Since my last post on curating content, I’ve been keeping an eye out for articles and posts that discuss this topic especially for L&D folks. Generally speaking I find that lots of people are saying that curation will be a required skill for L&D but these same people are either not practicing curators or getting into the detail of how to curate content.
One of the challenges I can see regarding content curation is finding ‘quality’ content in a sea of information. With such a huge volume you can’t be across everything but maybe that’s ok? Then what about sub-categories of content? As an example, in eLearning there’s content about authoring tools, learning theory, accessibility, graphic design, writing and many more.
So some questions I’ve been thinking about are:
Can the curated content be a mixed bag that falls under a common theme or is it better to sort by a category? For example eLearning or something more specific such as learning theory?
How do you keep track of content you find from different sources?
What tools are there to help with curating?
How do you build skills in curation? (I’m taking the jump in and give it a go approach).
Here’s my attempt at curating some content about content curation. The reason for selecting these particular posts was that they provide some diverse perspectives into content curation as well as a couple of examples of curated content (click the title to view).
A Framework for Content Curation by Ryan Tracey
In this post, Ryan proposes a practical framework for curating content. Built upon Tell me, Show me, Let me, Test me and focusing on quality being more important than quantity. The comments section is also a good read.
We are the Curators of the Learning Revolution by Ruth McElhone
As learning and development professionals move towards being curators in a world where there’s ample information, this post provides three good starting points for content curation.
Seven Approaches to Content Curation by Marc Rosenberg
I hadn’t thought of different approaches to curation until I read this post where Marc describes seven different approaches to curating content. Keep an eye out for Marc’s other articles on the topic.
Content Curation for Learning by Anders Pink
This is a FREE eBook from the folks at Anders Pink all about curation – why curation matters, the role of learning professionals in curation, examples and more.
Content Curation, How can it be used? by Lorraine Minister
Lorraine commented below and left a link to a post that describes a model she developed about different levels of content curation.
A carefully selected list of articles on a variety of L&D topics for the Guild’s community that comes out every week. In my opinion a good example of content curation.
A Week in Review by David Anderson
Another example of curation, each week David gathers links to demos, discussions, articles and more that all come from the E-Learning Heroes Community.
Pick of the Posts by Jane Hart
Jane does a monthly curated post but hers is focused around a particular topic area. For the month of August it was posts about social learning.
Comments
10 responses to “Continuing with Content Curation”
Excellent post Matt! I think there is something to learn about content curation for L&D folks and Subject matter experts who plan to start curating.
Thanks Jeff!
Good day Matt!
Thanks for the article and links!
I too have been exploring the subject of content curation in regard to its impact on L&D professionals. As you have discovered, there is a lot of information out there and trying to find the digital nuggets worthwhile takes effort. Over the next few months, I’m going to be moving to a “Simplicity over Complexity” approach to what I’m doing. Part of that will encompass taking information, removing the fluff and trying to present it in the most easy to understand way. At the moment, my thought is to take a “focus deeper on specific topics” approach within categories. When it comes to curation, the only way to truly produce quality content is to be picky about what we choose, filter out the junk and promote the core idea of the content. Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I look forward to following this thread.
Richard
G’day Richard! I like the sound of your approach especially to ‘focus deeper on specific topics’. I’m also leaning towards curating by topic area as it may help to make content easier for others to find. I look forward to hearing more about your curating efforts too!
[…] a follow-up post Continuing with Content Curation I curated some posts on content […]
Hey Matt thanks so much for including my ATD post. If anyone has trouble accessing as it is a subscriber site happy for them to drop me a line and I can provide a word version.
Re Curation in general I don’t know if you have seen Curation Guide for Learning from Anders Pink or the Content CurationPlaybook from the Melbourne Learning Sumitt.
Both are great resources for L&D to refer to.
Take care and once again I am humbled to see you have included my post amongst other noted L&D folk.
Con
You’re welcome Con. I’ll need to take a look at both of those curation resources as I have some ideas for another curation post, so thanks for the info!
Hi Matt, great post with well balanced resources, thanks for sharing!
Like Con I highly rate Anderspink both for their content on curation and for their content curation tool. I’ve got a few posts on Content Curation too (some real practical examples). This is one that was mention in Jane’s 2017 MWL book https://madelearningdesigns.com/2016/02/26/content-curation-how-can-it-be-used/.
I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Lorraine
Thanks for stopping by Lorraine and sharing the link to your post. I hadn’t thought of levels of curation before but this does make sense especially in a workplace learning setting and provides a framework for the L&D team.
[…] decided to try it out by creating a simple demo using some resources from my Continuing with Content Curation blog post. Click on the image to access and let me know what you […]