Wikiversity and e-Audiology: developing a MOOC in Audiology

Authors: Adriano Jorge Soares Arrigo¹, Hector Gabriel Corrale de Matos¹, Priscila Carvalho Cruz¹, Maria Julia Ferreira Cardoso¹ , Kátia de Freitas Alvarenga¹, Thais C. Morata², Lilian Cássia Bórnia Jacob¹

¹University of São Paulo

²National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Background Wikiversity is an open and free platform to mediate teaching and learning based on the objectives: (a) develop and host educational materials; (b) provide a space for the development of activities; and (c) facilitate research projects and provide scientific content. Audiology content in Wikimedia platforms has been consistently increasing since the adoption of Wikipedia assignments in educational activities and online global campaigns such as Wiki4WorldHearingDay in 2019 and 2023, and Wiki4YearOfSound2020. Training and education in hearing health are critical to facilitate remote and virtual audiological interventions. Wikiversity enables hosting of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) that foster knowledge and potentially may mitigate health instruction inequality. Hence, we describe the development of the Brazilian Portuguese “Introduction to Audiology” MOOC on Wikiversidade.

Methods A network of Brazilian researchers are producing the course materials based on the guidelines for health communication developed by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The technological backend was structured from the Wikiversity framework proposed in the Koblenz-Landau University, that is an interface of JavaScript, Lua, and CSS. The MOOC is composed of modules, quizzes, and tasks on an index file (MoocIndex). MoocIndex contains the infrastructure of the course, including sections, titles, and summaries is necessary to follow a course overview page to have access to the modules and classes.

Results The preliminary MOOC (https://w.wiki/6Jat) is currently available and when completed will include the modules: Peripheral and Central Auditory System, Psychoacoustics, Bone Conduction Mechanisms, Audiometry, Speech Recognition, Auditory Clinical Masking, and Tympanometry.

Conclusions The potential of an open course on Introductory Audiology may be explored in order to promote hearing health and Audiology basic training in different backgrounds contexts.