Background and Brief History
Developments in computing power have considerably augmented the growth of human knowledge. Curation in education provides solutions and opportunities. Historically, curators gathered, nurtured, and managed artifacts in a zoo or museum. However, today, curators share knowledge and enhance value by supporting others to interpret various elements in a wider context. Applied to education, faculty help students make sense of research findings and learning content in theory and practice (Whitworth et al., 2012). Throughout its history, curation expanded from artifacts to encompass data and content from nonformal to encompass formal learning contents. It also expanded from individual to consist of collaborative curation. Apart from the traditional artifacts, people curated data and content. Subsequently, content curation comprises of numerous examples of instructional content for learning or teaching. Overtime, curation has extended into formal learning settings such as higher education. For instance, faculties curate course content, and students are able to learn through coursework that requires curation (Whitworth et al., 2012). Outside of academia, curation has been applied in various contexts, such as curating social network profiles and social curation, assisting communities curating online content. Curation in education entails managing data to meet institutional needs, capturing specific knowledge, and making information accessible. Curation in formal educational contexts and collaborative curation demonstrates the growing role of curation in education (Whitworth et al., 2012).
Research Studies that Supports this innovation
A study by Cherrstrom & Boden (2019) sought to examine curation in education, particularly in adult learners’ content in the higher education context. The findings of the review established the changing aspect of curation in education. It also illustrates the expansions of curation from conventional emphases to encompass newer and broader emphasis. The study illustrated the importance of using curation in adult learning contexts. Some of these significances include making information accessible, recording specific knowledge, and management of information. The study established that curation provides educational design solutions associated with examining existing resources and developing learning content to offer up-to-date, relevant information and fulfill the needs of various learning preferences. Furthermore, adult learners would be able to benefit much from the use of curation in their educational settings (Cherrstrom & Boden, 2019).
Another study by Antonia & Tuffley (2015) aimed to explore how digital curation can be used to promote the development of digital information learning competencies among higher education leaders. The study established that the idea of curation has gone through considerable change in the wake of an increasingly digital society. The fining showed that the process of digital curation could potentially be utilized in improving students’ skills in digital transformation literacy(Antonio & Tuffley, 2015).
