Grants:TPS/Ocaasi/UCSF Medical Elective

User name: Jake Orlowitz, Ocaasi
User location (country): United States (Philadelphia)
Event name: UCSF Medical Elective, March 2014
Event Web site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:University_of_California,_San_Francisco_(UCSF)/Expanding_WikiProject_Medicine_(March_2014)#Timeline
Event date(s): ~~March 3-4, 2014~~ Due to low enrollment the course meeting dates were changed to March 31st-April 1st. I am going to reevaluate.
Event location (city): San Francisco
Amount requested (remember to specify currency!): $400 USD
Endorsements

Budget breakdown

Provide a detailed breakdown of your funding needs here. Please specify the currency for all amounts. For example:

Travel: USD 400, round trip economy class airfare from PHL to SFO

I will be staying with a UCSF student and paying for my own meals, so airfare is the only expense.

Proposed Participation

How would your participation at this event further the Wikimedia Mission?

UCSF's 2013 Medical Elective broke new ground by involving medical students with the Wikipedia and education. The course has generated a significant amount of positive press, drawing attention to Wikipedia's increasingy important role in delivering medical information to the public as well as to students and even clinical professionals. The first course was covered by the NY Times, NPR, and The Atlantic.[1] [2] [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

I set up and co-organized the elective the first round along with UCSF Medical student Mike Turken, Wiki Project Med President James Heilman, and course ambassadors Brian Badsen and Kevin Gorman. Our goal was to have a successful pilot. The second round of this course will focus on capturing learnings from the first round and developing a more stable and shareable curriculum for other medical schools to emulate.

In process are several peer-reviewed academic publications to distill insights and analysis for the pedagogical and linguistic contributions this course has made and could make. The second course will provide more data for those publications and further the dissemination of learnings to the broader medical and medical-education communities.

Wikipedia is regularly cited as one of, if not the most, frequently-viewed source of medical information for the lay public. Medical articles receive over 200 million views per month. Surveys have consistently shown a large number of students and professionals in medicine and pharmacology, between 35-95%. Wikipedia is also one of the only sources of general medical information for the lay public available in many small languages. By partnering with Wiki Project Medicine Foundation, Translators Without Borders, and Content Rules, the content developed in the UCSF course can be simplified and translated into dozens of smaller language Wikipedias. This information serves a direct public health benefit by informing readers about common diseases and standards of care that may effect them personally, or their communities.

My role in the March 3rd-4th elective will allow me to be in the classroom during the only 2 'in person' days before the course begins. I will be delivering introductory lectures, facilitating discussions and onboarding activities. I will also be meeting with course professor Amin Azzam to develop the 'medical elective kit' for other institutions, to speak with UCSF library staff and Stanford librarian Lauren Maggio (who assisted in the course).

Participation in the UCSF course will:

Improve Wikipedia's presence among educators and curriculum, specifically in medicine
Expand a pioneering medical course to teach advanced medical students how to edit
Add high quality, up to date, reliable medical content to Wikipedia
Share knowledge about the importance of Wikipedia's medical content
Further academic discourse about Wikipedia's role in medical education
Develop content for translation into non-English, smaller languages
Facilitate other institutions to adopt UCSFs successful model

Goal and Expected Impact

What will be accomplished if your participation is successful?

These are all of the things I will personally do, advance, and hopefully complete as a participant.

Introduction and training: Students will receive in person instruction in the fundamentals of editing Wikipedia, with an emphasis on the medical reliable sources guideline and medical manual of style. A talk, "Wikipedia and Medicine: Keys to Success" will be given and refined.
Innovative onboarding: Students will use both the Education program 'Training for students' and the onboarding game 'The Wikipedia Adventure'. Feedback will be given and analyzed on the comparative strengths and weaknesses of these two tools.
Students and teachers, library staff, and academic deans will be able to ask questions about Wikipedia's policies, technology, culture, skills, and community. An FAQ will be created.
A kit will be developed, creating a short how-to curricular guide and syllabus for other institutions looking to adopt the program.
A Wikimedia Foundation blog post will be written discussing learnings and challenges from the first round of the curriculum and plans for advancement and expansion.
Learnings will be presented at the Western Group on Educational Affairs (WGEA) regional medical education conference on March 23-25 http://omejabsom.com
Ties will be built between UCSF and Wiki Project Med Foundation (I'm a board member and the outreach coordinator), helping our members to continue broad outreach to medical institutions. While we do have one other Wikipedia course ambassador in the SF area, I am the only one involved with Wiki Project Med Foundation and medical outreach or global translation work.