Curation Best Practices
The Skillsoft Curation Team has put together a list of curation best practices used within our own content. There are four main areas to focus on - planning, building, content discoverability, and iterating and improving.
Planning
Understand the difference between aggregation and curation.
- Content aggregation is information collection based on a common topic, using one or more related keywords.
- Historically, content providers have done well at content aggregation.
- Content curation is the collection, organization, and online presentation of content related to a particular theme or topic.
- Content curation helps users make decisions that give them exactly what they need in a concise delivery method.
Establish a mission statement or scope statement dependent upon the scale of the curation project.
- Key components should include (but are not limited to) business objective, time line, resourcing, and, most importantly, success metrics.
- Treat curation like a project with specific deliverables, and determine a way to measure success.
Consider the audience. Who are the learners, and what are their roles? How much time do they have and how do they prefer to learn?
- Determine the types of content the target user needs/wants, their prerequisite knowledge, and the modalities that work best for them.
- The key is to curate content in a way that meets the needs of the target audience, but also to not overwhelm the user.
Building
Think about the structure of what you curate and the logical order in which content should be consumed.
- You can use various consumption methods (weekly goals or assignments), or think about proficiency levels (transitioning a learner from beginner to expert).
- Think about the flow of content and keeping users engaged.
- Provide choices and options when possible.
- Consider the appropriate amount and types of assets – you don’t want to overwhelm a learner but you also do not want to provide insufficient resources.
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Understand how any assessments will be applied. Are you testing that the learner completed the assignments and can apply their new skills?
Content discoverability
Having appropriate metadata for all content is critical.
- Consider factors such as expertise level, topic areas, competencies, skills, and content length/duration
- These factors improve the discoverability of content through search results, defining relationships between assets, and providing recommendations to learner based on similar topics or other similar learners.
- This important data can also help learners know if the content they are consuming is appropriate for them.
Iterating and improving
Learn and iterate constantly.
- Repeat the process above as part of continuous improvement. What was the impact and did it meet your expectations? Are there any additional improvements to recommend?
- Your first curation model may change or evolve over time. Don’t think that you curate once and it is set forever.
- Your curation model needs to be maintained, bugs need to be addressed, and new features or components need to be added.
- Continually revisit your curation to ensure it is up-to-date and efficient.
Curation needs to be dynamic and evolve, but it is also important to establish governance and rules around how curation is iterated.
- Establish criteria for the frequency of updates, the types of updates, and how that is communicated. These lead to the success of the program.
- Ask the following questions:
- How can the model be expanded? Consider new topics and content assets to keep things fresh and relevant.
- How is new content added or other content removed?
- What is the process for adding new modalities?
Analyze metrics and various sources of feedback.
- Use metrics to measure success and study usage patterns. When possible, obtain user feedback.
- Collect and review learner and stakeholder feedback regularly to address challenges and plan new features or processes. Possible methods for gathering this feedback includes:
- Surveys
- Advisory panels
- A/B testing