Wikimedia+Education Conference 2019/Submissions/Education program in Thailand and evaluation of Wikipedia medical content
 | This is an Open submission for Wikimedia+Education Conference 2019 that has not yet been reviewed by the members of the Program Committee. |
- Submission no.
- Title of the submission
- Education program in Thailand and evaluation of Wikipedia medical content
- Author(s) of the submission
- Athikhun Suwannakhan
- E-mail address
- athikhun.suw@student.mahidol.edu
- Country/place of origin
- Thailand
- Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
Wikimedians in Thailand User Group
Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
- Main theme
- Free knowledge for the world
- Type of session
- Presentation and a poster
- Scope
- students, learners
- Length of session
- 20 minutes
- Do you want to submit a paper for peer-reviewing?
- No
- Abstract
I started editing Wikipedia as a student of chemistry class at Mahidol University, Thailand, in 2015. The class has given me first exposure to editing and basic understanding of the community. After the class, I remained as an editor on the English Wikipedia and became teaching assistant in the class ever since. More than 110 students have voluntarily participated since the introduction of the education program. Since its first implementation in 2014, the program has resulted 150 high quality articles being created or significantly improved. More than 800 media have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Overall student contributions are equivalent to 370 written pages as of December 2018. It was also reported that students' work on Wikipedia is indistinguishable from that done by PhD experts. In addition to the contribution to free knowledge movement, the education program promotes self directed learning and encourages 21st century learning skills such as information literacy, technology literacy, collaboration, and critical thinking. Additionally, Wikipedia is used by 90% of medical students and almost 50% of physicians. Despite its popularity in the medical community, Wikipedia has received considerable criticism in the academia regarding the quality of its content. To address this problem, our user group is collaborating with academic institutions to evaluate Wikipedia articles in selected subjects in medicine. Comments provided by the experts could be reflected by the community and would overall help improve Wikipedia. To sum up, this presentation will summarise the educational benefits of Wikipedia assignment at university level, and discuss how Wikipedia community would benefit from content evaluation by experts.
- How does your proposal add knowledge to the international community in Wikimedia and education?
- Our Wikipedia assignment may be transferable to other science classes at university level.
- The education program encourages experts to contribute to Wikipedia, resulting in high quality and technical content being added.
- Evaluation of Wikipedia articles by experts could help improve the accuracy and coverage of Wikipedia articles, and ameliorate negative perception of Wikipedia in the academia.
- Who is the intended ideal audience for the topic?
Education program instructors, educators, students
- Slides or further information
Please see the attached poster on the right side.
- Special requests
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