British Psychological Society workshop
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Wikimedia UK volunteers gave a one-and-a-half-hour workshop on the middle day of the British Psychological Society conference in Harrogate on 10 April 2013 as part of its expert outreach programme. The advertised title was "Improving Psychology Articles on Wikipedia: An opportunity for education and impact".
Summary
The workshop was publicised heavily, with a mention in a column in that month's issue of the BPS magazine The Psychologist, and flyers that were visible throughout the conference venue.
Due to the workshop being one of six parallel sessions in the middle of the conference, attendance was lower than expected. In addition to the two trainers, our BPS contact and the session chair, there were six attendees.
The first part of the workshop was a presentation giving a background about Wikimedia, talking about quality control on Wikipedia, introducing Wikiproject Psychology, and showing the specific issues with improving psychology articles, with the Confirmation bias article as a case study of improvement. It briefly discussed Wikipedia Educational Assignments (since there were educators in the audience) with examples in psychology.
The intention was to use the second part of the workshop for Basic Wikipedia training, but the facilities available meant that only a few attendees had suitable devices, and only two (plus the presentation laptop) could get onto wi-fi. So instead we demonstrated editing, article history and article and user talk pages, and discussed how the process could be used as a tool for teaching critical thinking. We also talked about how the research community could make it easier for Wikipedians, for example by publishing more consensus statements to clearly define mainstream scientific positions.