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College credit for editing Wikipedia

The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth-year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine. Fourth-year students at UCSF travel often, which makes the ability to perform work remotely an advantage. Amin Azzam, MD, MA, an associate professor at UCSF and an instructor for the new class, said:


The course is also designed to foster communication skills among medical professionals, and to help them accurately and efficiently share information using everyday language rather than medical jargon. Writing Wikipedia articles will help students in that endeavor. James Heilman, a Wikipedia editor himself (Doc James) and president of the WikiProject Med initiative, told the Signpost that most medical students ‘’use’’ Wikipedia, but the WikiProject would like to see most students contribute to it as well. Time will tell if this class can help achieve that lofty goal.

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