Team:HKUST/Education
Education
True Facts
To reach out to members of the public of the public who may not have deeep knowledge about hagfish, or may not even know of its existence, we developed a series of videos introducing the facts in an interesting manner on our YouTube channel. The videos were supplemented with pictures and animation to better explain some concepts. In addition, bilingual subtitles were provided so that we could reach a wider audience.
Inspiration
We were inspired to make documentary style videos by YouTube user ZeFrank, who manages to make both informative and humorous "documentaries" about various living creatures.
Topic Covered
- Hagfish
- Hagfish intermediate filament
YouTube Stats
Our YouTube channel has gathered 529 cumulative views as of 18th October, 2020. Check out our YouTube and Instagram here!
Screenshot of our YouTube Channel
Screenshot of our Instagram page
Textbook
Inspiration
The majority of Hong Kong students face great pressure preparing for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) exam. We wanted to help them prepare for the tests as well as to introduce synthetic biology to prospective students. Thus, our team came up with the idea of designing a textbook with colorful graphics and layouts, providing them with exam review materials and some introduction of synthetic biology.
Audience
Students taking the HKDSE curriculum, mainly Hong Kong secondary school students.
Topics covered
Human physiology, Applied ecology, Microorganisms and human and Biotechnology are covered respectively in each chapter of our textbook. In order to help students review the concepts at a glance, the major learning points are listed out concisely supplemented with graphs and charts. In addition to the HKDSE curriculum, the textbooks also briefly cover biotechnology which are widely used or are having great potential in the field of synthetic biology. At the end of each chapter, sample questions are provided, enabling students to practice for examinations and check their understanding.
Connections to HKDSE curriculum
Each chapter corresponds to an elective part of HKDSE biology, and local students can use it as reference material when preparing for the examination. Besides final year students, junior students who are unsure which elective chapters to take will also benefit as our textbook can serve as a preview of the elective parts. Thus, this textbook can help them to find their interests.
Connections to Synthetic Biology
We made sure our textbooks are more than just reviews for exams by featuring related projects of past iGEM teams. The biological basis and goals of their projects are summarized. For example, 2011 iGEM John Hopkins is mentioned in Chapter Elective 3: Microorganisms and Humans, introducing how synthetic biology could add nutrients in the bread making process by yeast . This way, students could learn beyond what is required for the syllabus while being exposed to excellent iGEM projects. It is hoped that our textbooks could introduce or even promote the emerging field synthetic biology to readers.
Reception
Several approaches are adopted to spread our Textbook to reach more highschool students. We spread them among Hong Kong highschools, they are ready to be downloaded from our social media pages. To collect advice on how could we improve the contents, a comment collection box is created to allow us to iterate the materials on the next phase.
Full textbook download:
Board Games - It's about Genetics!
Inspiration
With little possibility to hold a face-to-face workshop due to the pandemic situation in Hong Kong, we sought to reach out to the public using online means. However, we imagine it would be quite boring to only hold a lecture to introduce complex genetics through Zoom. We wanted to make something that our audience could do safely at home while making it memorable and meaningful.
With a goal to make genetics accessible to anyone, we designed a board game that can be played in the comfort of the players’ own house: It’s about Genetics!. Each player role-plays as a researcher in control of a type of chassis. The main goal in this game is to be the first to express 3 Genes of Interests by playing different types of cards strategically.
Basic Rules
This game is easy to pick up! Players have to collect Biobrick cards and be the first to successfully express all 3 Gene of Interests by obtaining 3 complete sets of circuits in the correct order, while stopping opponents by playing Action Cards, Nutrients, and Biotechnology Product cards strategically.
To express a Gene of Interest, your BioBrick part must be in the correct sequence! A correct sequence must be Promoter (P) → Ribosome Binding Site (RBS) → Gene of Interest (GOI) → Terminator (T). Since there are three GOIs to express, a correct sequence would be P → RBS → GOI1 → T → P → RBS → GOI2 → T → P → RBS → GOI3 → T. This forms a BioBrick Circuit! You win if you finish collecting and put all of them into your Plasmid.
Accessibility
This game is designed with 3 difficulty levels, from newbie, intermediate, to expert, so that even people with little background knowledge could enjoy this game. With each increasing difficulty level, a new type of card is introduced which enables more advanced playstyles.
The cards are designed with care to make genetics easy to understand without compromising the accuracy. Beautiful graphics are accompanied by a sentence explaining the scientific significance of it, while the ability of the card is written at the bottom. All jargon or scientific terms are explained simply, and this maximizes the learning outcome from playing the game.
Difficulty
The complexity of the game can be adjusted in accordance with the players’ familiarity with biotechnology and genetic constructs.
Newbie level
Newbie level is designed for players who have no background in biology or genetics. Players could understand what are Biobrick components (promoters, ribosome binding sites, terminators, etc) and players should be able to know some of the processes cells employ for genetic modifications (like DNA recombination). Example of an [Action card], Repressor
Intermediate level
At the Intermediate level, players could adopt a new type of cards called [Chassis] (6 types, which are E. coli, B. subtilis, C. reinhardtii, Bacteriophage, Yeast and Cell-free chassis), allowing for complex strategies. Each of the chassis has a unique ability inspired by their real-life counterparts (for example, Bacteriophage’s ability is lytic cycle). Players have to utilize the ability creatively to gain maximum advantage from each chassis.
Expert level
At the Expert level, a new type of card [Biotechnology Product] is introduced, and allows even greater potential for strategizing. [Biotechnology Product] cards relate to real-world examples of biotechnology being employed in the fields of medicine, agriculture, and food industry . This gives the players a simplified explanation of their underlying principles.
How have we made it accessible to the public?
The card game is distributed via a link in our social media.A link for collecting comments is also applied so that we could further improve our content later on in phase 2. Also, it is distributed to some of the secondary schools in Hong Kong.
Preview of some of the cards:
Comics - Mack and Aaron's Lab
Mack and Aaron’s Lab (Chinese: 論盡實驗室) is a 4-panel comic strip published on the team’s Instagram page. It follows the experiments carried out by Mackenzie and Aaron, which more often than not, fail to produce the expected results. Aimed at secondary school students, we hope to reiterate the importance of proper lab techniques while showing some “behind the scenes” (behind the paper?) of conducting research.
Design
Since Japanese comics and animation have a significant presence in Hong Kong, we decided to draw in the mainstream Japanese style and design appealing characters that would resonate with secondary school students. We also realize not every reader is fluent in English, so we made it fully bilingual (Traditional Chinese and English, the 2 official languages recognized by HKSAR) to maximize accessibility.
Characters
Aaron is handsome, smart, and adored by many girls, but he is a little complacent and looks down on others. Mackenzie is her twin sister, and they always compete for higher scores in exams.
Mackenzie is older than Aaron by 38 seconds. She is intelligent but clumsy. Is conscious of her height (142 cm). Her dream is to one day grow tall using biotechnology.
Comics - Ocean Rescue
Ocean Rescue is another 4-panel comic strip to be published on our team’s Instagram account. It is aimed at primary school students with the goal of introducing the causes and remedies of marine pollution. In the comic, anthropomorphic animals conduct field trips to find out why their homes are covered in litter. Unfortunately we could not finish it in time before the wiki freeze. However, we have planned out the story and characters.
Design
The comics were designed to invoke interest in environmental conservation by introducing the topic of environmental protection via anthropomorphic marine animals. To increase the visual appeal, we adopted vibrant colors and simple character designs. Taking into account the language ability of primary students, we also made it bilingual (Traditional Chinese and English).
Characters
Dolphin, Shark, Fish, and Whale are students studying at the “SEA SCHOOL”. They are best friends. Their favorite school subject is Science, and Mr. Shrimp is their beloved teacher. Mr. Shrimp is the supervisor of the student-led team Ocean Rescue and the only teacher in town. He takes a hands-on approach to teaching, preferring to let students learn by experiments rather than rote memorization of information.
Reception
The comics were distributed via the Issuu Website. A link for collecting comments is also applied so that we could further improve our content later on in phase 2. Also, it is distributed to some of the secondary schools in Hong Kong.
First 2 episodes
