AI-Powered Content Curation in Degreed: Unlock Strategic Investments

Taylor Blake

Wednesday, February 19th, 2025

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Corporate learning budgets are getting squeezed like never before, requiring L&D teams to do more with less. At the same time, business leaders are feeling more and more pressure to prepare workforces for a future dominated by AI.

We built Degreed to help L&D teams save time and money through learning curation—and today we’re excited to take the next step on this journey. Degreed is proud to introduce a new experiment that explores AI-powered content curation capabilities, features designed specifically to help L&D and Talent Development teams maximize learning impact while reducing costs.

With this advanced, multi-agent curation, you can reduce reliance on generic content libraries and provide your employees with highly relevant, authoritative, and expertly curated learning materials tailored to their specific needs (at a fraction of the prior cost).

Don’t leave upskilling to general purpose AI.

On-demand AI answers have not diminished the need for high-quality content or structured learning. While instant knowledge can be useful for performance support, learning “in the moment” is often limited by context, initiative, and retention ability. True skill development, on the other hand, requires dedicated time, practice, and reinforcement.

That’s why smart companies don’t just rely on ad-hoc learning. They create structured development plans and programs that offer expert guidance, draw upon authoritative content sources, and incorporate proven instructional methods like spaced practice and reflection to ensure long-term retention and real skill growth.

Use AI curation to reduce costs and optimize learning investments.

Large enterprises spend millions of dollars (often tens of millions) on content to support everything from compliance training to business-driven upskilling initiatives. This content ranges from high-quality, technical material to generic, uninspiring, clip-art-style e-learning—from custom-built courses to giant content libraries.  

While high-quality, original content remains valuable, AI is already replacing low-value, generic content with more engaging and cost-effective alternatives. An analysis of course library usage on Degreed shows that a significant percentage of the generic content used by large enterprises could be replaced by AI-curated alternatives that are more relevant, engaging, and cost effective.

The Art and Science of Our AI-Driven Curation Capabilities

AI curation that meets the requirements, standards, and expectations of large enterprises requires much more than simple prompts.  With over a decade of experience in curation, and after two years of experimenting with AI workflows, we have refined AI’s strengths while addressing its limitations. Our capabilities structure the process into various stages, optimizing and connecting different AI models and tools along the way.

Planning and Research:

• Identify the latest news, trends, and studies.
• Extract technical insights from subject matter experts.
• Source thought leaders, industry experts, and top publications.
• Apply human review and refinements to ensure accuracy, relevance, and alignment with employee needs and objectives.

Most AI tools aren’t created by teams taking these critical steps; they rely instead on outdated training data. By ensuring AI integrates the most current and comprehensive information, we deliver highly relevant and expert-backed curation.

Searching and Evaluating:

• Conduct a comprehensive search of resources across sub-topics, industry publications, and thought leaders.
• Use AI tools optimized for in-depth, technical searches.
• Read, assess, and rank resources based on clarity, coherence, credibility, and relevance
• Apply human oversight to refine and validate selections.

Many conventional search tools (Google Search, Perplexity) surface SEO-optimized content that is often vendor-driven and lacks depth as well as quality checks. Deep Research from OpenAI, on the other hand, excels at in-depth analysis across multiple sources but lacks breadth in its search scope.

True confidence in AI-powered curation comes from blending deep analysis with extensive research, ensuring a balance of breadth and depth in the content selection process.

Selecting and Designing Experiences:

• Structure content to align with learning objectives.
• Choose the most relevant, high-impact resources.
• Add clear introductions and transitions to connect materials to learner goals.
• Perform human review for quality assurance.

Most AI tools don’t understand your learning system’s requirements, what that system supports, what fields are editable, etc. Most AI tools also don’t consistently apply the principles of effective curriculum design. We do.

Supplementing and Generating Content:

• Generate AI-assisted articles to fill content gaps.
• Create multimedia resources (podcasts, videos) to enhance engagement and storytelling.
• Perform human review to ensure clarity and accuracy.

AI content generation tools are getting better, but they still require oversight. Our automation pipeline streamlines content creation and review, making the process fast and seamless.

Personalization and Maintenance:

With Degreed AI curation, learning experiences are tailored to your ecosystem. Our team ensures content aligns with your needs, so you don’t have to handle it all. Plus, Degreed keeps your curated pathways up to date, saving you time and effort.

Identify cost saving opportunities you can trust.

To identify potential savings from AI curation in your content libraries, consider:

• Does the course provide in-depth, structured, technical instruction with interactive tutorials?
• Does the content cover material not widely available elsewhere?
• Is the primary value derived from the instructor’s unique expertise (e.g., a recognized subject expert)?

If the answer is no, AI curation is the smarter alternative. It curates high-quality, diverse, and authoritative sources, ensuring learners access trusted, expert-vetted materials. 

It’s also more trustworthy. Content generated by general purpose AI tools  may lack credibility and depth; for example, recent studies have shown that major AI chatbots are inaccurately summarizing news stories. On the other hand, AI curation integrates reputable sources while synthesizing insights from various perspectives. This approach creates a richer, more dynamic learning experience.

Content savings will open the door to more strategic investments.

AI curation can save companies millions, but it’s about more than just cutting costs. By making content strategies smarter and more efficient, businesses can reinvest in high-impact areas like skill intelligence and workforce transformation.

Want to stop overspending on generic content? Contact your Degreed representative, or schedule a personalized, one-on-one call with a Degreed expert today.