Curation is the Overlooked Enabler

I felt the most important job when I was at Bentley - after we had "really good coverage" of the primary scopes of OpenRoads - would to curate that content.  Without curation, even excellent signal gets lost in noise [[note: we never did curate it, we just published it into the learn server. If you've been there, you know it's noise.]]

Proactive Curation puts content right in the face of those who need it.

Stopping at "the content is available" is one of those "Mission Accomplished" moments.  If content is not findable, it's not "available".   Value not curated is value lost.  In every ecosystem.

Bentley's learn server is a giant bucket of all noise.  They should have an OpenRoads Curator so that OpenRoads learners can find the valuable Signal buried in that all-program noise.  Without them making their content more consumable, it's up to us.

In fairness, even a consumer-oriented Learning Management System (LMS) like Pinnacle Learning Systems is a labryinth off-the-shelf.  So. Many. Options.

I myself tend to defer any curation when I'm busy. I tend to create first, promote it and hope "currency = curation."  It doesn't.  Noise overwhelms, unless Signal is boosted.

Immediate Steps to Better Learning

Start Curating the content you already have. 

Don't wait.  (Never wait to be better.)

• Prioritize your primary needs (recognize the primary audiences (roles/"personas" (training industry term)).
• Identfiy current best content for each.  Even if it's not easily consumed (it is what it currently is).
• Get the recommendations to your audiences.

Develop your Force System

• (Your Force System is more properly termed a Learning Management System - an LMS.)
• You already have capabilities included with learning.bentley.com - use them.
• Have an adoption and strategy for your permanent LMS.  Learning.Bentley.com has custom content capability, but vendor-neutral LMS's like Pinnacle Learning Systems allows an "all-in-one" capability.

Force It!

• To ensure compliance, you absolutely need a assignment and tracking system.  Consider your HR-mandated training:  0% interest, 100% compliance.
• It doesn't matter how "eager" your staff is.  It doesn't matter how good your Pull System is.  If you want assured results, you need to ensure.  Assign, Track, and Badger.
• Curation is still essential: you need to know what to assign.
• The more consumable the learning content (the more granular), the more effort needs to go into its curation and its promotion.
  • You are essentially transferring all the "slop time" away from your deadline-constrained designers over to a proactive resource
    • you allow your production staff to stay highly productive longer (fewer deadlines missed) 
    • The bigger the scale, the more efficient this transfer becomes
      • when the training so short enough to be billable, you pay for the centralized overhead

more here: Training: Use the Force