Team:Dalhousie/Engagement
Public Engagement
Public Engagement Introduction
In 2014, a survey by the Canadian Council of Academics found that 42% of Canadians had a basic level of scientific literacy. This statistic put Canada first in terms of scientific literary amongst 35 countries with similar available data, but it shows that half of all Canadians are not able to read and interpret science-themed newspaper articles. Following these results, the Canadian Council of Academics made three suggestions to boost Canadian science culture: increase informal learning opportunities, increase inclusion of minorities, and increase scientist’s communication and public engagement. The human practises and public engagement portion of our project was formulated upon recognizing that there is a need to start open conversations with the public and to provide science-based educational opportunities for everyone.
Science communication and literary are weaved throughout our entire iGEM project and thus it is not surprising that our theme has also manifested within our public engagement initiatives. We developed three initiatives for public engagement this year: science communication, education, and media. In each of these sections our goal was to encourage conversation surrounding science, facilitate learning, and to engage populations that may not have regular access to science. In all aspects of our public engagement we attempted to keep in mind the three recommendations from the Canadian Council of Academics.
For the communication aspect of our engagement program we sought to reach a larger audience of people not necessarily within our own circles. This is why we started the Think of the PLoSibilities blog. The blog also allows students to practise their own science communication by writing blog posts that get edited by faculty members. Since inception, PLoSibilities has reached over 300 people and it has a regular audience from around the world. While we are not certain about the age or gender demographics viewing the blog, we are pleased that it has such a global spread. In addition to practising communication on the blog, we participated in the iGEM-PLoS Collection following the jamboree in 2016. From this collection we have morphed our iGEM 2016 project into a manuscript currently being reviewed by PLoS for publication. We are eagerly waiting for the manuscript to be published.
For our education programs, we interacted with a variety of students of all ages. The purpose of these programs was to provide activities and topics that fostered curiosity and promoted scientific inquiry. Over the course of the summer, we learned how to communicate complicated scientific concepts, and how to lead discussions so that everyone can be involved. These were probably some of the most fun and successful activities we held throughout the year. To quote a young participant at the Discovery Center during the strawberry DNA extraction, “science is cool.”
For our media program, we engaged with a diverse group of agencies to reach a broader audience that may not have been previously aware of our team. The Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation Journal and Genome Atlantic were two of our financial supporters whose articles were read by their immediate viewership. The Chronicle Herald is a local newspaper and The Signal is the King’s University Journalism Radio Program which both research very diverse audiences. It was here that we practised effectively communicating our project using the skills outlined in our integrated practises section.
Our public engagement and human practises should not be thought of as a separate entity from our wet lab/dry lab project. In our engagement efforts, we not only continued our conversations with programs we established in previous years (ex. SuperNOVA), but began conversations with new outlets such as the Discovery Center and SHAD Valley. These programs, however, were not just for the benefit of the participants but for us too. Over the course of this project, we have learned and practised being effective science communicators whether that be through the PLoSibilities blog, the manuscript, the various interviews, and the interactions with the public. We hope to keep these conversations going to ensure that the public stays informed and that we continue to better ourselves as communicators. With 82% of surveyed Canadians saying that they “would like to know more about science and how it affects our world,” we have a mighty mission in front of us, but we look forward to being part of making Canadian science literate.
COMMUNICATING SCIENCE WITH THE PUBLIC
PLoSibilties Blog
In partnership with PLoS, we began the PLoSibilties blog to
bridge the gap between open-access journals and the lay
audience. Scientific jargon in research articles often limits
how accessible science is to the general public. One goal of
the blog was to provide a lay audience with the important
information from science publications such as: What is
already known? What are the results? What are possible
future experiments? Why is the research important? Why
should we care? How do the results change the field? The
other goal of PLoSibilities was to give undergraduate
students (not limited to iGEM team members) the
opportunity to practise writing lay summaries for a non-scientific audience, as well as to publish
their work on an online platform. The blog has a readership of over 200 people from around the
world. While this initiative began due to iGEM, we hope to continue it throughout the rest of
the year and recruit more student writers from outside of iGEM.
EDUCATION
Shad Valley
We had a blast hosting SHAD Valley
for the first time! Approximately 20
students joined us for an afternoon
filled with synthetic biology, ethics,
and DNA extractions. The
Dalhousie Biochemistry
Department very kindly provided
us with all the necessary reagents
to do the extractions. The students
not only got to extract their own
DNA from cheek cells, but also got
to take the DNA home with them in
double helix pendant necklace.
SuperNOVA—Catalyst Camp & Innovators Camp
Continuing the partnership we established last year with SuperNOVA, we ran two workshops
targeting two different age groups: the
Catalyst Camp (grades 10-12) and the
Innovators Camp (grades 7-9). In a jammed
pack 1.5-hour workshop, the Catalyst Camp
students learned about the basics of
synthetic biology (e.g. DNA, protein, cloning,
etc.) as well as extracted DNA from the cheek cells. They got to keep their DNA in double helix
pendant necklace (these necklaces were a hit!). In addition, we talked to students about
E. coli to the slides ahead of time so that the students did not
studying at Dalhousie and future opportunities to join our iGEM team. For the Innovators
Camp, we created a different workshop to highlight
another important aspect of synthetic biology… the
organisms! The workshop began with students sitting
through a brief presentation about the wonders of
bacteria, and then it was gram-stain time. To ensure that
our students were safe,
we had them wear
gloves and lab coats. In
addition, we fixed the
have to turn on or use the Bunsen burners. We also wanted
to show the students gram-positive bacteria, but were
limited for time, so we received a prepared slide of
Streptococcus from the diagnostic microbiology lab at the
local hospital. The Streptococcus was given to us as a blood
smear so we got the additional benefit of showing students what red blood cells look like!
Discovery Center—Open house
The Discovery Center is Nova Scotia’s hand-on science facility and every Wednesday admission
is free to the general public. On a cold dark evening in September we eagerly arrived at the
Innovation Lab in the Discovery Center and opened our minds and our experiments to the
public. In addition to speaking to the public about iGEM and our project we organized two
hands-on activities that accompanied our description about DNA and cells. The first activity
involved extracting DNA from strawberries and bananas. The younger members of the public
had a great time squashing the fruit and were very surprised to learn that the snot-like
substance at the end was DNA. The second activity involveCanadian Council of Academicsd looking at dog kidney cells under
the microscope. A lot of the children who came by were in awe to see cells and couldn’t believe
that cells are so small!
We did an additional event on a quite Sunday morning at the Discovery Center focusing this
time on iGEM and our project.
#summerofscienceCAN
We participated in the #summerofscienceCAN initiative which encourages local members of
parliament (MP) to engage with the research occurring in their ridings. We met and discussed
our project with our MP, Andy Fillmore. In addition, we gave him a tour of our lab! It was
amazing to be part of this federal campaign.
Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation (DMRF)
We ran a booth at a DMRF event for Dalhousie medical alumni where we talked about our project, iGEM, and synthetic biology. Families of alumni joined us in extracting DNA from strawberries and
visualizing fluorescent proteins expressed in BSL-1
bacteria. These two activities accompanied our
conversation about DNA and synthetic biology. In
addition, we talked with young individuals who
were interested in science in general and answered questions from the public about current
scientific technologies. There was a lot of interest in synthetic biology and the ethics following
such exploration. We tried our best to explain the moral responsibilities that we have as
scientists.
MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
References
Chung, E. (2014, August 28). Canadians' science literacy, engagement may be highest in world. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadians-science-literacy-ranks-1st-among-35-countries-1.2749413
