As an expert in your field, you probably read a lot about your area of expertise. Sharing links to what you have read can be a valuable knowledge-sharing activity for your coworkers. However, sharing alone does not add any value and only becomes meaningful when you add your own knowledge and context to show the relevance and usefulness of the links. This is what we call “content curation.”
What is content curation?
Content curation involves finding, grouping, organizing and sharing the best content on a specific subject or domain. By curating and sharing the most relevant and thought-provoking content, you establish yourself as an authority or thought leader in your area of expertise.
The term “curation” originates in the world of museums. A curator is the manager of a museum’s collection who selects and arranges the various pieces to be exhibited. Often, he or she borrows works from other museums or private collectors. How does a curator decide what to select and how to organize an exhibition?
4 Steps to curate e-learning content
Now that you know what content curation is and where the term comes from, let’s take a look at the steps you should follow to curate content for your e-learning materials. We’ll use our museum analogy to help you along the way.
1. Search and select content
Let’s assume you are the curator of a museum and you’re putting together an exhibition of Rembrandt paintings. Imagine you have been asked to exhibit every existing Rembrandt painting. If you put them all up side by side, you would end up with something like this:

This is not curation. It’s more like a search result! (More specifically, a Google Images search result, which is where this picture actually comes from ?).
The first step in content curation is to select the works or pieces you want to display. Selection is carried out with a purpose: there is criteria or a rationale behind each choice. As a Rembrandt curator, you need to identify your selection criteria and tell a story based on that.