Many students in high school and college have turned to Wikipedia in their times of greatest need. One of the side effects of the digital age we live in is that there is almost a glut of information to be found on the internet, but Wikipedia seems to summarize millions of concepts in a nice, concise, essay-ready format. While most teachers and professors frown on the use of Wikipedia as a reliable source, some professors are actually turning to Wikipedia as a way to help with course curriculum.
Editing Wikipedia for Course Credit
While most students at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) might not be a professional Wikipedia editor, they still have valuable information to provide to the general public. Medical students at UCSF will be tasked with editing Wikipedia pages about certain important diseases for course credit. The goal is both to assess their knowledge of these particular diseases and to help people throughout the globe have a better understanding of these ailments. Some of the pages that the students will be editing include:
- Tuberculosis
- Dengue fever
- Urinary tract infection
- Syphilis
Obviously, there are reliability standards already in place at Wikipedia that make it difficult to put erroneous information on an article. Still, having actual scholars (student or otherwise) editing pages on topics that affect a great deal of people is important for more than academic reasons. In fact, the articles that are going to be written and improved by the students at UCSF will automatically go to an organization called “Translators Without Borders.” As their name suggests, these individuals take important information about diseases and other topics and translate them in full detail into other languages (i.e. Javanese and Hindi).
A Global Outreach
The value of this is overwhelming, considering that the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia’s charitable arm) is working to make vital information more accessible to parts of the world that are still developing. One of their initiatives is to bring Wikipedia to more people via high-quality translation and the use of mobile devices.
The students in the class will be editing these articles as part of the Wikiproject Medicine. This is a project composed of hundreds of individuals looking to improve the information on poorly written medical articles or medical articles that simply require better or more complete information. You don’t necessarily have to be a professional Wikipedia editor to help out with this project, but you do need to have a background in the medical field.
Obviously, fourth-year students at UCSF have a keen understanding of what’s being asked of them. They will also, of course, be graded on the proficiency of the information they provide. One of the issues they might face is the sometimes harsh regulations involved in Wikipedia. They need to not only provide a basic understanding of each disease, they also need to do so with adequate references and a neutral tone. Either way, the far-reaching effects of this college course could be substantial if everyone at Wikipedia and Translators Without Borders has their way.
by Michael Wood – Michael Wood is an online marketing expert and owner of Legalmorning.com. He specializes in reputation and brand management, article writing, and professional Wikipedia editing. He is an expert Wikipedia editor and has helped hundreds of businesses and people post their articles to the site where they have otherwise failed. He is a regular contributor to many online publications including AllBusiness Experts, Yahoo, Business Insider, and Social Media Today.