The Power of Online Content Curation | Perspective Series
Blog: NASSCOM Official Blog
When my son has a question for which I don’t have an answer, his immediate response would be – “Dad, google it”. In today’s world, ‘googling’ has become THE term for finding required information.
Does it mean ‘Googling’ is answer to everything? The answer is – ‘it depends’. There is plethora of content available on the open web and it is sometimes described as ‘information obesity’. The challenge is in picking up the relevant & credible pieces of content and organizing them in logical sequence. The challenge grows exponentially if one is a greenhorn on the subject. However, leveraging Subject Matter Experts (SME) and/or inquisitive learner(s) can help solve this problem and produce high-quality content.
Typical challenges faced by organizations are:
- The readymade content available in the market may not align with organization/business requirements
- Cost of the off-the-shelf content may not be easy on the pocket for organizations, especially if it does not completely align with their needs.
- Content creation (from scratch) may not always be feasible/viable given the time & effort involved and the dynamism around changes in technologies.
The key benefits of curation are:
- Leverage the tacit knowledge of your in-house experts or inquisitive learner(s) to curate content as that could be more contextual to the business needs.
- Curation simply means marrying relevant pieces of content from (i) In-house library (ii) open web and/or (iii) content providers
- Combination of different types (video, article, blog, infographics, etc.) of content to suit users with varied learning style
- Reuse content thereby reducing time, effort and cost of building a learning module
Do all organizations leverage their in-house talent to curate content OR simply rely on off-the-shelf content from various content providers? In my view, majority fall into the latter category. Many are yet to realize the power of curation and tap into the high-quality content available on the web. The reasons could be many:
- Belief that curation of open web content like blogs, videos, etc. would not facilitate learning when compared to a traditional course.
- Limited bandwidth of in-house SMEs/talent
- Lack of platform to curate content
Some organizations are leveraging the curation feature on the NASSCOM FutureSkills platform to
- Build business aligned learning content
- Assign it to target audience
- Track progress
- Reward and/or recognize learners there by building a desired talent pool
For the first time, organizations are able to cross-leverage their expertise by sharing curated content across the FutureSkills ecosystem. Sharing couple of case-studies that point out the value of curation.
Case Study #1
A large IT services and consulting firm wanted to build awareness on emerging technologies and methodologies across their workforce. Their key needs were:
- 14 topics comprising emerging technologies and professional skills
- Restrict the content duration to ~40 hours
- Include varied content type to suit varied learning styles
- Modularise so that users get a sense of accomplishment after completion of each module
Solution
They realized that off-the-shelf content did not serve their need and hence curated a module by marrying content from in-house, FutureSkills library and content providers and rolled it out to all employees. FutureSkills platform provided them the ability to trackprogress and ensure completion.
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