In today’s fast-paced world, effective educational content is crucial for professional development on an employee and business level. As an organization looking to train or upskill your employees, the decision between using curated or custom educational content can influence your outcomes. This blog post aims to help you navigate this choice by exploring the benefits of both approaches and offering guidance on when to choose each.

Understanding Curated Educational Content

Curated educational content consists of resources that can come from various learning organizations or training providers and is collected and organized to provide valuable learning experiences. Think of it as a carefully selected assortment of courses, programs, or certificates that are relevant to a particular career path, emerging industry, or company.

Examples of curated educational content include online learning platforms that aggregate courses from different providers. Experienced upskilling platforms will even be able to match their offerings to individual users to create a personalized learning experience, or help companies fill skill gaps by identifying content within their network to best upskill employees.

Benefits of Curated Educational Content

To help you weigh your options, here are some benefits of curated content:

Time Efficiency: Instead of creating courses or programs from scratch, with curated content, you can quickly access educational resources that have already been vetted.

Expertise: By drawing from a diverse range of sources, curated educational content often brings together insights from various experts and institutions, providing a well-rounded perspective.

Cost-Effectiveness: Generally, curated content has lower upfront costs than developing custom content because it doesn’t require extensive creation or development costs.

Understanding Custom Educational Content

Custom educational content is tailored specifically to meet the unique needs and objectives of an audience or organization. This can include training programs, specially designed courses, and exclusive workshops created from in-house expertise.

Examples include a learning company designing an internal training module for a new software tool, or an educational institution developing a specialized curriculum for a niche subject.

Benefits of Custom Educational Content

Here are a few perks associated with custom content:

Relevance: Custom content is crafted to address specific learning objectives, organizational goals, or personal interests, making it highly relevant to the audience.

Engagement: Tailored content is often more engaging because it resonates with the unique needs and contexts of the learners.

True to You: Custom content can reflect your organization’s values, culture, and branding, providing a cohesive and tailored learning experience.

Choosing Between Curated and Custom Content

When deciding between curated and custom educational content, consider these factors:

Learning Objectives

If your goal is to provide a broad overview or introductory material, curated content may be sufficient. For learning objectives that require knowledge unique to your organization, custom content might be necessary to provide the depth and detail required.

Audience Needs and Preferences

Assess your audience’s familiarity with the topic and their learning preferences. If they need foundational knowledge or diverse perspectives, curated content might work well. For specialized needs or specific use cases, custom content can be tailored to address those requirements if the curated content doesn’t exist.

Budget and Time

Curated content is often more budget friendly and can be implemented quickly. If resources are limited, leveraging existing materials might be the practical choice. Custom content may be more resource intensive and require longer development time but can be a worthwhile investment for high-impact training or specialized knowledge.

Making the Right Choice

It doesn’t have to be one or the other—it can be both. In many cases, a hybrid approach that combines both content types can be effective. For instance, you might use curated resources to provide a foundational understanding and then develop custom content for advanced topics or specific applications.

Deciding which type of educational content is right for your business depends on various factors including learning objectives, audience needs, budget, and time constraints. By carefully assessing these elements, you can select the approach that best fits your situation and maximizes the effectiveness of your educational initiatives.