Pros

Both students and instructors can engage in microlearning throughout microlearning courses, with some platforms allowing for gamification opportunities as well. Microlearning can provoke deeper engagement by nudging students to apply their learning in specific ways, taking action in the real world.

With this style of learning, it's possible to customize a course to the needs and skill levels of each individual student. This level of personalization means that students can focus on mastering their skills in a particular area of expertise that will provide the most benefits to them. Therefore, students are learning specific skills that prepare them for their future careers (Kato et al. 2020).

Micro-credentials are another benefit for students where they can upskill their current skills in a rapid training program and attain a digital representation for the skillset they have achieved. This leads to the incentive of cost, due to the low cost of courses and the option to choose how many skill-specific courses you would like, microlearning can be made available to a wider population of students compared to traditional, high-cost higher education programs. Microlearning courses in higher education can therefore be more economical and less time-consuming for students.

Cons

Sometimes a subject or topic is too complicated with interconnected ideas and concepts that it should not be broken down into microlearning content. In doing so, some important discourse and information necessary to fully understand the subject may be lost along the way. Therefore it is not conducive to achieving mastery in some particularly complicated subjects or domains (Chai, 2020)(Pappas, 2016).

Another disadvantage to microlearning is that because it only focuses on short snippets of information to be learned at a time, it does not allow for long-term learning goals to be achieved unless it is used consistently and often for a long period of time which may also lead to burnout (Pappas, 2016).

A lack of consistency is another problem specifically with the microcredentials earned upon completion of the paid microlearning courses offered at different higher education platforms. Different platforms refer to their microcredentials as 'certificate degrees', 'nanodegrees', 'micromasters', etc. The lack of standardization and consistency with these names and what the courses entail could lead to a perceived lack of value associated with them (Pickard, 2018).

Furthermore, since each microlearning course is designed by different companies or individual instructor, they have different designs and could risk the information becoming fragmented if not designed well with subject matter displayed in an appropriate sequential matter that links well to the next module in the course. If not designed well, this could then lead to incomplete course modules or confusion of concepts and where they “fit” within the course itself and therefore a confused or disengaged learner (Chai, 2020)(Pappas, 2016).