<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Inter-laboratory studies have great implications in both academia research and industry. Comparison of results can not only help determine the characteristics of certain products, but can also validate the test method and determine the source of uncertainty. Synthetic biology aims to achieve predicable gene expression outcomes [1], but challenges for this goal still exist on every level from parts design, circuity complexity to measurement methods. iGEM InterLab study is exactly designed to unravel the source of unpredictability and to quantify the degree of variability [2], the logical of which William and Mary iGEM team shares deeply. We have been an active participator of the InterLab Study since 2015 (the second year William and Mary joined the iGEM family) and we are very honored to be able to continue to contribute this study. </div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Since creating the Synthetic Biology Curriculum in 2015, we have had a lot teams from iGEM contact us to ask us to send them it. We had not updated it since its creation, but since others continue to use it, we decided that this year we would work on updating it and making sure it can be a more effective teaching tool. We had the particular aim of making the curriculum a good resource for both other iGEM teams, synthetic biologists, and teachers.</div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Toward the beginning of our iGEM project, we arranged a meeting with a project specialist from the STEM Education Alliance to learn more about connecting with teachers and how to improve the Synthetic Biology Curriculum for teachers. He suggested to split it into three separate parts (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) and make sure it has activities that are similar to the standards of learning (SOLs) for Virginia public schools and the AP requirements.</div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >In response to this meeting, we removed and replaced a few activities to better adhere to Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) and AP standards. We also split up the activities booklet and changed the format from images to a pdf file, which means we can continue to edit it into the future. We wrote up a document that details which activities fulfill specific SOL and AP requirements, which we can now give to teachers when they request the booklet. We also chose to change the name of the project from the 2015 team’s “Synthetic Biology Curriculum” to “Synthetic Biology Teaching Booklet,” as curriculum has a very specific connotation for teachers and our activities are meant to be relatively short and only include a small amount of background information.
<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Kristin Cosby is an AP Chemistry teacher from Jamestown High School, a nearby school. She is also the head of the science department at her school. One of our contacts at the STEM Education Alliance at the William & Mary School of Education connected us with her during the summer. Kristin kindly visited our lab and met with us during the summer to discuss with us how we could better act as a resource for public school teachers and students in the area. She said she had no idea there were so many science resources available at our college, as they are not publicized to people in the public school system, and was very enthusiastic to work with us in the future. She helped us arrange the small teacher focus group and remained involved in our outreach activities, bringing her son to one of the Bioengineering Speaker Series events! </div>
<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >After meeting Senator Mason in our lab and talking to him about the outreach we do, he was interested in starting a more in-depth collaboration with the local school district. He told us he was impressed with our outreach work and wanted to help make more teachers and students aware of it. </div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Shortly after our initial meeting, we sent Senator Mason a proposal for our collaboration with teachers and principals. We told him we wanted to act as a resource for teachers based on their needs, whether that was with curriculum planning, teacher workshops, lab visits, or helping to apply for grants. We had a follow-up meeting with Senator Mason to talk more in-depth about how he felt we could help public school teachers in our area. He told us that he felt that teachers could benefit from the resources we mentioned and that he was interested in helping us connect to some of the important people in the local public school system.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Because we also want this project to include iGEM teams, we created a survey for teams who request our booklet and submitted it to our IRB (Institutional Review Board). We were approved to conduct research on the efficacy of the activities booklet and plan to do it until next August, which is when our IRB approval expires. Based on the results, we will again update the activities booklet.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >We distributed the activities booklet to teams who contacted us and requested it, to teachers at the teacher focus group meeting, and posted them on our social media accounts.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >After the meeting, he kindly put us in touch with Tami Byron, the K-12 STEM coordinator for the entire Newport News public school system, which has a total enrollment of about 29,000 students and 37 elementary, middle, and high schools.</div>
<td style='background-color: #DDDDDD;column-width: px;font-size: 12px;'>Education and Public Engagement</th>
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<td style='background-color: #DDDDDD;column-width: px;font-size: 12px;'>Goal: Talk to a local public school STEM coordinator about how our team can act as a resource for teachers and students.</th>
<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >The Biology Club at William & Mary recently reached out to us about acting as a resource for students interested in doing synthetic biology research. For the first time, members of the club will be conducting supervised biology research projects in the areas of Neuroscience, Bioengineering, and Microbiology. Much of the research is going to be conducted in our lab, so the head of the club asked us if we could organize an activity for students to help them learn about lab equipment. We had students visit the lab and do an activity where they explored the lab and guessed which equipment they would need for their projects. It was fun to connect with students.</div>
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<td style='background-color: #DDDDDD;column-width: px; font-size: 12px;text-indet: 10px;'>Audience: Tami Byron, the K-12 STEM coordinator for Newport News (a county near the College) public schools</td>
<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >It was particularly exciting to collaborate with the Biology Club, however, because we discovered that this year their organization has high school members. The STEM Club from one of the local high schools reached out and asked to join the undergraduate club. Because a student was the person who reached out, this was not a widely-known resource among other students and teachers in the area. Therefore, we invited the heads of the club to present to our teacher focus group to expand the reach of their club to various local high schools.</div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Inter-laboratory studies have great implications in both academia research and industry. Comparison of results can not only help determine the characteristics of certain products, but can also validate the test method and determine the source of uncertainty. Synthetic biology aims to achieve predicable gene expression outcomes [1], but challenges for this goal still exist on every level from parts design, circuity complexity to measurement methods. iGEM InterLab study is exactly designed to unravel the source of unpredictability and to quantify the degree of variability [2], the logical of which William and Mary iGEM team shares deeply. We have been an active participator of the InterLab Study since 2015 (the second year William and Mary joined the iGEM family) and we are very honored to be able to continue to contribute this study. </div>
<center><div style = 'padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 30px;font-size: 22px' ><b>Summary and Next Steps</b></div></center>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >We connected with Kristin Cosby, the head of the science department at Jamestown High School, through our contacts in the School of Education. After our initial meeting with her, she helped us organize a meeting with teachers from various high schools in our local school district. She also invited the K-12 science coordinator from the Williamsburg-James City County public school system. We had a small, informal meeting in our lab to get feedback from teachers about what they need and what we can do for them in our outreach.</div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >We are currently in the process of establishing a recognized student organization to help conduct STEM outreach with local teachers and school districts. In order to help increase interest in not only synthetic biology, but STEM subjects in general, we want to create a sustainable, organized platform for helping teachers to work with college students, so they can have easier access to people who are knowledgeable about science but also closer in age to the high school students. These college students will be a resource for teachers who want people to visit their classrooms and lead activities. Additionally, having an interdisciplinary group of students who are interested in doing STEM outreach will help ensure that we have a larger reach in the future and can continue to address teachers’ needs continuously throughout the year. </div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Prior to the meeting, we reached out to the head of the Biology Club, which currently has members from Lafayette high school but not from the other high schools in our area. We asked them if they would be willing to present to the teachers about their club and biology research project, and also expand their reach to include more high school students. They agreed and presented their club to the teachers as a possible resource for students who are enthusiastic about biology.</div>
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Based on our conversations with science teachers and the science coordinators from our two local school districts, we realized there is a need for general STEM and biology resources, not just synthetic biology. While our expertise and passion is with synthetic biology, we attend an institution with extensive STEM resources and with people who are interested in outreach. During the past year, we have been fortunate to collaborate with professors and students from our school who enjoy outreach, as well as people from the School of Education. However, most of the those associated with the College work independently, and currently the infrastructure does not exist to address the needs of teachers in our area. Hence the need for a platform with a general STEM focus and not just a more narrow focus on synthetic biology Although our PI, Dr. Saha, will continue to advise us in our outreach efforts, we also are working to involve our other collaborators in this organization.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >We also told teachers about resources that we would be able to offer them, such as educational material, teacher workshops, and lab visits for students or teacher training. The teachers then told us about what they would like out of a potential partnership.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Several high school students from the nearby high schools are now interested in joining Biology Club and conducting their own biology or synthetic biology research. We hope to get them involved in this research and act as advisors for them as they carry out their project.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >They said that although many of the high school teachers were knowledgeable about engineering, biology, and synthetic biology, there are strict rules in place that prevent them from performing most biology hands-on activities and experiments. Additionally, they felt that due to this lack of ability for students to learn through doing the science, many students felt disinterested. The teachers also expressed their concern that students felt disconnected from the teachers due to their age differences and therefore felt that even when the teachers showed enthusiasm about science, it did not translate to the students. The science coordinator also expressed that most of the elementary school science teachers did not actually have scientific backgrounds, and felt uncomfortable teaching about science because of this. Although there was a need for improved biology programs in the high schools, a lot of the problems with science education stems from elementary and middle schools.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Two of the teachers from the focus group have already arranged to visit our lab to conduct hands-on activities with their students. Even though there are very strict rules about doing synthetic biology activities at their schools, they have more freedom and scope for action by working in the college laboratories. We are already helping them prepare activities to do in our lab at the end of this semester and the beginning of next semester. They are also publicizing the resources available at our school to other teachers, and we hope to have a more extensive collaboration with them going forward.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >We were very surprised to hear this. Prior to the meeting, we had thought that the problems with biology and synthetic biology education stemmed from teachers simply not being familiar with newer advances in the field and that teaching educators about synthetic biology could address the lack of instruction on this subject in classrooms. Additionally, teachers wanted resources for general science education, not just synthetic biology education. This meeting helped us better understand the needs of the community and make informed decisions about our future education outreach.
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<div style = 'padding-right: 190px; padding-left: 190px; text-indent: 50px;line-height: 28px;' >Tami Byron, the STEM Coordinator for Newport News School District, plans to have us collaborate with a magnet school in her school district that needs more biology resources for their students.
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Revision as of 02:48, 31 October 2017
2017 Synthetic Biology Activities Booklet Updates
Since creating the Synthetic Biology Curriculum in 2015, we have had a lot teams from iGEM contact us to ask us to send them it. We had not updated it since its creation, but since others continue to use it, we decided that this year we would work on updating it and making sure it can be a more effective teaching tool. We had the particular aim of making the curriculum a good resource for both other iGEM teams, synthetic biologists, and teachers.
Toward the beginning of our iGEM project, we arranged a meeting with a project specialist from the STEM Education Alliance to learn more about connecting with teachers and how to improve the Synthetic Biology Curriculum for teachers. He suggested to split it into three separate parts (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) and make sure it has activities that are similar to the standards of learning (SOLs) for Virginia public schools and the AP requirements.
In response to this meeting, we removed and replaced a few activities to better adhere to Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) and AP standards. We also split up the activities booklet and changed the format from images to a pdf file, which means we can continue to edit it into the future. We wrote up a document that details which activities fulfill specific SOL and AP requirements, which we can now give to teachers when they request the booklet. We also chose to change the name of the project from the 2015 team’s “Synthetic Biology Curriculum” to “Synthetic Biology Teaching Booklet,” as curriculum has a very specific connotation for teachers and our activities are meant to be relatively short and only include a small amount of background information.
Because we also want this project to include iGEM teams, we created a survey for teams who request our booklet and submitted it to our IRB (Institutional Review Board). We were approved to conduct research on the efficacy of the activities booklet and plan to do it until next August, which is when our IRB approval expires. Based on the results, we will again update the activities booklet.
We distributed the activities booklet to teams who contacted us and requested it, to teachers at the teacher focus group meeting, and posted them on our social media accounts.
Collaboration with Biology Club
The Biology Club at William & Mary recently reached out to us about acting as a resource for students interested in doing synthetic biology research. For the first time, members of the club will be conducting supervised biology research projects in the areas of Neuroscience, Bioengineering, and Microbiology. Much of the research is going to be conducted in our lab, so the head of the club asked us if we could organize an activity for students to help them learn about lab equipment. We had students visit the lab and do an activity where they explored the lab and guessed which equipment they would need for their projects. It was fun to connect with students.
It was particularly exciting to collaborate with the Biology Club, however, because we discovered that this year their organization has high school members. The STEM Club from one of the local high schools reached out and asked to join the undergraduate club. Because a student was the person who reached out, this was not a widely-known resource among other students and teachers in the area. Therefore, we invited the heads of the club to present to our teacher focus group to expand the reach of their club to various local high schools.
Summary and Next Steps
We are currently in the process of establishing a recognized student organization to help conduct STEM outreach with local teachers and school districts. In order to help increase interest in not only synthetic biology, but STEM subjects in general, we want to create a sustainable, organized platform for helping teachers to work with college students, so they can have easier access to people who are knowledgeable about science but also closer in age to the high school students. These college students will be a resource for teachers who want people to visit their classrooms and lead activities. Additionally, having an interdisciplinary group of students who are interested in doing STEM outreach will help ensure that we have a larger reach in the future and can continue to address teachers’ needs continuously throughout the year.
Based on our conversations with science teachers and the science coordinators from our two local school districts, we realized there is a need for general STEM and biology resources, not just synthetic biology. While our expertise and passion is with synthetic biology, we attend an institution with extensive STEM resources and with people who are interested in outreach. During the past year, we have been fortunate to collaborate with professors and students from our school who enjoy outreach, as well as people from the School of Education. However, most of the those associated with the College work independently, and currently the infrastructure does not exist to address the needs of teachers in our area. Hence the need for a platform with a general STEM focus and not just a more narrow focus on synthetic biology Although our PI, Dr. Saha, will continue to advise us in our outreach efforts, we also are working to involve our other collaborators in this organization.
Several high school students from the nearby high schools are now interested in joining Biology Club and conducting their own biology or synthetic biology research. We hope to get them involved in this research and act as advisors for them as they carry out their project.
Two of the teachers from the focus group have already arranged to visit our lab to conduct hands-on activities with their students. Even though there are very strict rules about doing synthetic biology activities at their schools, they have more freedom and scope for action by working in the college laboratories. We are already helping them prepare activities to do in our lab at the end of this semester and the beginning of next semester. They are also publicizing the resources available at our school to other teachers, and we hope to have a more extensive collaboration with them going forward.
Tami Byron, the STEM Coordinator for Newport News School District, plans to have us collaborate with a magnet school in her school district that needs more biology resources for their students.
