The 3-Question Test Every L&D Pro Should Use

Why Most Resource Libraries Fail — and What Real Curation Looks Like Instead

There’s a folder. You know the one.

It lives in your bookmarks, a shared drive, or a Teams channel someone created with good intentions in 2021. It’s called something like “Learning Resources” or “Good Stuff” or — the tell — “TO SORT.”

Inside: a TED Talk on psychological safety. Three articles on microlearning you meant to read. A LinkedIn post from someone whose name you can’t quite place. A PDF from a conference two years ago. A YouTube video your manager forwarded with the message “could be useful?”

This is not a curated collection. This is a content landfill.

The distinction matters more than most L&D professionals realize. The difference between the two isn’t the content. It’s everything surrounding it. And confusing them is costing learners more than we’d like to admit.

Collection vs. curation: a three-question test

Pick any item from your folder. Answer these three questions honestly:

1. Why is this here? Not “it seemed good” or “someone sent it.” What specific learner need does it address? What performance gap does it help close?
2. Why this instead of something else? What did you consider and reject? What makes this the right resource for this person, in this context?
3. What does a learner do with it? Where does it fit in their experience? What comes before and after? What should they think, do, or question as a result?

If you can answer all three, you have a curated resource. If you’re reaching — if any answer is honestly “I’m not sure, it just seemed relevant” — you have a collected item.

Neither is wrong as a starting point. The problem is when we stop there and call it curation.

The inversion that changes everything

Accidental collection happens when we’re paying attention. We read something sharp and save it. We encounter a framework that would have helped us five years ago and file it away for the learner who’s five years behind us now. Good instinct.

The problem is what happens next. Usually: nothing.

The item sits in the folder. The folder grows. When a need arises, we either dig through it hoping something fits — or we ignore it entirely and search from scratch. Which is how the folder got so large in the first place.

Intentional curation starts somewhere different.

Not “I found something worth saving” but “I have a learner with a specific need.” That inversion — need first, content second — is what separates a curator from an aggregator. It sounds small. It isn’t.

Starting with the learner’s need means defining it with precision before touching a single resource. It means asking what success looks like — not for the content, but for the person. It means the first act of curation happens before any content is involved at all.

Most of us skip this. Content is visible and concrete. The learner’s need is abstract and requires work to define. So we go straight to the resources and call it done. This is why our SharePoint sites look the way they do.

The judgment that makes it professional

Here’s what actually separates a curated collection from a content dump: the presence of someone’s judgment, visible throughout.

Not just in the selection — though selection matters — but in the arrangement. The framing. The connective tissue between pieces. The explicit reasoning for why this resource and not that one.

Consider the difference between these two entries in a leadership development pathway:

Option A: “Why Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek (YouTube, 45 min)”

Option B: “Why Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek (YouTube, 45 min). Start here. Sinek’s framing on safety and trust sets up everything that follows. If you’re short on time, watch the first 15 minutes and come back to the rest.”

Same resource. Different experience. The second version carries a fingerprint — evidence that a thinking person made a decision on the learner’s behalf. That fingerprint is the value. The content is just the material it works with.

This is also why “AI can curate for us” deserves scrutiny. AI scans breadth efficiently. It surfaces volume in minutes that would take a human researcher days. What it cannot do is make the call about what’s right for this learner, in this context, with this performance gap and this organizational culture. That requires someone who knows the learner. Which is you.

What learners actually experience

Learners are more perceptive than we give them credit for. They know the difference between a collection designed for them and one assembled in their general direction.

A designed collection has a point of view. It makes choices visible. It tells the learner not just what to engage with but why this matters to you specifically — and that framing often determines whether they engage at all.

A dumped collection does the opposite. Open a SharePoint folder with forty-seven unorganized resources and no guidance. The experience is not “I have so much to learn from.” It’s “I don’t know where to start, so I’ll close this tab.” 

Nielsen Norman Group research on information overload consistently finds that users presented with undifferentiated content lists abandon them at high rates — not because they lack curiosity, but because the cognitive cost of navigation exceeds the perceived reward.

More content, less learning. The irony is real.

Every resource that doesn’t belong is a tax on every learner who has to look past it to find the one that does. The curator’s job is to eliminate that tax — to reduce the cost of getting to the right thing so much that getting there feels effortless.

Try this before your next project

Before you open a browser tab, write one paragraph. Who is this learner? What do they need to be able to do? What does a successful outcome look like — not for the content, but for the person?

Then find content that serves that description. Evaluate what you find against it. Arrange what you keep in an order that creates a progression, not a list. Tell the learner why each piece is there.

That’s the whole shift. It takes longer than grabbing the first three things that seem relevant. It produces something that actually works.

More than that: it produces something learners can tell was made for them. In an environment drowning in content, that feeling is rare. It’s also what makes them come back.

The folder can wait. The learner can’t.