Team:Oxford/Engagement
Education and Public Engagement
Introduction
Designing educational activities around synthetic biology is difficult because the field is new and interdisciplinary. Consequently there is a lack of standard principles and definitions, creating an enlarging division of knowledge between the general public and the synthetic biology community; this may foster generalisations and misconceptions. Bidirectional public engagement is necessary to help bridge this gap, and it was therefore a key focus of our summer.
Summer School Engagement
A major reason for the gap between the general public and the scientific community is a lack of exposure to synthetic biology in modern education. To accurately tackle this problem we based our activities on the learning objectives for MIT undergraduates training in synthetic biology (Figure 1). Our approach meant that our educational activities were:
- Not generalised
- True to core synthetic biology
- Encouraging scientific thinking
Although there are some excellent secondary education tools available (e.g. Biobuilder), we found that many of these require extensive access to lab equipment and expensive resources, creating a barrier to use in teaching. Therefore, our designed activities are low cost, require minimal materials and do not assume lab access.
Figure 1: Main outcomes of synthetic biology education and activities we designed to fulfil these
Our Activities
To meet these outcomes we designed a variety of activities including: a genetic memory computer lab, a bacterial photography system worksheet, an ethical washing line activity, and a 'Design your own biosensor' activity. These activities have been formatted into lesson plans and printable resources, made publically available for use by future iGEM teams.
Our workshops were used at 3 different oxford summer schools: Northwest Science (students aged 17-18 yrs interested a broad range of sciences), Oriel College summer school (students aged 13-14 yrs interested in medicine) and UNIQ (academically selected students aged 17-18 yrs from state schools and disadvantaged backgrounds interested in biochemistry).
Image 1: Zoë C and John giving a presentation at the Northwest Science school at Corpus Christi College
Image 2: Chun, Jei, Alissa, Helen and Sumaera at the UNIQ summer school
Improvement through Feedback
Student feedback allowed us to refine our activities after each summer school session (Table 1). For example, we converted the TinkerCell computer based bacterial photography system activity into a paper based game so computer access was no longer needed, and we also developed a formalised ethical washing line workshop after finding students disengaged by an unstructured ethical discussion. In addition to workshops, Zoe F gave a university style lecture about synthetic biology and our project to students at the Northwest Science school.
| School | Positives | Problems | Modifications |
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| Northwest School |
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| Oriel |
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| UNIQ |
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Curiosity Carnival
The Curiosity Carnival is an Oxford wide festival for researchers to share their research in innovative ways, as a part of the European Researchers' Night (NIGHT). The Oxford team were thrilled to be accepted in having an activities stand at this event. Our stand was in the centre of the city and attracted a diverse audience of more than 4500 members of the public, from young children to other researchers.
Image 3: Kushal, Angela, Sumera and Zoe C at the Curiosity Carnival
Our stand involved:
- Poster display outlining facts about Chagas disease and our diagnostic solution
- ‘Find-cruzi’ game to highlight the difficulty of identifying the parasite by microscopy of a blood smear
- ‘E. coli pong’ game to explain transformation
- Competition to design a biosensor from magnets on a white board
- Voting on ethical scenarios
Image 4: Sumaera demonstrating our ‘E. coli - pong’ activity
iGEM UK Meet-ups
Engaging with other teams to share ideas and techniques is a vital component of iGEM: we were grateful to be able to attend the UK meet up jointly organised by the University of Westminster, UCL, and Warwick during which we gave Jamboree style poster and powerpoint presentation to other teams, providing invaluable preparation for Boston. The event was lots of fun and we appreciated the opportunity to meet, network and form collaborations with other UK teams.
Image 5: Our excellent speakers (Arthur and John) pose with Tom cruzi (complete with his own little tie) before they go in to give our presentation at the Shard
Image 6: UCL held a fantastic set of debates about synthetic biology, and our team members were very successful - here's Zoe F with their winning team, who argued in favour of using genetically modified organs
Image 6: At Westminster, Arthur talks through our poster with members of the UCL team
Social Media
We have worked hard to develop a solid and consistent social media presence across three platforms during our project. Our Instagram account has included regular updates on what the team was getting up to inside and outside of the lab, helping to promote a more well-rounded image of scientists, and also participating in tags such as #femalesinstem to display the gender diversity in our team. We have a high level of engagement for our Instagram posts, regularly reaching a variety of accounts including Oxford colleges, scientific institutions, and the general public. Our Twitter account keeps abreast of the important instagram and facebook posts, and is also key to engaging with other iGEM teams. The Oxford iGEM Facebook page has the biggest following of all our accounts, with over 1000 followers, and displays a range of posts from ‘Meet the Team’ to information about our outreach events and human practices. We have made sure to advertise any outreach we have been involved in across all platforms, such as the Curiosity Carnival and the UNIQ summer schools.
