Education
As iGEMers, we understand the power of synthetic biology and the positive change it can bring to the world. But, as the general public, a lot of people don't understand biology, synthetic biology, or even science. At this time, it became iGEMers' responsibility to popularize scientific knowledge, stimulate more people's interest in synthetic biology, and thus promote synthetic biology. To better educate synthetic biology, we implement stratified strategies and offer tailored educational programs to meet individuals with diverse academic backgrounds. To achieve this goal, we divide our educational activities into three levels: primary school students, university students, and the general public. Not only that, we also focus on engaging with the public in the process, listening to their feedback, and constantly improving our methods and activities. We believe that this experience is valuable not only for future iGEM teams but also for our lives.
Teaching in rural villages
Process: In August 2024, in collaboration with the UCAS Volunteer Association, we designed a series of science popularization courses focused on what science is and what scientists do. Within these courses, we introduced the concepts of synthetic biology in a guided manner, which we subsequently presented to students at Xizhong Road Primary School in Pizhou, Jiangsu. Additionally, we led the children in a chlorophyll fluorescence experiment to help them understand fluorescence and recognize the power of synthetic biology in their surroundings.
Achievement: Both the children and the local teacher enjoyed our class. Some children provided creative answers about the potential impact of synthetic biology on our future lives, which surprised us greatly.
Feedback: Both the children and the local teacher loved our class. They actively participated and asked a lot of relevant questions.
Reflection: We plan to incorporate more experiments and leading questions into our courses to enhance the children's hands-on skills and logical thinking. This approach will make it easier for them to grasp the concepts and ignite their interest in science.
Public Science Day held by CAS
Process: The Public Science Day is a large-scale science popularization event organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and aimed at the entire Chinese population. On a weekend in May each year, citizens are free to enter various research institutes of the CAS and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), attend science popularization lectures, and engage in scientific activities. Every year, as representatives of UCAS-China, we are responsible for popularizing biology and synthetic biology-related content to the public. Based on last year's feedback, this year we are trying to make our event even richer, adapting it to a broader context of biological knowledge and making it accessible to all. Taking that into consideration, we designed five activities with varying levels of difficulty:
- DNA origami: We teach children to fold a piece of DNA using colored cardstock and use a DNA model as a demonstration to introduce people to basic DNA knowledge.
- Finding words: We made a letter table and asked people to find six biology-related words horizontally or vertically. In this section, we introduced to them these six words: DNA, RNA and Protein, Replication, Transcription and Translation.
- Plasmid puzzle: We cut out different functional segments of a simple plasmid and introduced their functions to the participants. We then guided them to reassemble the segments back into their original positions, using this method to help the public understand the operating principles of plasmids.
- Flower bookmark making: We help participants make their flower bookmarks using flowers, cardstock, glue, etc., and introduce them to the types and structures of flowers in the process.
- Biological painting: According to the children's interest, we used special body paint on the back of their hands to draw a variety of biological patterns, mostly a variety of butterflies. In the process of painting, we taught them about the types of butterflies and some knowledge of insects.
Achievement: Hundreds of people came to our booth for the event. They were interested in synthetic biology and asked us a lot of questions. The whole event lasted for a morning and we were delighted to see parents bringing their children to learn about biology with us. In addition, there is often a group of people gathered at the booth to discuss synthetic biology with us.
Feedback: We educate the public about biology, and our team gets a lot of attention. People are curious about what our team is doing to help make our world a better place. We have also had enthusiastic participants take the initiative to request updates on our team's social media accounts for future events. There are also UCAS students who are passionate about what we are doing and hope to join us next year.
Reflection: The public generally has a certain understanding of biology, but most people know little about synthetic biology, which also reminds us to pay more attention to synthetic biology publicity in the future.
Education science booklets
Process: During the preparation for the Public Open Day, to enable the public to "take knowledge home", we created an education science booklet------ What is protein. We wrote the content and drew the illustrations for the booklet ourselves, resulting in the 8-page popular science booklets. We distributed these booklets to participants in various activities and shared them on our team's social media platforms for online dissemination.
Feedback: These beautiful popular science brochures have not only received positive feedback in their interactions with the public but also their interactions with other iGEM teams. We are glad that our brochure can help those around us.
Reflection: During the production process, we realized that it is very difficult to measure the average level of knowledge of the masses, and after considering our goals, we wanted our booklet to have a certain depth of knowledge, better illustrations to make it easy to understand, and the use of color to stimulate people's interest.
Attachment: We attach the Chinese version of "What is protein" here, anyone who seeks for reference can download it.
Microbial painting facing freshman
Process: As a long-standing annual event, we organized the 2024 microbial painting activity at the start of the new academic term. On September 22nd, students from all disciplines were invited to our biological laboratory to unleash their creativity by creating paintings using microorganisms. Students first draw their favorite patterns on the back of petri dishes or white paper with markers and then use disposable inoculation rings dipped in the bacterial solution to draw the finished patterns. Our team members provided guidance on laboratory safety regulations and explained how microorganisms thrive in nutrient mediums. All the bacteria we used were obtained from CGMCC (China General Microbiological Culture Collection Center) that pose minimal threat to humans and the environment.
Achievement: Here are their wonderful paintings.
Feedback: During the event, the participants showed great enthusiasm and all completed more than one project. After the event, we distributed a questionnaire to the participants about their thoughts and feelings. To our delight, they all shared positive comments and expressed their gratitude, which made us feel very warm.
Reflection: In the feedback questionnaire, one student mentioned that he hoped primary and secondary school students would also be involved. Of course, both the process and the level of safety suit them well, so why not extend this fun course to elementary school students to develop their interest in biology? In China, most middle schools don't have biology laboratories. Maybe we can invite them to visit our lab next year.
iGEM training courses
Process: To build on the experience of the previous UCAS-China team, to allow the new team members to adapt to iGEM faster and start iGEM quickly, we have designed a series of introductory iGEM courses, including experiments, software, hardware, modeling, and front-end sections. These courses are open to all students in our school and we welcome anyone interested in any course to attend. We also put our lessons online for others to learn. In particular, we focus on how to integrate synthetic biology with the lessons as an iGEM foundation. Given last year's problems, we have adopted the form of partially offline teaching this year, which has been widely praised.
Achievement: We successfully conducted several iGEM lessons, such as a winter camp, which gained popularity on our campus.
Feedback: We were delighted to have over one hundred students enroll in our courses, with numerous inquiries and expressions of gratitude that we received. Freshmen, in particular, showed great enthusiasm for these lessons.
Reflection: The main disappointment of our team is the low completion rate of some of our online courses, which may be due to the somewhat fast course schedule and online teaching format. In contrast, the effect of offline teaching is far better than that of online teaching. But because of the time, we have to take at least part of the teaching online. How to make our online teaching more engaging is something we need to consider next year.
