Click the enroll button at the top left of this course page. You should see your Wikipedia username at the bottom of this course page after enrolling.
Find an academic paper on a health topic that you like and bring it to class. You will share a fact from this paper in a Wikipedia article that you choose, and you will cite this paper.
Watch the videos to the right - "The Impact of Wikipedia" and guide for contributors to health topics (7 minutes total)
After this class, everyone should be comfortable making small changes to Wikipedia articles if you wish.
Because participants will have edited Wikipedia, also now and forever after everyone will be more comfortable having conversations about how online health information comes to appear in Wikipedia, on blogs, in new sites, etc.
Class 2: Remixing and circulating online information[edit]
Objectives -
Learn enough about citing and remixing sources to be able to discuss the issue
Post critiques of your classmates' work
In class and later in life - check the Wikipedia metrics showing the impact of what you did
Class is three hours - this is the approximate agenda
0:00-0:20 - Introduction to Wikipedia metadata - a tour of how citations, articles, images, and pdfs get remixed into other websites and languages
0:20-1:00 - Ask questions about Wikipedia. Quality control will be discussed, particularly matching academic citations to facts.
1:00-2:30 - It's time! Everyone breaks into small groups and edits Wikipedia. Breaks throughout for demos and questions.
2:30-2:50 - The project is almost over - let's talk about impact and metrics in health communication, and how you can see the results of what you did.
2:50-3:00 - Information wants to be free - may you and everyone around you always have the information you need when you need it.
Milestone
From here forward, if you wish to share information in Wikipedia, you will know how to do this properly and be able to estimate the time commitment for doing so.
By extension - you will have a model to consider if you share health information anywhere online, and be able to think about the differences between online and print publishing.