Session Information
ERG SES D 09, ICT and Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Content curation, “the process of sifting through information on the Web and organizing, filtering, making sense of it, and sharing the very best content with your network” (Kanter, 2012, p.7) is an emerging theme. It went beyond its thriving areas of online marketing and social media (Rosenbaum, 2011) and is being adopted in education (Minocha & Petre, 2012), and training. It is the expression of a movement toward the consolidation and organization of content on the Web, with tasks undertaken by a curator assisted by new suitable Web tools. Curation can “help a specific group of people make sense/learn or be updated on a specific topic” (Good, 2012). When performed in a systematic way, curation is a form of conscious and methodical participation. O’Connell (2012) believes that content curation should be investigated, understood and adopted as part of users information literacy strategy.
Curating is a demanding task which involves a coordinated set of multidisciplinary skills along with the use of proper curation Web tools, the most important attribute of a curator is subject matter expertise, something already acquired by academics (Good, 2010). Curation may also endow a practitioner with the necessary experience and familiarity with a specific topic.
In this study we utilized Kanter’s tripartite framework for content curation: “seek, sense, share” (2011b) an adapted model of personal knowledge management by Jarche (2010). “Seeking” is the process of keeping up to date in one’s field; “sensing” is making sense of information by placing it into context; “sharing” is the process of exchanging resources, ideas and experiences with networks and collaborating with colleagues.
By “Personal Knowledge Management” we mean “A set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world, work more effectively, and contribute to society” (Jarche, 2012). Knowledge emerges gradually from the interlinked activities of seeking out information sources, making sense of them and sharing with others to confirm or accelerate our knowledge.
As content curation constitutes a form of sense making of a particular topic, it can be based on the “seek, sense, share” model and serves personal knowledge management.
The main objective of the research was established as a contribution to the study of content curation process and its potentials as a skill to manage personal knowledge in online education. The specific objectives to attain the overall purpose were defined as follows:
- Determine whether agents involved in teaching/training used any form of content curation;
- Inquire about the type of content curation practice;
- Determine whether the undertaken process of content curation contemplated the three main skills activated by the practice of curation, namely: “seek, sense and share”;
- Determine whether the practice of content curation has a positive contribution in the development of personal knowledge management processes.
For this study we chose the curation service Scoop.it, (available at http://www.scoop.it/) as it holds features that propitiate a more comprehensive and complete process of implementation and promotion of content curation. It was launched to identify content that matched users’ interest, letting them edit and published content in a magazine format. The curated content can be shared to a diversity of social media networks and there’s the possibility of connecting with a community of curators on similar interests. The way users curate their posts (or scoops) determines the type of curation performed.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Good, R. (2010). Real-Time News Curation - The Complete Guide Part 5: The Curator Attributes And Skills. Retrieved September 24, 2012, from http://www.masternewmedia.org/real-time-news-curation-the-complete-guide-part-5-the-curator-attributes-and-skills/ Good, R. (2012). Content Curation for Education and Learning. @Emerge 2012. Retrieved from http://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/content-curation-for-education-and-learning-robin-good-emerge2012-98ccaad217074a07b9bff8b76effab8e Jarche, H. (2010). Network Learning: Working Smarter. Retrieved October 03, 2012, from http://www.jarche.com/2010/10/network-learning-working-smarter/ Jarche, H. (2012). PKM is not a technology. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from http://www.jarche.com/2012/08/pkm-is-not-a-technology/ Kanter, B. (2011). Using Social Media for Professional Learning: Seek, Sense, and Share. Retrieved October 03, 2012, from http://www.bethkanter.org/seek-sense-share/ Kanter, B. (2012). Unanticipated Benefits of Content Curation: Build Staff Expertise and Reduce Information Overload. NTEN Change, (6), 6–12. Retrieved from http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?m=16975&l=1 Minocha, S., & Petre, M. (2012). Handbook of social media for researchers and supervisors. Vitae Innovate, The Open University. Retrieved from http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/upload/Vitae_Innovate_Open_University_Social_Media_Handbook_2012.pdf O’ Connell, J. (2012). Content Curation in Libraries - Is it the New Black? Collected SLANZA, (2), 4–5. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/miriamtuohy/docs/may2012 Rosenbaum, S. (2011). Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators. McGraw-Hill Professional.
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