Wikipedia: A Medical Student Educational Project to Edit Wikipedia in Preparation for Practicing Evidence-Based Pain Medicine

Enculturating a Community of Action: Health Professions Educators' Perspectives on Teaching With Wikipedia

PURPOSE

Health professions educators are increasingly called on to engage learners in more meaningful instruction. Many have used Wikipedia to offer an applied approach to engage learners, particularly learning related to evidence-based medicine (EBM). However, little is known about the benefits and challenges of using Wikipedia as a pedagogic tool from the collective experience of educators who have sought to improve their instructional practice with it. This study aims to synthesize the perspectives of health professions education (HPE) instructors on the incorporation of Wikipedia editing into their HPE courses.

METHOD

Applying a constructivist approach, the authors conducted semistructured interviews from July to December 2020, with 17 participating HPE instructors who had substantively integrated Wikipedia into their curriculum at 13 institutions. Participants were interviewed about their experiences of integrating Wikipedia editing into their courses. Thematic analysis was conducted on resulting transcripts.

RESULTS

The authors observed 2 broad themes among participants' expressed benefits of teaching with Wikipedia. First, Wikipedia provides a meaningful instructional alternative that also helps society and develops learners' information literacy and EBM skills. Second, Wikipedia supports learners' careers and professional identity formation. Identified challenges included high effort and time, restrictive Wikipedia sourcing guidelines, and difficult interactions with stakeholders.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings build on known benefits, such as providing a real-world collaborative project that contextualizes students' learning experiences. They also echo known challenges, such as the resource-intensive nature of teaching with Wikipedia. The findings of this study reveal the potential of Wikipedia to enculturate HPE students within a situated learning context. They also present implications for HPE programs that are considering implementing Wikipedia and faculty development needed to help instructors harness crowd-sourced information tools' pedagogic opportunities as well as anticipate their challenges.

Writing for Wikipedia: An Exercise in Microbiology, Writing, Research, Communication, and Public Service

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on how postsecondary education was and is delivered. Educators were forced to rapidly move their instruction online and find new and innovative ways to convey content, stimulate student engagement, and satisfy curricular requirements. The purpose of this article is to describe the use of a Wikipedia writing assignment in Veterinary Bacteriology and Mycology, a second-year course in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) curriculum at the University of Saskatchewan. Students had the opportunity to write and edit incomplete articles on topics related to course content. In addition to deep exploration of a topic, this fostered in students the development of research and communication skills, which have been articulated as core competencies in veterinary programs.

Wikipedia in Health Professional Schools: from an Opponent to an Ally

As an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is the world's largest reference Web site, with 1.7 billion visits per month. Given how easy it is to access and read, students use Wikipedia globally, despite most faculty members' admonitions. Since 2013, health professional schools worldwide have incorporated Wiki-editing into their formal curricula. These courses impact students by (1) strengthening their ability to evaluate evidence-based content and (2) multiplying their contributions to society through improvements to Wikipedia articles accessed by millions. We showcase several models of incorporating Wikipedia-editing assignments into health professions education worldwide. These successful initiatives can be replicated everywhere.