Leveraging Wikipedia in undergraduate health sciences education: a key tool for information literacy and knowledge translation

Abstract

Background: Academic institutions and libraries are familiar with Wikipedia. There is growing momentum in higher education for using Wikipedia as a learning tool in various contexts. These include, but are not limited to, the use of Wikipedia-based assignments to teach information literacy, science communication, evidence-based practice, and more. Although there is growing acceptance of Wikipedia’s value in the classroom, there are limited exemplars available for how it is applied in undergraduate health sciences education. Description: This program description describes a librarian instructed course in the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University in which students dedicate one academic term to learning about Wikipedia content production and making contributions to a health-related Wikipedia article of their choice. Outcomes: In the five iterations of this course that have been offered, undergraduate health sciences students have made significant contributions to 25 health-related articles in Wikipedia. They have added more than 120,000 words and over 2,000 references to high-quality literature. In class, conversations emerged about the meaningfulness of the editing Wikipedia, information literacy, and knowledge translation.