One of the most successful ways Smart has used GIFs is for micro-learning. Imagine being able to record a simple 30-second task and share it with a wide audience in an easily accessible manner. In the spring of 2020, Smart’s team member, Megan, found herself in need of low-tech education to support members facing challenges with Zoom. Some members were new to the video conferencing platform, and we needed a way to show them how to troubleshoot background issues or add our new branded association backgrounds, generously donated by our committee members.

The association hosted the GIFs and provided links for background downloads on their website. These GIFs, with their animations, continuously looped to showcase the steps. To this day, these GIFs remain some of our most-viewed content. For instance, the ‘adding the background to Zoom’ GIF has accumulated over 839,292 views, with the association logo continuously looping in the background.

Recently, I started uploading some of our ‘Tuesday Tips’ social media posts from Canva to our Giphy account after adding Canva’s animation features, with my favorite being ‘stomp.’ I observed as the view counts grew. Our ‘Mini-Model Ideas’ gif jumped to over 11,000 views in less than two weeks!

As industry educators we are always looking for ways to be inclusive and get our education or message out to the masses in easy ways to digest it. By using gifs for education, we are creating another opportunity to support all different types of neuro diverse learners and communicate processes clearly no matter how they like to consume the knowledge.