How Content Curation Can Make eLearning More Manageable

It can be quite a challenge to create a steady stream of high-quality learning materials for your eLearning program. After all, the sheer quantity of information out there can feel overwhelming. Where should you even start? And how can you filter through everything and organize it for your students so they can learn effectively? 

The good news is, you don’t have to do it all on your own. Content curation can help solve this problem — by saving time, offering variety, and ensuring that your courses are of the highest quality. In this article, we’ll show you how content curation can level up your company’s eLearning program and give you step-by-step instructions for getting started.

Content curation in eLearning involves taking existing digital learning materials and incorporating them into your eLearning program. You can curate learning material from a variety of sources: you could purchase a full series of courses on topics like compliance or marketing, buy a single course or course module to round out your existing material, or connect your LMS (learning management system) to platforms like LinkedIn Learning. You can also add individual pieces of curated content to your employees’ learning paths for more variety. These might include news articles, white papers, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.

One of the main benefits of using curated content in your eLearning program is that it saves time and resources compared to creating everything from scratch. When you purchase pre-made courses, you save the effort of producing the course (or having it produced), as well as designing the learning materials. You can rest assured that the lessons are up-to-date and created according to industry best practices. You can also use curation to quickly refresh older courses. For example, you could purchase a single course module, or add additional material such as current news articles to keep the information up to date.

Content curation can also be used to add variety and real-world examples to your eLearning program. By adding content like news articles, white papers, or podcasts to your employees’ learning paths, you enhance their learning with diverse perspectives and real-world examples. That can help them better understand what they are learning and apply it to their daily work.

By providing a variety of curated resources in your eLearning program, you can create customized learning paths for each of your employees, and also give them the chance to personalize their learning and dive deep into topics that interest them. For example, you could add several different curated articles, infographics, and videos to an extra module titled “Further Learning”, where employees can choose the material that piques their interest.

When you provide a curated selection of additional information for your employees, you save them the trouble of sifting through the overabundance of information found online. By sorting out the wheat from the chaff, you ensure that your employees are learning from trustworthy, reliable sources while also saving them from information overload.

Curated courses can also make it significantly easier to provide legally mandated training. When you purchase this type of finished course, you can be sure that it meets the required standards and that the materials are up to date. For example, if you need your employees to complete a data privacy course, you might find one created by a data privacy and cybersecurity attorney. That would ensure that the information provided is legally accurate and complete — a big improvement over trying to piece it all together yourself. This principle can be applied to any legally mandated training, such as workplace safety for shop floor managers or hygiene training for the food industry.

When you create learning content, you gather sources of information and synthesize them to create something new. You might use the information you gathered to write a video script and film a new lesson for your course. Or you might outline and create a piece of new written content. Whatever it is, you are creating a learning material that didn’t exist before. You have full control over the process and you own the copyright to the finished material, but there is far more effort and decision-making involved.

In content curation, you are sourcing external information and using it directly as part of your employee training program. You might add a whole course, a single course module, or an individual piece of content to an employee’s learning path. Or you might add curated content to a module in one of your existing courses. However you do it, you are sharing existing resources rather than creating something new.

Creating your own content lets you precisely tailor the course or material to fit the needs of your students and your company. You can use your company branding, write in your company’s brand voice, and include any information you think is important. Those are all significant benefits, but creating content from scratch takes a great deal of time and effort.

Curated content, on the other hand, reduces the effort needed to get fresh content into your employees’ learning paths. You don’t need to create anything yourself; all you need to do is find useful content that already exists and make it available to your learners. However, curated content also has a few disadvantages. It will always be generic and may not fit our company’s corporate identity. Not only your company’s visual branding but also the tone of voice and corporate values will be absent. That means that your employees may not identify with as much as they would with courses produced specifically for your company. Buying complete, ready–to–use courses also means that you can’t add information or regulations that are specific to your company. 

If you are adding a full course or course module from an external source to your company’s eLearning program, you should always purchase an appropriate license from the course creator. If you aren’t certain that you have permission to share the course with multiple people, then be sure to check with the course creator before doing so.

When you use individual pieces of curated content, such as a news article or podcast episode, then you will most likely not need a license for them. However, you should never just copy and paste information from someone else’s article or website. That would violate copyright law and would, of course, be unethical. But if you properly cite the source of your content, you’re in the clear.

If you are manually uploading curated content, the best strategy for legally and ethically sharing it is to name the original source and provide an easily visible link to the original content. It is also best to add your own  introduction wherever possible. 

Many learning management systems (LMS) and learning experience platforms (LXP) offer the option of connecting directly to Spotify, YouTube, or other similar apps. If your LMS or LXP offers something like this, then you can rest assured that you’re complying with any applicable regulations.

If you don’t want to do all this work manually, there are also learning platforms that use AI to make the content curation process easier. The AI assistant can automatically curate content from your company’s existing courses and materials, connected apps like LinkedIn Learning or YouTube, and the internet in general. It then takes the curated content and assigns it to your employees’ learning paths depending on their competencies and learning needs.