Curation. Whenever I hear the term I always think of a person working in an art gallery carefully selecting pieces of work for an upcoming exhibition. But I’m also seeing it as a skill needed for modern L&D folks…
“We need curators and community managers, rather than course designers” Charles Jennings
…and certainly it’s an area (along with community management) that I want to explore more and build my own capability in. But how can I do this?
What is curation?
The starting point in wanting to learn more about how to do something is to know what it means. So here’s a couple definitions that I found online:
“Curation isn’t just about collecting or filtering…it’s about adding value through context and analysis” David Kelly
“A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online” Rohit Bhargava
I thought that I was curating already by selecting some of the articles/videos/blog posts that I come across and sharing them via social media e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn but the comments above suggest that it’s more than this. Ok, I’ll give this a go by adding some curated resources at the end of my blog posts that ties in with the topic of the post.
I feel comfortable in attempting to curate content within the eLearning space as it’s an area that I have experience in and being active in SoMe means that I’m exposed to lots of information in the field plus people who I interact with online.
But if curation is a skill needed by L&D professionals, a big question for me is:
How do I curate content outside of my area of expertise?
As an example, if right now I was working in an L&D department within an organisation, I might need to curate some resources for managers to develop their capability for managing people. How can I do this effectively when 1) I haven’t managed staff myself for a long time and 2) I’m not actively across what’s available out there. How can I tell the ‘wheat from the chaff’ in terms of curating resources for them when (from my point of view) I’m not in a position of credibility?
One of my pet peeves is that in a number of posts/articles etc. that I read about the ‘future of L&D’ is that they often just focus on what L&D should be doing but provide little to no guidance on the how. It’s easy to say “L&D need to be content curators” but it seems like there’s more to it than pulling a few resources together.
Generally speaking, for the L&D people I come into contact with, the field is very much entrenched in the course mindset which are one-off learning events that are expected to bring about change. I see content curation as being more ongoing but will require a huge mindset shift from developing courses.
I’m keen to learn more about the practical, the doing, the how of curation as well as how do we get there. Do you curate? If so, how do you do it? Please let me know your thoughts/ideas/advice in the comments below and if you have any examples of curated content, let me know too.
I did come across this example of curated content about curation by David Kelly which I thought was a good one because there’s lots of articles on the subject:
Comments
14 responses to “Getting Started with Curating Content”
Interesting topic and one that has been puzzling me for some time as to the “How’ of the topic.
This is what I am looking forward to as to how one can curate not just for one’s self, but to the diverse group of learners I com into contact with.
Thanks for stopping by Derek and hopefully we’ll get some tips from those who have experience with curation!
Great article Matt. My gut instinct to answer the question”How do I curate content outside of my area of expertise?” would be that you shouldn’t! I don’t think we should be encouraged to curate unless we can add value, and we often feel obliged to share because it will be a popular subject – when actually, sharing less but with higher value is a better approach.
Thanks Ant and I get what you’re saying about not curating outside your area of expertise but then how can curation be utilised by L&D for their organizations?
I see your point – I guess it depends on what you class as expertise. If you work for a sugar production company as an L&D Manager, then I guess you are expert enough to curate content from the sugar industry.
I was thinking more from my own perspective, as an L&D Consultant NOT specialising in sugar production, I shouldn’t be curating that content and leaving it to the experts in that field.
I would say it’s up to each individual to know whether they are confident with a topic, and not just curate for the sake of sharing content.
Yep, get the SMEs in the organisation to pitch in.
I agree, Matt. A lot of talk about “what”, much less about “how”.
I use a framework for content curation that you may also find helpful:
https://ryan2point0.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/a-framework-for-content-curation/
Hi Ryan, thanks for reminding me about your post. It’s a useful framework to use for curation (and the comments on the post also provide some good ideas). I also saw a tweet recently from Shai Desai that linked to an ATD article on curation: https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Learning-Technologies-Blog/2016/03/Digital-Assets-Creates-New-Role-for-LD-Pros-the-Content-Curator
While I feel that this article was still somewhat general in nature regarding curation (perhaps to sell more digital copies), one point did stand out: “curation cannot be managed by a single source or individual process.” To draw on what Ant mentioned about involving the SME’s, maybe the role of curation for L&D folks is not purely to curate for the organisation but to curate with the organisation?
I agree with Ryan. If you don’t have the knowledge to curate the content, partner with someone who does.
For example, several years ago I worked with an IT security/audit manager to put together a training package for her team. She identified specific e-Learning courses and resources (from a vendor’s library) and we (L&D) bundled them together for easy access.
There’s no way I could have done that by myself, I had zero familiarity with the content.
Thanks for sharing your experience Simon! It seems like (and I agree) that partnering with experts is needed for content curation. I think this will be huge mindset shift for many L&D folks who are only concerned with delivering courses.
Great article Matt. It reminded me of a blog post I wrote a few years ago which I have now republished – see http://superblearning.com.au/content-curation/.
In it I talk about how, when curating content, you need to make sure it is Current, Relevant, Accurate and Presented well (my CRAP test).
Thanks for this Matt and an easy to remember acronym!
[…] my last post on curating content, I’ve been keeping an eye out for articles and posts that discuss this topic […]
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Akshay