What is curation in eLearning?

Curation in eLearning is the act of researching and selecting the best resources for your students or employees.

According to Bersin by Deloitte “curation is the art/science of identifying the best information for the organization and providing content and order to it”.

There is so much information and content available today, which means the modern Learning & Development professional can spend less time creating content and more time curating it, which means compiling the best sources of information.

Truly effective eLearning curation has a clear purpose behind it, that provides relevance and value to the audience.

Sharing continuous, specific, relevant insights with an employee or student in the content of their role, their needed competencies and their business objectives.

• Supporting a formal learning programme or event

• Offering performance support

• Building a community of practice

• Grouping together relevant resources related to a conference

When designing a new course (classroom or digital), existing content can be curated from both inside and outside the organisation to provide a starting point to work from.

This content can then either be rewritten or incorporated in its original form, with the aim of reducing both times to delivery and cost.

Collecting and sharing resources as a trigger to inspire action or further exploration.

As a follow up on an event (such as a webinar), the curator can provide a blog to the audience that contains the relevant sources, slides, videos, research and articles.

It inspires the learners to explore the topics covered in greater depth, extending the learning experience and audience understanding of the topics.

Curating for others can help strengthen your own understanding of a topic.

Curation can be built into formal learning programmes to give learners the chance to reflect and share how they will apply their learning in their role.

It inspires the audience to critically analyse their own learnings and feedback on the learnings of their peers, which is a good example of curation driving social learning.