How Can You Use Content Curation In Your L&D Strategy?

While Learning and Development (L&D) teams realize the importance of using content curation in their learning strategy, they are keen to see its practical application and impact. This article showcases a case study on how you can use content curation along with social learning, gamification, and personalization approaches.

What Is Content Curation?

Content curation could mean different things to different people. Our definition is based on its relevance to learners and the impact it can create for business.

We define content curation as an exercise to continually find, filter (group, organize), and share the most relevant content on specific topics and offer it to learners as an online tool or through a portal or platform.

What Are The Benefits That Content Curation Offers And How Can It Enhance Your Existing Learning Strategy?

Content curation can add value to your learning strategy and enhance the impact manifold as it helps you:

1. Aggregate meaningful content.
With content curation, you can gather and organize all relevant online and offline resources in your network and help your learners access them all in one place.

2. Empower your Learning and Development team and learners alike.
Content curation allows both Learning and Development experts and learners to generate and curate content and make contextual learning material available for everyone’s benefit.

3. Motivate your learners.
With content curation, you can enable employees to get recognized and rewarded for their contribution, effective usage, and learning achievements.

4. Encourage learning as a continuum.
Content curation will help your learners experience constant learning through forums, discussions, and chats for peer level collaboration. It also provides the choice for learners to build paths and share content. Furthermore, it facilitates creation of strong relationships between experts and learners.

5. Provide personalized feedback through analytics.
Through some smart data analytics, the solution can provide personalized recommendations/feedback to learners as to what content they should go through.

Why Should You Adopt It?

While formal and structured learning approaches will continue to be revered in Learning circles, there is a growing sense of consensus with regard to they being less appealing to modern-day learners. The reasons are many – longer development time, longer seat times, limited learner participation, higher development costs, time consuming update processes, and so on to mention a few.

Content curation appeals to today’s generation of learners who are accustomed to looking up information on the Internet.

It resonates with today’s learners due to the following factors:

1. Focused.
Although the information that learners get through content curation is dynamic, it is filtered and just what they want, mapping precisely to their needs.

2. Continuous value enhancement.
Filtering of information by experts notwithstanding, learners get to play an equally important role in curating content and making the content repository richer.

3. Social learning and performance gain.
When today’s learners find a useful piece of information, they tend to share that information with others. Content curation allows them to share content with others, thereby creating a larger learning audience.

4. Changing the learning culture.
Content curation can serve the purpose of creating a culture of learning as a continuum really well.

What Are The Steps Involved In Content Curation?

For your content curation exercise to be beneficial, you need to follow these steps:

1. Find the most suitable content from different sources (both from external sources and your existing repository).
Filter it so that learners only get to see content that’s relevant to them.

2. Share the content found at the right time through the right platform.

3. Add value to that content with additional inputs, context, or commentary.

4. Tag and archive information, which is vital in ensuring its usage in future. (Consistency in tagging is very important. Often, there could be multiple people involved in an aggregation exercise but they should adhere to identical guidelines to tag the resources).

5. Take feedback from learners to assess the relevance, usage, and the impact.

Are There Any Best Practices To Maximize The Content Curation Impact?

You can enhance the impact of your curated content by following a few simple practices:

1. Seek validation from learners.
While the process of curation would have gone through the rigor to secure the content that is relevant for the learners, it is important to validate this with them. Create channels to seek your learners’ opinion and feedback, validate them against your assumptions, and make the required changes.

2. Integrate the curated content into online courses.
The engagement of learners tends to end with completion of an online course. You can extend this by providing a supporting Webliography or Resources (outside of the eLearning course). You can further extend this to ensure that this continues to be enriched by learners through their ongoing contribution to it.

3. Endeavor to create a self-sustainable learning ecosystem.
Often, great ideas tend to start on a high note and lose sheen in the long run. By creating “communities of interest/practice” and ensuring that your content is being updated by learners, you can create a sustainable learning ecosystem.

4. Continuous improvement to refine your strategies.
Take feedback and continuously checkpoint the usage. These cues will provide the required insight to improve and retain learners’ interest.

Case Study

Now, I share a case study that will help you understand how you can use content curation in your organization.

Our content curation approach is based on a dedicated learning portal featuring multiple learning paths. We have integrated aspects of social learning, gamification, and personalization to support the organization’s 70/20/10 learning model.

Key Highlights

• The platform allows learners to create their own profile and select topics of their choice.
• It then recommends personalized learning paths based on the areas of interest chosen by them.
• Learners can view recommended assets based on their browsing patterns and trending topics.
• The solution offers social recommendations to learners with the option for them to share the content.
• Gamification elements come in the form of points gained, achievements, badges for accomplishments, and so on.
• The platform also offers insightful analytics for admins to assess the browsing patterns of learners and make the learning more personalized for them.

Take a look at this video to see how this solution works and the kind of impact it can create on the learning:

I hope this article provides the required insights on content curation (its definition, benefits, and how it can be used practically). If you have any queries, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.

Also Read:
Why You Should Use Content Curation To Support Your Corporate Training – 5 Questions Answered


Source: https://www.eidesign.net/how-can-you-use-content-curation-in-your-ld-strategy/

5 Questions Answered: Why Should You Use Content Curation To Support Your Corporate Training?

Today’s learners need information that is relevant, up-to-date, and fresh and accessible. That’s where content curation comes into play. In this article, I outline how you can use the content curation strategy to support your corporate training.

5 Questions Answered: Why Should You Use Content Curation To Support Your Corporate Training?

Let us have an analytical look at some questions that explain why you should use content curation to support your corporate training.

1. What Is Content Curation And How Does It Add Value To Your Learning Strategy?

Let me describe how we at EI Design see it. Our definition is based on its relevance for both businesses and learners.

We see content curation as an exercise to continually find, filter (group, organize), and share the most relevant content on specific topics and offer it to learners as an online tool or through a portal or platform.

To expand on this, content curation encompasses the following:

1. Finding the best content from multiple sources (usually external content but could also be from your existing knowledge base).
2. Filtering it so only the most relevant content makes it through.
3. Sharing it with the right internal audiences, at the right time, through the right platform.
4. Adding value to that content with commentary, context, or organization.

Content curation provides the following unique benefits and adds punch to your learning strategy.

1. Aggregates Meaningful Content.

It gathers and organizes all online and offline resources available in your network and allows learners to access them all on a single platform.

2. Enables And Empowers Learning And Development Teams And Learners.

Normally led by experts from Learning and Development teams, it facilitates everyone in the organization to curate learning resources. The process ensures that only the highest quality, most relevant, and contextual content is presented to the team.

3. Motivates Employees.

It enables employees to get recognized and rewarded for their contribution, effective usage, and learning achievements.

4. Propagates Learning As Continuum.

It also establishes a constant engagement model through social media usage – like forums, discussions, chat for peer level collaboration, and choice to learners to build paths and share content (community of learning approach) and establish strong relationships between expert and learners.

5. Provides Personalized Feedback Through Analytics.

It can also provide personalized recommendations/feedback to get learners on the right track regarding how to “consume” content by the intelligent use of data analytics.

2. Why Does It Make Business Sense To Have A Content Curation Strategy?

There are many factors that are changing rather rapidly – business dynamics, global economic volatility, and pressure on training budgets. On the other hand, learner expectations are increasing.

So, the Learning and Development teams need to think beyond the current approaches to deliver training and look at options that can augment or support their current learning strategy.

As we know, traditional learning focuses predominantly on formal training that is necessarily discrete and happens over a finite number of days every quarter or year. Often, the formats used here do not map to the way learners want to learn. This is on account of the fact that they are not always in sync with immersive or new trends.

What would really help is the adoption of “Learning as a continuum” wherein learners see this learning journey as an intrinsic part of their daily/weekly/monthly planning.

Creating a culture of continuous learning is a tough mandate and this is where content curation finds a great fit. By finding the information that is most relevant, packaging it for an easy retrieval and usage, giving learners the flexibility to share and add further, you will be able to create the required mind shift in aligning to learning as an ongoing journey.

Content curation is not at loggerheads with formal training nor will it replace it. However, Learning and Development teams can use this approach very effectively to not only support formal training but create a culture on learning as a continuum.

3. What Is Content Curation’s Value In Learning, And Can The Content Curation Strategy Support The 70/20/10 Model Of Learning?

We all are familiar with how we learn and the 70/20/10 model is a commonly used approach to define it. While formal learning constitutes only 10% of how we learn, most organizations have focus predominantly on this. On the other hand, social learning or learning from others that constitutes 20% of how we learn and 70% that is experiential is often ignored or not focused upon.

While formal and structured learning will always have its place under the sun and is certainly needed, we need to note its limitations as well.

• The time to go live and people having to sit through for longer periods of time to gather knowledge makes it relatively lesser appealing to today’s learner.
• It is certainly expensive and cannot be changed/updated as easily.

Look at it from the learner side as well.

• How often would they sign in to the Learning Management System to seek a specific input that they need on the job?

Content curation aligns to the way learners want to learn. Its value in learning can be summarized as follows:

• Focused.

It has the dynamism of delivering the right information that learners want. Furthermore, it is filtered by experts so that it maps exactly to learner needs.

• Continuous value enhancement.

Once this is in place, you will see the curated information becoming richer by ongoing contributions by learners.

• Social learning and performance gain.

The information will get a wider audience as learners will share it and apply it as this info now maps to their moment of need.

• Changing the learning culture.

Over time, it will create a learning culture that maps to “Learning for life – Learning as a continuum”.

4. What Are The Benefits Of Content Curation For Learners?There are several benefits of content curation for learners.

1. The learner is the “HERO”: They don’t have to plough through masses of content from Learning Management Systems, portals, intranets, wikis, social forums, news feeds, and search results to find quality content. The platform will do that for them!
2. Learners feel empowered as they browse through various kinds of relevant content and pathways.
3. It enables learners to get recognized and rewarded for their learning achievements.

5. How Does The Content Curation Strategy Enhance The Value Of Learning And Development Teams?

At any time, we all have access to valuable information but we end up googling again at the time of need. Very often, we do not have time to wade through the ocean of information to pick what is most relevant.

Learning and Development teams can play a pivotal role by adding value to address this moment of need. They can:

1. Identify the most appropriate inputs for the learners (bring in the Subject Matter Expertise).
2. Provide context and observations to highlight the relevance and usage (provide Expert guidance).
3. Keeping learning current and relevant: Everything learners need to know is out there but not everyone is willing or capable of going and finding it. That’s where Learning and Development teams can really add value – being the people who help people find really good stuff and keep updating it to keep it current and relevant.
4. Provide a platform to share and curate further knowledge.
5. Help learners access all kinds of learning resources (internal as well as external) in one place.

To summarize, with content curation, Learning and Development teams will be able to provide value-adds such as:

For Learners

1. Giving learners just what they’re looking for.
2. Saving their time.
3. Providing smarter insights to learners.
4. Helping learners chart their own learning path.
5. Encouraging exploration of information.
6. Encouraging sharing of information.

For The Organization

1. Helping organization reduce costs and stay agile.
2. Offering a more responsive service.
3. Creating a comprehensive resource bank for frequent and lasting usage.
4. Fuelling innovation, continuous learning, and collective intelligence.

In the process of solutions through content curation, Learning and Development teams get an opportunity to build and showcase their expertise. This approach would go a long way in creating a culture of constant learning in the organization.

I hope this article provides essential clues on why you should integrate Content Curation in your learning strategy. This support to your corporate training will add tremendous value to the organization, highlight contribution of Learning and Development teams and most significantly appeal to the learners. If you have any further questions or observations on this, do contact me at apandey@eidesign.net.

Source: https://www.eidesign.net/use-content-curation-support-corporate-training-5-questions-answered/