Expanding Reach of Occupational Health Knowledge: Contributing Subject-Matter Expertise to Wikipedia as a Class Assignment

Details

• Personal Author:
  Blumenthal H ; Carreón T ; Ceballos, Diana M. ; Chu MT ; Herrick, Robert F. ; Morata, Thais C. ; Nguyen VT ; Sadowski JP
• Description:
  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and several university programs have collaborated on a large effort to expand and improve occupational safety and health content in Wikipedia using a platform developed by Wiki Education. This article describes the initiative, student contributions, and evaluations of this effort by instructors from two universities between 2016 and 2020. The Wiki Education platform allowed instructors to set timelines and track students' progress throughout the semester while students accessed training to best expand health content in Wikipedia. Students chose topics in occupational health based on their interests and by a set of topics deemed as a priority by the "WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health." Students' contributions were peer-reviewed by instructors, NIOSH Wikipedians-in-Residence, and traditional Wikipedians. Students presented their projects in class at the end of the semester. Students from both schools expanded 55 articles, created 8 new articles, and translated 2 articles to Spanish, adding 1270 references; these articles were viewed over 8 million times by May 2020. Feedback received from the implementation suggested that students learned about science communication and digital literacy-providing valuable content on occupational health while reducing misinformation in the public domain. The process of identifying and addressing gaps in occupational health in Wikipedia requires participation and engagement toward improving access to information that otherwise would be restricted to the scientific literature, often behind a paywall. The Wikipedia assignment proved to be an engaging approach for instruction and information literacy. It helped students improve their science communication skills and digital literacy, tools that are likely to be critical for successful communication of science in their future careers. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Case Reports Education Occupational Health Safety Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Wikipedia Case Studies Classroom Communication Systems Graduate Students Information Dissemination Information Literacy Information Systems Occupational Health Occupational Safety And Health Plain Language Writing Student Project Teaching Training

  More +
• ISSN:
  0046-9580
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  California ; District of Columbia ; Massachusetts ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 1 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 5 ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  WTCHP - World Trade Center Health Program ; OD - Office of the Director ; DFSE - Division of Field Studies and Engineering
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-11
• Volume:
  58
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20063825
• Citation:
  Inquiry 2021 Jan-Dec; 58:1-11
• Contact Point Address:
  Thais Morata, Division of Field Studies and Engineering, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, OH, USA
• Email:
  tmorata@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2022
• NORA Priority Area:
  Construction ; Manufacturing
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Inquiry: the Journal of Medical Care Organization, Provision and Financing
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a4ef0cc9c37a18ee1ebe1968f6279308162e0956e960b77dee45d4f98065b74c8bb5dc67ebb515e05be2f814b056369d9d7080e7c57b86927ccc069a81d06308
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/222375/cdc_222375_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 553.76 KB ]