Educators and educational technology entrepreneurs have been mixing at SXSWedu. Our online learning platform, BMJ Learning, is thinking hard about its next phase, so Dr Helen Morant went along to the educational innovation conference in Texas to see if we could learn anything.

• Now we can measure everything, we can start measuring the right things

The most exciting thing about online learning is how we can measure things that we couldn’t dream of before. Everyone knows that time is a terrible measure of value in education, but for a long time it is all we had. Now education and assessment are moving online, we have piles of data that is useful for students and their teachers, appraisers and assessors. What learners do online, and how they do it can all be recorded and fed back to create hyper personalised learning experiences. But perhaps the most exciting thing is that education is moving out of being a woolly social science discipline into something evidence based and important. And we’ve barely scratched the surface of the data. more…

It’s been a long time in the planning, but we have finally released a whole new group of features in the BMJ learning site.
The ratings, reviews and recommendations project has several factors.

Anyone who has ever been in a meeting discussing improving a website will have heard someone say, “can’t we make it like Amazon?”. We’ve added star ratings, which are displayed at the top on each module intro page.

 

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Following the launch of BMJ Portfolio earlier in the year, ‘Add to portfolio’ links have been rolled out across all articles in our suite of specialist journals.

Located in the right-hand column of the article page, these links make it even easier to track, record, plan and report on your continuing professional development.

So, for those of you that missed the introductory blog post, what is BMJ Portfolio?

It’s a tool doctors can use for recording their own needs, activities and notes relating to keeping up to date with medicine – continual professional development, or CPD, as it’s known. Why would doctors use BMJ Portfolio rather than the back of an envelope or an Excel spreadsheet?

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The new BMJ Learning site launched at the end of September, with a major redesign. It’s the result of a year of work from developers, editors, and marketing staff, and represents one of the leading online destinations for continuing medical education.

The most obvious change is a fresher look, which, as well as being visually appealing, reflects modern thinking about web design, with an emphasis on accessibility and usability. The new site is also much more dynamic, with lists of popular modules updating to reflect how visitors are using the site, and editor’s picks covering topical issues such as revalidation.

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May saw the launch of BMJ Portfolio. This is actually something of a radical new step for BMJ Group – the first website we’ve launched with no content. Instead, it’s a tool doctors can use for recording their own needs, activities and notes relating to keeping up to date with medicine – continual professional development, or CPD, as it’s known. Why would doctors use BMJ Portfolio rather than the back of an envelope or an Excel spreadsheet?

more…