Approaches to educational curation: how lecturers in higher education incorporate educational resources in course designs

As the use of digital and open educational resources becomes more prominent in higher education, lecturers are increasingly expected to curate resources in pedagogically meaningful and contextually relevant ways. However, little is known about how this is done in practice. Through interviews with twenty-three lecturers at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences, this study investigates how lecturers approach educational curation. Six core curational activities emerged: searching, assessing and selecting, creating and editing, structuring, sharing, and soliciting feedback. Drawing on curation approaches in other fields, variations in sequence and emphasis of activities were identified. This led to five distinct approaches: compiling, creating, mixing, building-on-book, and collecting. These findings highlight that lecturers' curatorial behaviour is more nuanced than existing conceptual models suggest. As such, this study contributes to an empirical framework for understanding educational curation. Additionally, the outcomes can inform course design, faculty support, and instructional development in increasingly complex teaching contexts.