Content Curation: Tackling Content Overload in L&D

Applying content curation into learning and development strategies is more than just bookkeeping. Curating L&D content is beneficial for learners and L&D professionals; L&D professionals are able to build value into their content, and learners gain access to highly relevant content at the right time in their learning process.

What is Content Curation?

Like museums and galleries, L&D content requires curators. Content curation builds value by applying content with context. Oftentimes, curating content is as simple as providing learners access to particular content at the appropriate time. A direct result of content curation is avoiding content overload for your learners.

Content Overload: A Complication for Your Learners

There is more content circulating than ever before, leading many to question how much of this content is good content. This also leads people to question how much of this good content is applicable to learners at specific moments. Content overload is an excessive amount of content made available all at once.

L&D professionals run the risk of losing learners to dwindling attention spans or to the resentments of feeling overwhelmed when too much content is provided all at once. Content overload complicates learning and causes content to lose its relevancy or go entirely unused.

Additionally, learners are increasingly looking for ways to uncomplicate their lives; they only want to engage with content that is useful and relevant to them. People are already curating content themselves through organisation apps like Flipboard and Pocket.

Tackling Content Overload in L&D

So how are learning and development professionals plugging the content dam? To start, they are archiving out-of-date and duplicate content. This content is neither helpful nor informative. Instead, content curators are focusing on successful content and publishing it to learners when needed. Here are some other ways L&D professionals use content curation to control content overload.

Put Your Learners First

It is critical to put learners first when curating content for L&D. With learners at the forefront, assess how they are accessing this information. Is it through an LMS? An intranet? Just because a resource is made available to learners doesn’t mean that it is accessible.

Modern learners don’t have the time and patience to manually search through a content library for specific course materials. Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report highlights how learning is shaped today: “A new type of employee learning is emerging that is more ‘consumer-like’ and that brings together design thinking, content curation, and an integrated model offering an end-to-end designed learning experience.” Design thinking is a participation-based approach towards problem-solving.

Outline Learning Objectives

Learners demand a seamless experience. One way to cut overload is by outlining learning objectives. This can be as easy as content curators providing a course outline with a one-line explanation of each objective’s purpose. Keep in mind that this is just an outline, and try to avoid overwhelming learners with overly detailed explanations. As eLearning Industry points out, an outline can be as simple as a bulleted list.

Tie Content Together with Microlearning

Microlearning is simply learning done in small steps or parts. Content presented in small segments is easier to digest, understand, and remember. Microlearning is a great method for presenting highly complex subjects in different formats over time.

No one enjoys getting lost in a sea of words. Your learners are no exception. Certain content is best presented in different formats. For instance, data and statistics can be constructed into infographics, whereas demonstrations can be shown through videos.

Curate Consistently

Content curation isn’t a once and done process. L&D professionals should design courses based around content curation. Target content to be published and announced to learners on schedule, adjusting content access as you go. Curating consistently will help to garner attention from your learners while building trust. They’ll soon come to expect a seamless learner experience tied to high-quality content.

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