Making healthcare more accessible through translation
Kitty Quintanilla is a second year medical student at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. Here, she shares why she’s passionate about increasing access to free information. Have you ever had your parents ramble at you about the “when I was young, we didn’t have all these computers and the internet and … Continued
Wikipedia: Impactful science communication in higher education
Sarah Mojarad teaches a Social Media for Scientists and Engineers course at the University of Southern California where students write and improve Wikipedia articles as an assignment. Here, she shares her pedagogical motivations for doing so and the impact it has on students. “Chemistry is often elusive but Wikipedia helps to make chemistry topics, and … Continued
My experience editing Wikipedia’s “Vaccination” page during medical school
Since 2013, the UCSF School of Medicine has offered an elective course on editing health-related Wikipedia articles. The course is one month of full-time work, and is offered 2- 3 times each academic year. The following are reflections by Derek Smith, one student who enrolled in Dr. Amin Azzam’s March 2019 cycle of that course. I approached … Continued
Science communication in action at Northeastern
This spring, students in Dr. Amy Carleton’s Advanced Writing in the Sciences at Northeastern University created lots of new Wikipedia articles as an assignment. The new articles include topics like tissue engineering of heart valves, extremophiles in biotechnology, Bilophila wadsworthia, Boston University CTE Center and Brain Bank and food safety in the United States. Tissue engineered heart valves are prosthetic heart valves that, unlike … Continued
NIOSH gives award for educating the public through Wikipedia
Institutions know that Wikipedia is educating the world about the topics they care most about. Many want to understand how they can get involved in curating that information so it paints the most up-to-date and accurate picture of these topics. Thais Morata, a research audiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), … Continued
Developing metaliterate and information literate Wikipedians in the classroom
Trudi Jacobson is Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany, SUNY. Here, she explains how she wove a Wikipedia writing assignment together with the six frameworks of information literacy. This course not only taught me how to write on Wikipedia, which by the way I always thought was the coolest concept, … Continued
Professor named Woman of the Year for student-centered, equity-focused pedagogy
When your students, colleagues, and institution all recognize you for your teaching, that’s huge. In January, Dr. Kathleen Sheppard of Missouri University of Science and Technology won a teaching award for having her students write for Wikipedia as an assignment. Now, Missouri S&T has also named her their 2019 Woman of the Year for her “willingness to engage actively in issues … Continued
These scientists are improving the public’s knowledge of science
When members of the public read of a new astronomical discovery, learn about a unique endangered animal, fact-check claims about climate change, or educate themselves about an illness, Wikipedia is often their first stop. The encyclopedia that anyone can edit provides a wealth of information on a wide range of topic areas, but also presents many opportunities … Continued
How chemistry students can benefit the world right now
Dr. Irene Chen gave her chemistry students a unique opportunity to practice science communication. She incorporated a Wikipedia writing assignment into her course at UC Santa Barbara this last fall. The course discussed major breakthroughs in nucleic acids research – information that students then channeled into relevant Wikipedia articles where details were missing. Eight students added a … Continued
When students become experts and experts become students
Now that Wiki Education is regularly supporting around 400 Wikipedia assignments each term, it would be easy for us to simply leave well enough alone. Term after term, the vast majority of instructors (over 90%) indicate that they will run another Wikipedia assignment with many of those making it a mainstay of their pedagogical repertoire. … Continued