When instructors gather materials into a group for students, that group is a collection that may described as either "curated" or "amassed."

Curating

As mentioned in an earlier module, we can think of curating in the context of a museum curator. A curator carefully selects pieces to include in an exhibit that go together in some way to form an entire, coherent exhibit where the visitor gains deeper perspective because of the way the pieces are arranged relative to one another. When we curate a collection we are adding value for the learner by adding our own perspective as experienced educators and discipline experts.

Amassing

In the context of OER, it's possible to locate several different materials and simply stick them together in an electronic file folder to hand out to students for reference. Some librarians and OER experts refer to this sort of collecting (somewhat humorously) as "hoarding." Because that sounds incredibly judgy, I'm going to use the only slightly less judgy verb, "amassing."

Amassing [OER] resources is different than "curating" [OER] resources. This would be like a museum collector gathering a bunch of art pieces and arranging them haphazardly about the room with no obvious organizational structure.

I love this explanation from Christopher Lister's blog, where he writes,

hoard of books

person choosing some books

"More than merely collecting content on a specific subject; to curate is to make sense of the information we consume online. Strong curation involves carefully selecting content and evaluating it for a specific purpose, topic, or subject. It also involves making decisions about what is and is not useful to deepening understanding of the subject. Content deemed useful can then be customized and personalized, by the curator, by adding ones professional experience to enhance it before sharing that curated content with one’s learning network. Curating is a higher-level thinking skill. In order to curate content that is useful for others the content needs to be synthesized, evaluated, and interpreted before being disseminated. Well-curated topics and subjects help to inform and allow learning to happen at faster rates."

I like to think of it this way: we gather collections of learning materials for students. Our collections can be either amassed with somewhat less effort, i.e. "hoarded," or our collection can be carefully selected to tell a story - i.e. "curated." At the end of the day the goal is to move more towards a curated collection - but this may not happen immediately! A good curation takes time - be patient with yourself!

As I write this I'm realizing that much of the stuff in textbooks I used to use would probably count as hoarded info - it's there but it really didn't contribute to the story (the learning outcomes) I was hoping to help my students master. Eep! 😬