SCCAP/APA Convention/2018/Opening Up Psychology to Give It Away--- Open Platforms to bring Psychology to All People

This symposium, titled, Opening Up Psychology to Give It Away--- Open Platforms to bring Psychology to All People, shared how several different open-sourced platforms are helping improve the dissemination of psychological science.

Abstract
Wiki Education is a non-profit aiming to improve Wikipedia by systematically working with higher education institutions, instructors, and students to bring academic knowledge to the world’s most popular source of information. Wiki Education runs a program teaching students how to turn their research and writing into Wikipedia articles, closing content gaps in the encyclopedia. The program engages students to produce public scholarship, teaches information literacy and critical thinking, and actively teaches students how to communicate science. Wiki Education has developed a suite of tools and trainings to teach students how Wikipedia works and help instructors design, manage, and assess the Wikipedia assignment. Students at more than 500 universities in the United States and Canada have added 40 million words based on academic, peer-reviewed sources to Wikipedia, providing hundreds of millions of readers with better information. Psychology students alone have improved nearly 1,000 articles as a part of this program. Psychology students face stringent sourcing requirements, as their assignments require them to add medical information to the world’s most-accessed medical reference. Wiki Education’s resources help students navigate these standards. As students enter any new community, they must learn how to participate productively, and the challenges they face help build critical thinking and communication skills. As students and instructors consult Wiki Education’s resources and staff, they learn how to resolve potential conflicts with other editors, how to identify low-quality articles to improve, how to add well-cited psychological information, and how to improve Wikipedia’s psychology content in the long-term. During this talk, Wiki Education Executive Director Frank Schulenburg will address opportunities and challenges for students in the psychology classroom to amplify their impact to the world's understanding of psychology through Wikipedia.

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Abstract
Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world and the 6th most visited Internet site. Wikiversity is a sister site geared towards teaching. Evidence-Based Assessment (EBA) is a clinical decision-making approach that uses diagnostic probability as one way of guiding clinical decisions. Clinicians can use EBA methods to integrate multiple findings, such as test scores, risk factors, and other pieces of evidence to refine diagnostic probability estimates (Gray, 2004; Straus, Glasziou, Richardson, & Haynes, 2011). However, more needs to be done to put EBA tools in the hands of those who could use them to help others. Barriers include selecting the best quality instruments from an overwhelming number of competing options (Buros, 1965), cost (Jensen-Doss & Hawley, 2010), finding and accessing copies of validated instruments, and understanding how to interpret scores (Glasziou & Haynes, 2005). Open-sourced web-based approaches, such as Wikipedia and Wikiversity, improve access and eliminate costs to help bridge the science-practice gap. They are easily updated and community driven. There is now an online EBA ecosystem with niches for the different assessment stakeholders. It currently encompasses 150+ pages, accruing more than 25 million views and engaging more than 200 student editors, as well as garnering grant support from five professional societies. For researchers, there is an overview of the EBA model, with examples and code for statistical techniques to make findings more clinically applicable. For clinicians, Wikiversity pages show how to apply EBA, using vignettes to teach clinicians how to apply EBA principles to clinical cases, and providing resources such as free, well-validated assessments, along with scoring information. For the general public, Wikipedia pages provide an encyclopedic overview, and Wikiversity pages create forums for discussion and resources related to hot topics in psychology, such as the depictions of bullying and suicide in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.

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Abstract
The United States has always been a leader in modern psychological science. However, there are significant barriers to dissemination of research-based knowledge to educational systems globally. Such barriers include lack of language proficiency, limited access to high-quality learning material or opportunities, and geographical barriers. The rapid pace of technological innovation can bridge the inequality gap in education. Over the past decade, tele-education, an approach to enhancing student’s knowledge and performance via the use of information and communication technologies, has become more and more popular (Masic, 2008). Distance learning, videoconferencing, and asynchronous instructional video are some common forms of tele-education (Curran, 2006). The current project aims to develop an effective tele-education model to disseminate psychological science in college education. We conducted a pilot online research seminar including 24 students in the US, Canada, South Korea, and Taiwan from August to December, 2017. Specific goals included (a) enhancing students’ research-based knowledge, (b) teaching them data visualization for exploration and presentation, (c) teaching them how to use syntax to run basic and intermediate statistical analyses, and (d) providing students with opportunities to participate in psychological research. To address geographical barriers, the course used online communication platforms, including weekly video calls (GoogleHangouts). To address language barriers, even though teaching materials were presented in English, supplemental discussion sessions were delivered in Mandarin, the primary language of the teaching fellow (TF) (YLC) and Taiwanese students. The TF, who is fluent in both Mandarin and English, facilitated communication between students and the project mentor, a professor in the US. Finally, to address barriers to resources, all materials were shared in cloud storage. Finished examples, source code, and other learning resources were posted on an open educational platform, Wikiversity. Students submitted their final projects as academic posters to professional conferences. Strengths, limitations and recommendations of tele-education are discussed.

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Abstract
The tradition of giving away psychology grew out of the community mental health tradition. Although the roots are a half-century old, the philosophy aligns well with current initiatives in open science and teaching. Researchers often kept assessments and toolkits in the public domain, only to have the lack of advertising and distribution undermine societal benefit. Technology and crowdsourcing platforms can no bypass multiple leaks in the dissemination pipeline. Free measures can be hosted as PDFs online, or as free screening centers with evidence-based resources offered with the feedback (see DBSA.ORG/screeningcenter). Open teaching has changed from kind mentors sharing floppy disks to Wikiversity hosting open classrooms and exercises available to everyone with Internet access. The Open Science Foundation (osf.io) provides a free hosting resource that complements the strengths of Wikipedia to create a repository of research-oriented files. Online sites also create new opportunities for professional discussion and consultation, plus find-a-therapist directories. Wikipedia and Wikiversity offer a huge opportunity for Psychology by virtue of their strengths in terms of process and place. In terms of process, Wiki media are the most mature and burnished crowdsourcing platforms. They have well-refined procedures for documenting version history (~permanent “track changes”), attributing authorship, organizing feedback and contrasting viewpoints (the talk/discuss pages, ~“comment bubbles”), and monitoring pages (via the watchlist). In terms of place, Wikipedia is the 5th or 6th most visited site on the Internet, and Google (#1) searches return Wikipedia pages on the first screen full of hits. Wiki also harnesses the “power of one” network effect—because there is only one, people will always know where to look. Hitching Psychology’s wagon to the Wiki train will ultimately achieve the best dissemination: Though newer and initially having credibility concerns, the faster and better process and strength of place will carry the day.

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 * Powerpoint