Wikipedia:Wikipedia education program in medicine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An interview of Amin Azzam regarding medical Students editing Wikipedia through WikiProject Medicine

Wikipedia offers partnership opportunities to instructors and students at medical schools and other health science education programs.

About health and medicine educational partnerships[edit]

In a typical partnership the instructor of a health and medicine class will give students an assignment which includes editing the Wikipedia article for any topic taught in the class. The students each register Wikipedia accounts and edit Wikipedia articles. In the same way that it reviews all edits to Wikipedia, the Wikipedia community reviews the live contributions which the students have made in their class. The students should expect to respond to feedback and make changes in collaboration with their reviewers. Throughout the experience, everyone involved can watch a dashboard reporting the Wikipedia user names of the participants, which articles everyone is editing, and how many people are viewing those articles.

Outcomes of such a program include the following:

  • The class actually publishes content which people will read and which will have a measurable outreach impact
  • Students get the experience of learning by teaching others through publication in Wikipedia
  • Instructors - in a nonpromotional, neutral, and non-profit way - get to encourage the distribution of information that they curate, thus crowdsourcing the sharing of information in their field
  • Wikipedians receive content from contributors who are being watched by their instructor, who is a subject matter expert

Background resources[edit]

Any instructor in the United States or Canada who is considering using Wikipedia in a school can contact the Wiki Education Foundation for staff support.

The Wikipedia community recommends that all instructors use the Programs & Events Dashboard to register students and coordinate the class.

Anyone may post to the discussion page at WP:Wikiproject Medicine to talk with Wikipedia's community of editors in this field.

Example participating institutions[edit]

Many schools have participated. Some of the more engaged programs are listed here:

External links[edit]