Many of us are curators of digital content or experiences in one way or another. Here we are referring to content curation activities, using digital tools, such as Padlet or Wakelet, among the many others, that are used to support active learning. These tools allow us to use engage multiple modes, including video, audio, images and annotations.
“Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualizing, preserving, maintaining archiving and sharing digital content” (Advance-HE). A collection may demonstrate a particular theme or concept, or reflect personal, collective or academic interests. Whether students are studying individually or collaboratively, curation activities integrate well with hybrid, mobile or flipped pedagogies. However, the kinds of learning engaged in is not always evident.
Purposes and Pedagogy
From a pedagogical perspective, learners can engage with curation activities at different levels. As Jennifer Gonzalez explains, the purpose will determine the potential levels of cognitive engagement. Digital curation can be a low-stakes exploratory exercise that initiates motivation and helps with understanding and getting to grips with a new topic or concept. This can include learning to search, critically filter information and evaluate or synthesize content that fits a sophisticated set of criteria. Regardless of subject or discipline, such higher order thinking involves creativity and personal planning.
Critical annotations should justify choices not just of the individual artefact but thinking about the whole collection and its purpose in the context. This too needs to be articulated for particular audience and purpose (Ungerer, 2016). Curation could potentially lay initial foundations for more extensive research or practice that might call for analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing or presenting findings.
Personalising
This personalising, or mashing, of content is often referred to as a process of sense-making (AdvanceHE; Rohit Bhargava), be it engaging in personal or collaborative activity, through to new contexts, including co-creation with tutors.
It is frequently suggested that the ability to engage with authentic audiences can be motivating, but this is unlikely to be true for all students. Yet, as Hallet and Grindle (2009) suggest, the student is no longer communicating back and forth with tutors only, but has opportunities to share their work with a network of peers too.
Those who are well versed may use curation to support their studies, even if not a formal task (Hallet and Grindle, 2019). This may involve self-directed curating, individually or collaboratively. This activity that can help ‘bridge’ different communities of practice and link formal and informal learning (Cherrstrom and Boden, 2019). Several studies highlight the positive impact this can have on agency and self-efficacy. Hallet and Grindle (2019) propose a useful curation learning cycle for building in this ‘ownership, co-production and agency’.
With some planning and imagination, learning through curation activities can help build innovative and “rigorous pedagogies” that also provide opportunities for ownership, creativity and agency Hallett and Grindle (2019).
Final thoughts – practical tips
It can be useful to connect student work by linking into the VLE using discussion boards, blogs or journals. OneNote can support organising materials and annotations, or Sway can be useful for presentations; both can be exported in various formats, such as a pdf. This can allow selected parts of a portfolio to be uploaded for formative or summative assignment, where appropriate.
See related resources:
ClassNotebook for collaborative activities
Finally, it is worth being mindful of changes in digital tools and landscapes and good practice around data privacy and copyright issues.
Good starters include
The Teacher Challenge: Step 6: Using Curation Tools As A Connected Educator,
Spencer, John, Nov, 2017 Getting started with digital content in the Classroom
Reading and Resources
Bhargava, R. (2011), ‘The Five Modes of Content Creation’, Available at https://rohitbhargava.com/the-5-models-of-content-curation/ (accessed 07/10/22)
Cohen, J. N. and Mihailidis, P. (2013) ‘Exploring Curation as a core competency in digital and media literacy education’ Faculty Works: Digital Humanities & New Media. 4. https://digitalcommons.molloy.edu/dhnm_fac/4
Cherrstrom, Catherine A. and Boden, Carrie (2019), “Curation in Education: Implications for Adult Educators in Teaching and Research,” Adult Education Research Conference.
Gonzalez, Jennifer, (2017), ‘To Boost Higher-Order Thinking, Try Curation’, Cult of Pedagogy, April, 15, 2017. Available at: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/curation/ (accessed 05/10/22)
Hallett, R. and Grindle, N. (2019). ‘Designing Curation for Student Engagement’, Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 2(3), 181–198. Available at: https://sehej.raise-network.com/raise/article/view/895v (accessed 07/10/22)
Middleton, A. (2020), ‘Curation as a pedagogy’, Tactile Learning https://tactilelearning.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/curation-as-a-pedagogy-activelearning (accessed 07/10/22)
Spencer, J. (2021), ‘Getting started with digital content in the Classroom’, John Spencer, Blog: May, 2021. Available at: https://spencerauthor.com/content-curation/ (accessed 07/10/22)
Ungerer, L. M. (2016), ‘Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective’, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Volume 17, Number 5.