Curating Content In Microlearning
Content curation has always been important for the Learning and Development (L&D) industry, and it is especially relevant now in the modern microlearning era. Let’s start with what content curation actually is in order to see the truth in the above statement. Content curation is defined by the world-known industry analyst Josh Bersin (founder of Bersin By Deloitte), as the identification of the most relevant information for a specific group of a target audience that is contextualized and organized before it is presented to them.
Steps To Curate Content Effectively
Effective content curation requires that L&D professionals follow these simple steps:
- Aggregation of information from multiple sources
- Filtering aggregated content to handpick only the most relevant information for learners
- Chunking the content to give it a logical structure and make it easier to comprehend
- Simplifying the content to make it easier to understand while adding explanatory content
- Sharing relevant resources in the content for those who want deeper knowledge
- Creating an archive where the content is stored and can be accessed easily by learners (preferably through a smartphone)
- Making it easier for learners to share feedback
Now that we have understood the steps to effective content curation, let’s have a look at 3 tips on how corporate organizations can use content curation in their microlearning strategy.
Using Content Curation In Microlearning
1. Let Learners Take The Wheel
Give your learners the freedom to make choices. Introduce a rating system where learners can rate microlearning modules based on relevance, and create different filters for learners to search content based on factors such as top-rated, duration, relevance, newly posted, subject, job role, department, and the like. Also, create a community on social media where learners can discuss ideas about the modules such as what they learned and what they would like to learn. Also, encourage them to create groups based on shared interests in learning.
2. Design Your Learning Portal Effectively
L&D professionals should utilize content curation while designing their organization’s learning portal as well. Make sure that it doesn’t take the learner more than two clicks to get from any page in the portal to another. Add a resources section that has links to all the resources mentioned in various modules. Make sure that you use minimal content in the learning portal, but describe ways to use the learning portal in an effective, instructional manner using crisp text. Your learning portal should be designed just like it sounds—a "learning portal"—which directs learners to not only other modules in the portal (internal links) but to external resources (external links) as well.
3. Keep Curating Content
Content curation doesn’t end once a microlearning module is created and posted on the learning portal. L&D professionals that wish for their microlearning program to be a success need to regularly curate the content of past modules as well, as sometimes trends change and information that was relevant in the past might not be as relevant today. It is for this reason that updating and curating content regularly is necessary if you want your learners to keep their knowledge and skills fresh. In order to do that, L&D professionals must keep themselves updated on changing business needs and/or training requirements, while always being on the lookout for ways to offer engaging and valuable content to learners.
The above-mentioned tips will help digital learning designers and other L&D professionals use effective content curation in their microlearning program and make employees more productive with an actual zeal to learn. Facilitating learning isn’t easy. Digital learning professionals looking to be leaders in this industry must understand that there are a number of skills that they themselves have to inculcate in order to make Learning and Development better for learners. But if you put yourself out there and become a lifelong learner yourself, there’s no dearth of the amazing changes you can bring to this industry while be counted as a leader.
