This page shares information about a Wikipedia editing party for Touro College's "Occupational Therapy" class. This page provides optional information! Students in the class can read this if they wish, but most of it is not necessary!
While logged into your Wikipedia account, visit the course dashboard. If prompted, click "join course". This permits identification of your Wikipedia edits.
For your topic, read both the Wikipedia article and the academic article on that topic. Deep familiarity is not required, especially of the Wikipedia article.
Expect that during the event, you will take information from the academic article and add it to the Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia:Teahouse Beginners can ask a question online and get an answer at Wikipedia's Teahouse
Agenda
"Editing Wikipedia articles on medicine", a classroom handout
0:00-0:05 - Welcome
0:05-0:20 - presentation on Wikipedia
0:20-0:25 - Discussion and demos
0:25-1:00 - Wikipedia editing party!
1:00-1:10 - check in
1:45-1:55 - showcase
1:55-2:00 - wrap up and thanks!
The event will start with a presentation which gives the Wikipedia community perspective on the following:
To what extent does Wikipedia matter in health communication?
How does one edit Wikipedia?
What is Wikipedia's quality control system?
Following the presentation, anyone may ask any question about Wikipedia to get answers or demonstrations. Following this, it will be time for a Wikipedia "editing party", which is an event in which a group of people edit together. Desktop view, not mobile access, is preferred for this exercise, but come regardless. At the editing party, this is the goal:
Come to the event with some published source of good information
Identify a Wikipedia article where you think information from that source should go
In your own words, take information from your source and add it to the Wikipedia article
Hopefully everyone at the event will add at least 1-3 sentences in the time we have. After making additions, since Wikipedia is public, participants will review the accuracy and quality of classmate's edits. As we leave, participants will be invited to check back on Wikipedia after some time (3-7 days) to see if there is any online community response to anyone's contributions.
Participants will get experience translating information from academic journals into layman health information
The information submitted to Wikipedia will be read by the public. Wikipedia readers will be better informed based on this event's contributions.
After some months, the class will get a report on the number of pageviews to the Wikipedia articles which the class edited. At any time after the event anyone may visit the tracking dashboard to check readership, a measurement of content added, and other statistics.
Suggested topics
The ideal Wikipedia article to edit in this project is has the following characteristics in this order of importance:
The topic of the article is within the scope of what the class studies
The Wikipedia article is important, typically meaning that it gets lots of pageviews (3000/month is great, more is better)
The Wikipedia article is underdeveloped in general
The Wikipedia article might be developed, but it is lacking the perspective of the theme of this program
Here are some articles which are very popular, and which could include a physical therapy perspective, but which currently hardly mention physical therapy:
Development of these articles could mean either expanding or adding a section on the intersection of that topic and physical therapy.
Other support
The University of Virginia is providing the presentation at this event. Other organizations supporting Wikipedia outreach to health classes in New York include the following:
