An interview with Julie Gill, VP Education Center Strategy and Operations AMA and Paul Gee, VP Product Management and Development of JAMA Network
Scholarly associations and societies have rich educational material that has the potential to reach a bigger audience and diversify revenue. Yet, expanding these programs can be challenging, involving navigating platform complexities, updating content, and managing internal priorities. Strategic partnerships can help overcome these obstacles.
Maverick is speaking with publishing executives who have developed professional education products from their existing content. Julie Gill and Paul Gee from the American Medical Association (AMA), share how AMA’s Ed Hub, a centralized platform for online learning, leverages partnerships for success with Andrea Eastman-Mullins.
The Ed Hub is an online learning platform designed to support lifelong learning, licensure, and certification needs of physicians and medical professionals. Offering access to high-quality education from the AMA and other trusted sources, it hosts 8,000 activities and over 3,000 CME articles, podcasts, videos, and interactive modules.
Internal Alignment
The first partnerships were internal as the AMA had a variety of departments developing education to advance their strategic goals. Education products were created and disseminated in a somewhat siloed fashion, which was sub-optimal both from a resource perspective and an impact perspective. Early efforts to develop a more optimized approach felt more like “tinkering,” as Julie described, as they borrowed existing resources to make incremental improvements. Forming a strong partnership with executive leadership and across the publishing and mission areas was pivotal and led to the development of a unified strategy that effectively enables AMA’s full portfolio of education with greater alignment and optimized resources. The strategy focused on creating the capabilities and infrastructure to deliver education in a more compelling way for its members. The investment the AMA made in the Ed Hub benefited the entire organization rather than creating individual assets in isolation.
External Content Partners
When the Ed Hub launched in 2018, it offered the AMA’s education portfolio only but quickly saw that other organizations faced similar challenges and goals. Serving as a channel for these organizations, the Ed Hub provided access to a broader audience without the need to develop their own infrastructure. In turn, the AMA can connect physicians with access to more diverse content areas than they would otherwise create themselves. To support these partnerships, the Ed Hub acts as a white label platform, promoting other organizations’ brands above their own.
These partnerships lift all organizations while creating a stronger resource for medical education. As Paul describes, “it allows us to create a single starting point for physicians to find anything they need.” Content can now reach adjacent fields, having a broader impact. With over 50 content partners now signed up, Julie explains “we continue to focus on growing the offering and cultivating partnerships that drive the most value for physicians from an education standpoint and lead to improved care.” In fact, the challenge the Ed Hub now faces is supporting the increase in volume while maintaining quality.
Vendor Collaborations
Even in a large organization like the AMA, not everything is developed in-house. The Ed Hub leverages vendor partnerships, notably with Silverchair for its platform. Evaluating options for the Ed Hub early on, Paul explained, the learning management system (LMS) platforms often have course features like quizzing and interaction but lack the backend infrastructure to support larger content aggregations. Because hosting partner content was a strategic focus for the Ed Hub, they expanded their use of Silverchair to support the complexity they would need to scale. Paul and his team have worked with Silverchair as true partners, collaborating on features that support the educational design of Ed Hub.
Julie explained their learning experience design team also leverages external support for instructional design and other content creation. This allows them to “expand their bench” and ramp up and down depending on their needs.
With the growth of the Ed Hub, demonstrating how the content in the Ed Hub is improving educational outcomes is a longer-term area of focus. As with most work so far, Julie is eager to leverage partnerships rather than create solutions from scratch.
Partnership Advice
Regardless of size, societies can advance their programs using partnership models. Julie emphasizes that organizations “just don’t need to reinvent the wheel.” Whether partnering internally, with vendors, or like-minded societies, existing solutions can be leveraged through creative partnerships to advance more effectively.
Learn More
Maverick offers a global network of professionals with the depth and breadth of experience to match the exact needs of any project. Our Professional Education program helps you take advantage of opportunities by providing a simple, practical process to repurpose the investment in your content into new offerings. Reach out to your Maverick representative or email us at info@maverick-os.com to learn more.
By Andrea Eastman-Mullins, Affiliate Senior Associate
Learning is central to Andrea’s mission and career. As Founder and CEO of West End Learning, she consults with associations, publishers, and other educational organizations to advance their digital learning initiatives. Andrea has over 25 years of experience in aggregated collections for teaching and research. In executive roles for ProQuest, Alexander Street Press, the University of North Carolina, and more, she developed over 300 databases for academic libraries. Andrea holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Higher Education Administration with a focus on Instructional Design. Her expertise combines deep knowledge in higher education, proven experience in digital publishing and ability to stabilize through times of rapid change to ensure educational projects thrive.
Further Reading
Developing content for professional education products
New product development and the potential for AI in Professional Education
Maximize your content with Maverick’s Professional Education program
Maverick’s Professional Education Service Sheet