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• Public Engagement & Collaboration

  • Introductory Courses

  • Motivation Investigation

  • Collaboration

  • Recruitment Campaign

  • Destop Pet System

  • Website and Posters

Public Engagement & Collaboration

As a student of the top normal university of China, we felt obligated to contribute to the popularization and education of the advanced idea of synthetic biology and iGEM. Thus, we took advantage of the education-related resources we possessed, and did a lot of meaningful and experimental educational works. We designed a systematic four-week introductory courses with the help of professors who owned original comprehension on the methodology of teaching. We launched this course system in a series of schools, expecting to stimulate their interests in synthetic biology. As for the selecting and breeding process for the next generation of team BNU-China, we’ve developed a whole new and well-paced program with a step-by-step handbook. We shared the handbook with future iGEMers from Chongqing University and helped them to prepare for 2018 iGEM competition. What’s more, we’ve done innovative works with the user experience improvements of our website. We created an animated figure as a desktop assistant system based on our projects and basic knowledge and information on synthetic biology and iGEM. Users can access the above information simply through natural dialogs with the cute cartoon figure. The delightful way of science propagation had proven to be well-received among various population. Lastly, we reviewed the history and experiences of our team, and we set up our own websites and printed posters to exhibit our achievements.

Introductory Courses:

In September 2017, with the hope to accumulate experiences and explore the methodology of synthetic biology propagation, we launched the systematic four-week introductory course program in xx schools as a meaningful attempt on in-depth teaching of the principles of synthetic biology towards average high school students. The course system covers the 101 introduction on synthetic biology together with some example of its application adapted according to the knowledge base of high school students and a brief lecture on iGEM and our project. To guarantee the quality of the courses, we practiced, rehearsed and revised for several rounds. To make sure that the involved school, students and their parents fully consented with the course series and were willing to participate actively, we handed out well-adapted formal consent forms, which we believe to be a fair template for future references. The courses were liked by most of the students, and there were heated discussion among the teachers and students.

Through this short-term course series, we’ve discovered some patterns on the way these high school kids interact with introductory synthetic biology courses. Generally, due to lack of background knowledge, at first, they appeared indifferent about the theoretical knowledge, such as the assembly of the gene pathways. On the contrary, stories.

Motivation Investigation:

As we’ve all acknowledged, successes and breakthroughs in iGEM are tightly linked with the ability of the participants to self-motivate to learn and improve themselves. So we employed the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) to assess iGEMers’s motivational orientations and their learning strategies within the Chinese iGEM community. In total, we ‘ve collected XX questionnaire results in Chinese community. For the contrast group, we’ve sent out XX questionnaires to iGEMers all around the world.

The MSLQ is based on a general cognitive view of motivation and learning strategies. There are essentially two sections to the MSLQ, a motivation section, and a learning strategies section. The motivation section consists of 31 items that assess students' goals and value beliefs for a project, their beliefs about their skill to succeed in a project, and their anxiety about tests in a project. The learning strategy section includes 31 items regarding students' use of different cognitive and metacognitive strategies. In addition, the learning strategies section includes 19 items concerning student management of different resources.

Through our adapted questionnaire, nine scales of feedbacks on students’ motivation towards iGEM could be presented, which are Task Value, Self-Efficacy for Learning and Performance, Test Anxiety, Rehearsal, Elaboration, Organization, Metacognition, Time and Study Environment Management, and Effort Regulation. However, due to the limitation on the quantity of valid feedbacks, we can only explore the internal relationship among the following scales, which are XXX.

Here’re our major results.

Collaboration on lab safety:

In the Chinese academic society, safety education is an essential but usually neglected component of the lab training, which, unfortunately, has led to numerous tragic accidents. To our astonishment, only limited material on this matter can be easily accessed within the Chinese academic and educational atmosphere. Therefore, we planned a Chinese voice-over lab safety educational video shooting event together with Shanghai Technology University, Wuhan University, and some other Chinese universities. We were inspired greatly by the Yale Biosafety Manual, and divided the tasks into several parts and assigned them to each school. Our part was to shoot an introductory video on the safe operation on several commonly used equipment.

Video on lab safety

For more videos in this collaboration project, please click here.(超链接 目前还没法给你)

Recruitment Campaign:

Since the very beginning of team iGEM BNU-China, we’ve been optimising the process of team member selecting and training to better prepare our iGEMers. This year there’s a lot modification regarding both the procedure and the training contents.

On Sep. 24th, we held a recruitment campus event. We invited our coach, Prof. Zhu Xudong, to give us a keynote speech on the general idea of synthetic biology and iGEM. Later on, our core member presented some detailed information on the exciting iGEM experience and the composition of an iGEM team.

At recruitment campus event

After signing-up closed, we began our training session, which is carried out in a mentor-student system. Specifically, each core member of BNU-China 2017 is assigned 3-4 students matched according to the mentors’ specialty and the students’ interests. Students learn the required materials and supplementary ones listed on the syllabus. Mentors monitor the study pace of each student, answer their questions in the weekly meeting. Up to now, those, who had received trainings both by lectures and by our new mentor system, commented that they had gotten much more and much faster in this interactive system. In January and February, we plan on inviting several learned researchers and professors to give new iGEMers inspiring keynote speeches. Meanwhile, the training of lab techniques will start as well.

Destop Pet System:

This year our theme is based on a Chines literature classic story named Pilgrimage to the West, in which the Monkey King is one of the main characters. To offer a more interactive experience, we created a desktop assistant system with the cute animated figure of the Monkey King. This system can react to simple instructions in natural languages and send back with related information on synthetic biology, iGEM, and our team. Besides, the animated Monkey King will send out warm greetings and farewells to the users upon opening and closing. 这里有三个动图！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！

Sample dialogs with the desktop assistant system

Click here(超链接到下载安装包和操作说明的压缩包) to download software package and user’s guide for our desktop assistant system.

Website and Posters:

This is the fourth year since our university has joined in the iGEM community, whereas majority of our fellow students know little about this fantastic opportunity for fast personal growth. For the purpose of elevating the influence level of iGEM, we set up a website(加超链接到我们搭建的宣传网站) to exhibit the achievements of our past projects, to propagate the idea of synthetic biology and iGEM, and more importantly, to create a platform to document and share protocols, training videos and first-hand experiences for future reference.

BNU-China Official Website

Meanwhile, we printed out posters and put them up along the aisle outside out lab, where freshmen walk through for their experiment course. As a results, the sign-up number for the recruitment of the next team showed a significant increase.

Design drafts of 12 posters