The online training tools are designed to teach you the everyday skills of reading and responding to micro expressions, whereas the FACS manual is a much more technical guide often used by researchers, animators, and in other various professional settings. Therefore, for anyone interested in learning about micro expressions, we generally recommend starting with the training tools.
The online training tools are interactive modules, which help you learn to detect micro expressions and respond to emotional expressions. There are a total of seven training tools which are combined into three different packages. The format of each tool is a little different, but generally follows a series of learning, practice, and test sections to measure your accuracy and improvement over time.
The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a downloadable PDF manual. It is a comprehensive, anatomically based system for describing all visually discernible facial movement, which breaks down facial expressions into individual components of muscle movement. It takes at least 100 hours of self-study to learn, and it has been used extensively in a wide variety of medical, psychological research, and commercial contexts. You can learn FACS the traditional, self-guided way, or through a workshop.