
In my experience, these students have so many things to focus on in a given lesson – the anxiety stemming from the text in front of them, the fact that they have to remember 2- or 3-step (or more!) instructions from a teacher before beginning a task, the fact that they have ADHD and are easily distracted by various external stimuli as it is, etc… Microlearning can help alleviate some of these anxieties and help students retain more information, particularly those who struggle with attention. More and more classrooms are seeing the effects of overstimulated and highly distractible students, thus I do believe that this topic is important not only in the special education classroom, but in the mainstream ones as well. From my experience teaching grades 2 and 3 in a class full of students struggling with dyslexia, ASD, and ADHD, lessons that go over a 10 minute mark of strictly instructional time results in a quick decline in student attention, interest, and thus retention. I would be very interested to learn more about the field and find ways to weave it into my teaching practice on a more consistent practice. I know Microlearning seems to have the goal of providing lessons/learning experiences for those who are busy and always on the go, but I think it can have a two-fold goal by also targeting distracted learners.