Ensembl continues to make a substantial investment in training and user support. We regard this as critical not only to help users, but also evaluate the relevance of the data we provide and the easy of use of the services we provide. As discussed earlier, user engagement has been critical in developing the web site redesign. The Ensembl Outreach and Training group provides on-site courses on request and has run 102 workshops since May 2007, with an expanding effort in Asia (workshops in China, Malaysia and India), and a substantial presence in USA (20 workshops) and Europe (64 workshops). In addition to this, alongside standalone video tutorials, eLearning courses are now being developed and piloted within the EBI training platform (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/training/user/). Finally the new Ensembl blog (http://ensembl.blogspot.com/) provides updates on upcoming Ensembl training courses around the world.
