BBC CoJo now live; most content 'no more than three clicks away'

Anyone in the UK can now access around 2,500 pages of BBC learning material, including glossaries, guidelines, links and videos, at bbc.co.uk/journalism, the online home of the BBC College of Journalism. 

"What we're doing is letting the public - the UK licence payer - share the online and informal learning content that until now has been restricted only to BBC staff," the CoJo editor, Kevin Marsh, tells Journalism.co.uk.

"We hope this will be a resource for journalism students and teachers - and will help demystify some of aspects of journalism for our audiences."

In due course, the site will be available overseas by subscription, through Oxford University Press, a BBC College of Journalism partner.

As part of its partnership philosophy, CoJo has teamed up with Journalism.co.uk, for news:rewired on 14 January 2010. The College will film parts of the day and present a session on how journalists learn in a multimedia climate.

More partnerships are in the pipeline, Marsh says. Linking out will also be a key feature of the site - to external content and via social media.

Site navigation

"At a time when there is a move towards streamlining and automating web production content, we've deliberately gone the other way, flattening our site architecture to make most, if not all, content no more than three clicks away," CoJo's website manager Jon Jacob tells Journalism.co.uk.

"We've focused the search facility whilst enhancing the 'related links' section on the right-hand side of content pages, in the hope that this will help users 'discover' content."

During the initial production phase Jacob was not entirely convinced that this 'related content' concept was actually going to work, he says.

But as they began authoring pages and checking and re-checking copy, they found themselves stumbling on pages using that very function, he adds.

"It's not necessarily ground-breaking - on one level it's just related links and that's been going on for ages on the web - but it helps navigate a unique learning path through the 2,500 pages of learning on the site."

The BBC College is now live in the UK: if you have problems accessing it, contact the team via http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/.

Ten things to check out on the site:

• Links to global BBC training sites in 26 languages

• The CoJo Blog

• Video guide to writing for the web

• 'Taking Notes guide'

• Copyright guide

• The Reynolds Defence

• Authenticating UGC emails
  

• Robert Peston's guide to reporting business

• Radio Storytelling by Simon Cox

• Short course on shooting sequences

[Disclaimer: the BBC College of Journalism is sponsoring Journalism.co.uk's news:rewired event on 14 January 2010]

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