Team:Dalhousie/Engagement
Public Engagement
Public Engagement Introduction
In 2014, a survey by the Canadian Council of Academics found that 42% of Canadians
have a basic level of scientific literary necessary to understand media reports about science.
This statistic put Canada first in terms of scientific literary amongst 35 countries with similar
available data. 1 What this statistic also indicates is that more than half of the population are not
be able to read and interpret science-themed newspaper articles. After the survey was
published, the Canadian Council of Academics made three suggestions to boost Canadian
science culture. Firstly, there needs to be more “informal learning opportunities so adults can
maintain access through their lives.” 2 Secondly, “target underrepresented groups such as
women and aboriginal communities via strategies such as providing mentorship or
incorporating aspects of traditional knowledge.” Thirdly, “encourage scientists to communicate
and the public to engage in science decision making.” The human practices 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: education, science
communication, 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 our education programs we interacted with a variety of students of all ages. The
purpose of these programs was not to blatantly teach, but to provide activities and topics that
fostered curiosity and questioning. Over the course of the summer, we also learned a lot from
these programs such as how to best communicate complicated topics, 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 participant at the Discovery
Center during the strawberry DNA extraction… “science is cool.”
For the communication aspect of our engagement program we actually had very little
direct interaction with the public. From the survey we conducted, we knew the type of
audience that we were reaching through our social media platforms and we were not happy.
We wanted to attempt to reach a larger audience of people not necessarily within our own
circles. This is one of the reasons we started 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 its 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
practicing 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 reviewers. We are eagerly waiting for the
manuscript to be published.
For our media program we engaged with a diverse group of agencies to reach a broader
audience that may not have been aware of our team prior to reading about us in an article. 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 public. We hope
to keep these conversations going with the public to ensure that they stay 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,” 3 we have a
mighty mission in front of us, but we look forward to being part of making Canadian science
literate.
EDUCATION
- Shad Valley
- SuperNOVA—Catalyst Camp & Innovators Camp
- Discovery Center—Open house
- #summerofscienceCAN
- 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.
COMMUNICATING SCIENCE WITH THE PUBLIC
- PLoS iGEM Collection
- PLoSibilties Blog
MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
- Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation
- Genome Atlantic:
- Chronicle Herald
- King’s Journalist
