Why curate content, some managers wonder,when employees can find any information they need with a quick online search?But searching is akin to aggregating content. It casts a wide net into an oceanof information … and comes up with a lot of bycatch, along with a few keepers.Curation is the act of winnowing the bycatch: discarding the outdated,inaccurate, irrelevant, poorly documented, or just plain bad content andshowcasing the gems. A curated database or resource page should be an integralpart of your eLearning strategy. Here’s why.
Your employees’ time is valuable
Appointing a curator in your organization orin each work team or department saves time. This may seem counterintuitive: Won’tcuration take a lot of time? It will take time, but only one person’s time. Ifthe best, most current information is right there at their fingertips, the restof your employees won’t waste time looking for it. They won’t all have to siftthrough the same useless content; they won’t all get distracted by the same clickbait—contentthat has a great headline or sounds useful but is more glitter than gold. In adepartment of only five or 10 employees, cutting out redundant searches couldsave many wasted hours each week; think about the impact on a larger group ofemployees.
You can steer employees to the best online information
In a curated content list or database, youcan include only relevant, high-quality content. Who gets to decide whatconstitutes “the best” content? You do. Or your handpicked curator does. Eitherway, if you are eager for employees to learn about a particular topic, you canensure that they are learning about it from reputable sources, not picking upthe latest puffery from marketing pieces and blogs.
Sharing curated content will engage employees in learning
Encourage employees to share great contentthat they find and to discuss articles posted in the curated site. Many LMSsinclude discussion boards or other features that allow learners to share anddiscuss content. Incorporating curated content into this framework adds valueto your training and facilitates team collaboration. Employees or work groupswill also become more engaged in their eLearning, which can lead to betterretention.
The curated content will reinforce and refresh the material in yourtraining modules
Posting relevant materials—and encouraginglearners to read and discuss these materials—reinforces the material you arepresenting in eLearning courses and modules. Employees can apply their newknowledge as they interpret and discuss related articles. In a January 2016 Learning Solutions Magazine article, David James argues that contextually relevant content, available when learnersneed it, increases engagement. A well-maintained curated site is also a placefor employees to refresh their training knowledge weeks or months after they’vecompleted their online training.
Curated content complements the content in your eLearning modules
If eLearning takes place in structuredmodules, a curated resources site turns your eLearning program into apersonalized adaptive-learning experience. How’s that? It provides deeper discussionof relevant topics and allows interested learners to dive in.
Providing curated content supports employee performance
At the completion of a learning event,whether instructor-led or eLearning, participants might show a high level ofmastery of the knowledge or skill. But that doesn’t last. Authors ConradGottfredson and Bob Mosher argue that strong performance support can enhance learning transfer—employees’ ability tomove from learning to retaining knowledge and applying their new skills totheir jobs. And, in a related article, Gottfredson and Mosher point out the difficulty of findingthe information needed at the moment it’s needed. Quick access to that crucialinformation, they say, enhances performance. Enter the curator—by finding andfiltering information, the curator provides excellent and much-neededperformance support.
