Abstract
Over the past few years UEG has continued to go from strength to strength. This is exemplified by the size, quality and success of UEG Week, the launch of our own journal, the increase in collaboration between UEG Member Societies and UEG National Society Members, and an expanding portfolio of educational material, not least in the form of online content. At UEG Week in Barcelona 2010, UEG launched its online educational platform in the form of OLGa (Online Learning in Gastroenterology), subsequently rebranded to UEG E-learning. The growth of the project has been exponential and the e-learning material on UEG Education now includes thousands of categorised and searchable documents and media clips, CME courses and meeting content. On the back of this success we have spent the past year looking at how we can best prepare ourselves for the future with respect to improving our educational resources.
The past year has seen a great deal of change within the e-learning project. Along with Marco Bruno and the Education Committee, the UEG E-learning Taskforce has worked to formulate a strategy for the next 5 years and create a structure to support it. Changes include the engagement of a new technical provider so that we can take full ownership of the content that we produce, appointment of a Project Manager in the Secretariat and recruitment of professional Web Editors, led by an experienced Lead Editor to run the project on a day-to-day basis. Most recently, the separate Taskforce has been subsumed formally into the Education Committee, and from now on will fall under the leadership of the Chair. The latter point is important because the Education Committee will now act as the Editorial Board for all online education, allowing us to be more responsive to the needs of our Member Societies and National Society Members and ensure we are able to benefit from the huge expertise that we have at our disposal.
There is a wealth of online educational material available. The strength and advantage of the UEG project is in the UEG Member Societies and UEG National Society Members that feed into it. Shaping the future of the project relies on the input we receive and I would encourage you all to feed in your ideas. From market research conducted during early 2014, we know that trainees are very keen to have curriculum-based content with their learning broken down into more accessible modules. We are therefore already mapping content to the European Board of Gastroenterology and Hepatology ‘Blue Book’ curriculum, which will act as a roadmap for new course development.
We also have the unique opportunity to combine our respective strengths to develop learning resources that seamlessly integrate across UEG Week, the UEG Journal and the other UEG Education activities. Throughout UEG Week in Vienna you will see some examples of this integration and we invite you to visit the UEG Education Lounge to learn more. UEG Education is at the beginning of an exciting stage in its development and we value your input to shape the future.
Find out more, visit www.ueg.eu/education