Team:Toulouse INSA-UPS/Education
Science communication
Introduction
After choosing our topic, we looked for the issues raised by our project. How could our approach impact the world? Looking around us, we realized that for many people the applications of biology are limited to solve problems in the fields of health, pharmacology, food industry, cosmetics or the environment. In reality, the applications could be much broader and we, iGEM Toulouse, are proof of this! We have therefore decided to base our entire approach of Human Practices and Science Communication on the following problem: "how to bridge the gap between microbiology and synthetic biology and space and create new vocation? Indeed, making these fields known and giving future biologists the desire to make their path in these areas is a crucial step in enabling them to develop. In order to respond to our purpose in the most complete way, we decided to develop thoughtful actions for different target groups.
Video game
Producing interactive game as educational tool to discover research process, create vocations and bring knowledge
Video game
Aim: provide an interactive game and educational tool on research process
Target: high schoolers
Where and when? high school, 10.05
Important note: collect informations
Dont forget to take pictures if mission is completed!
Two modes are available in this game:
The iGEMINI mode aims to describe step by step the research approach followed during the iGEMINI project, from the problem to the design of the solution. The objectives of this mode is to:
- give a first pictorial overview of what a research approach is
- illustrate the diversity of problems that can be addressed through synthetic biology
- present our project in a playful and interactive way
- create vocations
- PCR mode - adapted to high school students
The PCR mode is a pedagogical method that supports a practical work done by high school students in the framework of their educational program. The creation of this game mode was initiated at the request of teachers after the French high school reform, the practical exercise being too expensive for many high schools and too impractical for many students.
You can also download the game on your computer: Download for PC - Download for MacOS
1) Learning through play
- Why did we choose to make a video game?
As our goal was to bring together the fields of synthetic biology and space, it was thus coherent for us to meet the high school students who are the most sensitive to questions of school counselling in order to create vocations. In France, the choice of study orientation occurs at the end of high school. However, the recent sanitary restrictions did not allow the regular and lasting physical contacts with the public we wanted to target, so we had to consider other solutions.
By studying the different practical and innovative pedagogical techniques that can be done remotely, we targeted game-based learning. This is how our video game and the iGEMINI mode was born.
- Why is the choice of doing video-game the most adapted to our needs?
We wanted to present our research approach and allow students to retrace our approach, starting from a problem with well-defined constraints in order to find a solution. Indeed, we started from the observation that for many high school students, the field of research was something rather vague where it was difficult to project oneself. It is by overcoming this obstacle and betting on a playful implementation that we hope to create vocations in the field of space biology. To achieve these objectives, we needed a fun and interactive device that would allow the student to take ownership of the problem. It had to be an easily accessible and diffusible medium to reach a maximum number of students despite the COVID-19 pandemic. We chose to make a "point and click" to allow students to make their own choices, but also their own mistakes. We have thus created what we call a DGBL (digital game-based learning) or a serious game. It allows students to follow a path, to make mistakes, to retrace their steps, and to really understand in depth. It is for all these reasons that the form of video game was the most adapted to our needs.
- The “point and click” choice
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|
No possibility of open questions. Limited number of thinking paths resulting in a lack of flexibility in play. |
- What is a “Game-based approach?
This is also what the study Kimmons et al, 2012 [1] revealed by highlighting the importance of the students' attitude on their results and by indicating a significant increase in their academic results on the considered domain and an improvement of their attitude following the use of playful pedagogical methods.
These articles have given us the idea on unconventional and playful educational methods but this is the article by Liu, M. et al, 2014 [2] that was decisive in the direction we decided to take with our game. Indeed, we used their study to build an interactive teaching tool, which encourages students' creativity and problem-solving skills while providing a playful vision of the theme in order to encourage vocations.
The previous articles proved to be valuable when we decided to develop the TP PCR mode in order to adapt our pedagogical tool. In that way, students get the most out of it and assimilate it as well as possible, finding the right balance between learning and playing.
2) iGEMINI mode
iGEMINI mode, discovering the research process
Story board
The iGEMINI mode is composed of different chapters corresponding to the major parts of our project. By following our Cosmos mascot on its way to Mars, the player will be able to find a solution to one of the problems of long-distance space travel: the degradation of vitamins over time.
The different chapters of this game mode are as follows:
Chapter 1: Coculture
This chapter is setting the problematic part of our project: the need to produce nutritive supplements for astronauts in a spaceship. The player will design the coculture thanks to the resources available on a spaceship. Thereby, the player will discover how to create a solution to a problem while respecting well-defined constraints.
Through this chapter, the player retraces a large part of our brainstorming process, thus having a first overview of what a research process is. It is this chapter that we have presented to many professors from the birth of the idea to its improvement and then its implementation in the form of a video game.
The following chapters have been thought and imagined but are not yet implemented in our video game. We work on these ideas with the different teachers who follow us. This is part of our perspectives for the future.
Chapter 2: Synthetic biology
This chapter concerns how to engineer a yeast to produce provitamin A. The player will discover the “magic” world of synthetic biology, he will learn the notion of cloning and how we can use biological tools as DNA polymerase in biotechnology. The other concepts discussed here are PCR, digestion, ligation and yeast transformation.
This chapter on synthetic biology will give an opening towards this discipline, which is still not very known and may be of interest both for the discovery of our research approach and for other iGEM teams who would like to understand more deeply the synthetic biology aspects of our project. This chapter is still at the work stage but will be available soon.
Chapter 3: Ethical thinking
This part could be a short video about the ethic of cloning and of the manipulation of living. Ethics is a central part of any research project and even more when it is about synthetic biology. In order to help discover the reality of a research process, this aspect must not be ignored.
Quiz:
The idea of a quiz at the end of the iGEMINI mode comes from the students we met during our intervention in high school (detailed below). They found that it would be relevant to make a quiz to test the acquired knowledge and set them in the minds of students. This is part of the improvements to be made to our game for the coming weeks.High school intervention
Figure 1: Responses of high school students during the intervention to the open-ended question "What is research for you?".
With the agreement of the teacher, Mrs Gratien, we decided to meet two classes of high school students (in their last year of high school) who tested our game. Our first objective was to present the research process to them in a very interactive way, based on the tangible example of our project that they had already discovered through the video game. Our work aimed first to show them that doing research in synthetic biology and working in the field of space was not incompatible, in order to encourage vocations. We also wanted to make them discover the reality of a student project in the field of research in biology by highlighting the value of our experience. Being able to intervene face-to-face at that time, we chose to do so in order to reinforce the message that we had already passed on with the video game. Therefore, we opened a dialogue with the students, questioning them about their vision of research and its different stages. At the end of our intervention, students were free to ask us all their questions and then they gave us their feedback on the video game. All these data are transcribed below.
3) Feedback and possible improvement of the pedagogical tool
- Teachers from high school intervention:
- Student:
- Academy inspector
- Teachers
- DNA extraction
- PCR
- Digestion
- Gel electrophoresis
- University libraries (BU sciences and Bib’INSA)
- Exhibition at the “Cité de l’Espace”
- “It was an interesting exhibition! It taught me things about an area that interests me.”
- “Very good explanatory posters easy to understand with a very friendly and cheerful team on site! Good luck!”
- “It was great, I hope to win the t-shirt.”
- “The poster on recycling in a spaceship could have been more explanatory of the chemical compounds used in the scheme.”
- “There should be more detailed information on current scientific projects in synthetic biology.”
- “More visual posters with perhaps less text.”
- “Highly accurate and scientific information, intended for an informed public and less for the general public.”
- Fête de la Science: L’Esplanade
- SOCIAL MEDIA
- PRESS
- "Eight biology students decided to create nutritious yeast for astronauts on space missions. The project will be presented in an international competition"
- “A team of 8 students from Toulouse III University and INSA Toulouse have invented a system for the autonomous production of vitamin A-enriched yeast to better feed astronauts in the future. The project will be presented at an international competition on synthetic biology.”
- “Students working on super nutritious yeast for space travel”
- “Eight Toulouse students studying at Paul-Sabatier and Insa are currently working to develop nutritious yeasts to better feed astronauts.”
- “Eight students from Paul-Sabatier University and Insa are currently developing nutritious yeast for astronauts to improve vitamin intake during long spatial missions. The young people from Toulouse will present their project at the end of October at an international biology competition called iGEM.”
- “Toulouse: students want to improve food for astronauts in space”
- PROMOTION VIDEO
- TALKS AND DISCUSSION
For our video game:
"On MONDAY, October 5, 2020, we received 2 students from INSA to introduce our students from TERMINALE SPECIALITE SVT to the world of Research and the scientific approach associated with the realization of a research project.
This intervention followed the iGEMINI video game that they created and that our high school students made from home.
This presentation was extremely dynamic and interactive since the students used a slide show, very well done, on which they relied. They also used the board to record the students’ responses to their questions.
The active participation of our students was also very much appreciated, as Cécilia and Solène were able to take it step by step, to question students on the steps of a scientific approach, an approach which is an integral part of the experimental skills that our students must acquire.
Thus, by insisting on the key steps of this approach, such as the critical spirit or the rigor that scientists must possess to set up an experimental protocol, these two students really succeeded in presenting the world of research in a very playful and extremely educational way!
Our high school students really appreciated this intervention, as well as the exchange time they kept at the end of the presentation: they were able to gather the more than positive opinions and remarks the students had about the IGEMINI game. Finally, they presented their background and their studies and explained why they were so passionate about the world of research.
All the students felt this appetite, and I think, without a doubt, that they were able to arouse in many of them future vocations but also the possibility of having another vision of the world of Research!
As a teacher at SVT, I really appreciated their approach, their dynamism and the active communication they showed towards the students.
I can only wish them a great success in their journey, and a happy ending for this contest!
Thanks to them ,
Mylene GRATIEN Teacher of SVT (Life and Earth Sciences), LYCEE LEON BLUM DE VILLEFRANCHE DE LAURAGAIS "
One of the professors supporting us in this game project, Mr. Carbonne, sent a questionnaire to an academy inspector for us in order to get feedback on the usefulness and implementation of our idea on a larger scale. From this answer, great perspectives for our video game could come out.
From teacher from abroad:
The team AshesiGhana with whom we did a partnership (Click here to learn more about our partnership) gave us the contact of Eric Fosu, the Head of Biology Department at GCIHS (the Ghana Christian International High School). We sent him the link of the first chapter of the video game: iGEMINI Coculture in order to get a different point of view of a teacher abroad in Ghana. He gave us some tips to have better navigation through the video game and advised us to add a "voice-over" to read the texts (in case someone playing has challenges with sight). As a conclusion, this game could be used as a pedagogical tool for highschool students in Ghana “as it explores crucial topics like microbiology and genetic engineering in an interesting way” according to Eric Fosu.
From French High schools teachers:
Our objective was to create vocations in biotechnology among young people and to introduce them to certain biotechnology techniques to help them discover this field. We knew that with the epidemic it would not be easy to achieve our goals through a format that did not respect social distancing. We therefore agreed that a video game would be a good educational support in this time of crisis. A fun way to learn at home. We turned to high school biology teachers in order to build a pedagogical tool in line with their curriculum and scientific background. Here is a summary of the two interviews that made us decide to build the iGEMINI game.
After the first version of the video game storyboard, we coded a part of the game. We felt it was essential to seek feedback from teachers in order to know if we were responding fairly to the needs identified during the first interviews. We gave a questionnaire to high school teachers via our acquaintances and a national education inspector. Unfortunately, many teachers were slow to respond because of the extra workload due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, we worked very closely with four high school biology teachers. Here is the overall answer to our main questions and their feedback.
What emerges from this data is the need of teachers for a pedagogical tool to teach the concepts of biology approached in high school in a different way. In France, a reform of high schools has taken place and is leading to much more technical and specialized notions of applied sciences than before. In addition, there is still a need to raise awareness among young people about the opportunities available after high school. They need to be made to discover trades and fields which they cannot suspect with what they are currently being taught in class.
4) PCR Lab
While trying to make our game evolve with the advice of high school teachers from France, Canada and Ghana thanks to our partnerships, we discovered real problems that our game could solve. So by extension we created the PCR lab mode in our video game. It is this innovative approach, as close as possible to the real needs of the French educational system that we invite you to discover here.
A game mode created thanks to feedback from teachers:
"I find your initiative really judicious! I believe that it could be very interesting to include a chapter on the practical exercise of the first grade classes in your game to improve accessibility and understanding".
The TP PCR game mode was born following a phone conversation with a biology teacher at the Lycée Jean Moulins in Pézenas: Mr. Philippe Carbonne. We contacted him in order to get feedback on the iGEMINI game mode.
Excited by our idea, he declared "I find your initiative really judicious! I think it could be very interesting to integrate a chapter on the practical exercise of the first classes into your game to improve accessibility and understanding".
We retrieved the curriculum of the high school students concerned by this practical exercise to adapt the storyboard of the video game to the students' needs. Through our game we wanted to give them a more concrete vision of their practical exercise but also to allow them to revise their notions in the program by contextualizing them in an experimental and practical context. Throughout this process, we stayed in contact with the teachers who followed us throughout the establishment of this game in order to validate the feasibility of our game and its pedagogical interest.
A storyboard based on the high school program:
This mode of play is based on a practical exercise that is done at the French high school in the specialty of life sciences since the high school reform that took place last year. High school students who have taken a first biology orientation have to carry out a PCR (molecular biology technique) as part of their practical work. First, carrying out a PCR requires a certain financial investment that not all high schools can afford. On the other hand, as the manipulation is not very visual, it is often misunderstood by the students. This is where our video game comes in. By entirely retracing the subject of their program, the video game allows students to virtually carry out their manipulation by being entirely actors of the experience. The video game can then come as a complement to the experiment or as a substitution, depending on whether the school has the equipment or not. In view of the current health situation, the video game has also been thought of as a substitute for the experiment in case of cancellation of all the practical work or re-confinement. It is all these aspects that make the video game the most suitable form to meet this need.
The player will virtually do the practical exercise to better understand and appropriate the notions associated with the exercise:
5) Conclusion and perspectives
The feedback from the students, as well as from the teachers, allowed us to better understand the needs of the students and the strength as well as the weaknesses of our game. Thereby, we were able to improve it and foresee the improvements to be made in the future. We have thus been able to create a multi-faceted pedagogical tool to support the curriculum of French high school students and at the same time introduce the reality of research at an international scale. In perspective of this project, we intend to continue to develop this video game and propose it to the French Ministry of Education in order to implement it widely in the high schools of our country. On the other hand, we currently explore other possibilities to test our game to a higher number of teachers and students in order to have a game best suited to their needs.
Online conference
Creating a major event to bring together top notch scientists and the general public around the role of microbiology and synthetic biology in space.
Online conference
Aim: gather scientific experts together with general public
Target: general public
Where and when? Zoom meeting online, 23.09
Important note: ask for experts in the field
Dont forget to take pictures if mission is completed!
Online conferences, workshops, courses and meetings have been well developed since the COVID-19 pandemic has reached us. This was the perfect solution we have found to gather people from everywhere while providing content on the role of synthetic biology in space research. This conference has been shared through our social media as well as in the website of the “Cité de l'espace”(City of Space) to reach out to several people across the country.
We wanted to give people an overview of the issues that space researchers are currently facing to succeed in long space travels. So, we contacted Dr. Brigitte Godard who is a ESA astronauts’ doctor to talk about the physiological impact of the space environment on astronauts. Yves Gourinat, lecturer at ISAE-SUPAERO, an aerospace engineering school, presented the place of the research in space for applications in space and on earth. Gilles Truan, a researcher in synthetic biology highlighted the potential applications of synthetic biology in several fields including in space. Finally, we presented the iGEMINI project to close the conference as an example of an applied project of space synthetic biology. An open discussion session was opened at the end of the conference and the most curious spectators were able to ask their questions.
“What a wonderful conference the iGEMINI team has organized here! Very interesting but most of all instructive. Congratulations to the speaker, in particular Yves Gourinat who managed to captive us during his talk”, Florian Gauchie, master student at Paul Sabatier University
We hope that we made the public question himself about the role of microbiology and synthetic biology in many fields and especially in the space conquest. Thanks to the participation of these scientists, we hope that we inspired the people present. Our conference is available online on our Youtube channel (click here to watch it) so everyone can access it and benefit from these interesting talks.
Conclusion
Thanks to this conference, we made the link between scientists who are experts in their field and who might not have had the chance to meet without us and the general public. Their disciplines, all of them together, made possible creating this conference aiming to bridge the gap between synthetic biology research and space applications.
Itinerant exhibition
Exploring the role of microbiology and synthetic biology in space through an itinerant exhibition by targeting students in science and the general public.
Itinerant exhibition
Aim: Explaining the role of microbiology and synthetic biology in space through an exhibition
Target: general public and students in science studies
Where and when? Cité de l'espace, libraries and student halls. SEPT, OCT and NOV 2020
Important note: collect crucial information about the target public
Dont forget to take pictures if mission is completed!
Our exhibition called “L’exploration spatiale, un défi pour la microbiologie de demain” (Space exploration, a challenge for tomorrow's microbiology) was one of our many approaches to bridge the gap between space and synthetic biology. We first have developed this exhibition to inform and educate the public about microbiology and synthetic biology and their potential applications in space research. Despite many applications of synthetic biology, the general public is not necessarily aware of this subject. We felt it was important to mention applications on Earth as well as the essential role of synthetic biology in long space travel. This itinerant exhibition aims to guide the reader through several descriptive and informative posters about synthetic biology and its potential applications in the field of space research. Through this substantial work, our biggest challenge was to reach the widest possible audience through easy-to-read posters without losing scientific information and accuracy.
Click on the numbers and discover our 6 posters for our exhibition:
Les microbes dans la conquête spatiale
Microbes in the conquest of space: we introduced what microorganisms are, and how useful they are on Earth. On Earth, microorganisms are essential to us and we know how to use them. What role do they have to play in the conquest of space?
La biologie synthétique, c’est quoi ?
What is synthetic biology?: we first show what is a cell, and then zoomed in from the genome to the DNA. And then explained what synthetic biology is and its many useful applications.
De l’exploration spatiale à la terre
From space exploration to earth: on this poster, we presented some devices that were invented for space and are now widely used on Earth. And therefore demonstrated how space research is useful on Earth too. We also presented the MELiSSA project that, like our project, recycles space resources into useful resources.
Le recyclage dans la station spatiale
Recycling in the space station: recycling in space is essential since resources are limited. We showed the recycling system used in ISS, which is currently not a close looped cycle. What if synthetic biology could be the solution?
La journée type des astronautes à bord de la station
Typical astronaut day aboard the station:we wanted to get closer to the general public by showing the astronauts daily life.
La biologie synthétique pour la conquête spatiale
Synthetic biology for the conquest of space: in this final poster we showed some possible applications of synthetic biology as a solution to the previously presented in our exhibition space issues.
Our objective was to correlate the content of our posters with the type of audience we wanted to reach. For the general public, we had to pay attention to the scientific terms we used. It must be accessible and easy to understand for non-scientists. Our biggest challenge has been to get our message across while being accurate in terms and information. Providing the necessary information to the public was major for the public to make up their own minds and opinions about the crucial role of synthetic biology in space. In addition, we wanted to give to the youngest the desire to specialize in these fields in order to create new vocations. To test knowledge and feedback of the public, we completed our exhibition with a QR code, which directly led to questionnaires.
Different venues for different public targets:
To target science students on our campuses, we have chosen university libraries to first set up our exhibition. We wanted to show students how synthetic biology is a multidisciplinary discipline that can be used in space research as well inspire the younger generation of science students to pursue their career in synthetic biology and biotechnology.
The“Cité de l'espace” is a scientific discovery centre focused on spaceflight. Thanks to the City of Space, we were able to show our work in the Astralia hall, which is one of the buildings in the park. Our target public was the general public from Toulouse and abroad. With our exhibition, we wanted to enlighten people and introduced microbiology in a place where it is not expected by the public. During the whole week-end, we were present to answer questions, explaining our iGEMINI project, and also to give a lot of goodies such as pens and Eco Cups (we will not be able to do it at the Boston’ Giant Jamboree this year!). During this exhibition, our promotion video was displayed on TV sets around the hall to introduce our iGEMINI project.
As a way of collecting feedback, the public filled out questionnaires and we were able to collect more than 60 feedbacks, which gave us information about their basic knowledge of our discipline and their feedback on what they have learned and their opinion on the question: is synthetic biology essential for long space travels? Most of the people were between 21 and 30 years old, which meant that the public was quite young. To our surprise, people were mainly from France but also Colomby, Spain and Norway.
We wanted to know more about their biology background. And most of the people knew what a microorganism was but around 42% did not know about synthetic biology which was in our predictions.
Most of the time, people learned new notions in every theme that we were presented in the posters. On the microbiology theme, only 6% of the people did not learn from our exhibition. To our surprise, nearly 80% of people learned new things on the space theme. After chatting with people, they told us that the poster on the recycling in the space station was very interesting with accurate scientific content. The feedback on synthetic biology was the most interesting for us and more than 95% of the people learned new things meaning that our posters were very informative.
All our efforts to reach the public consisted in educating the public on the role of synthetic biology in long space travels. Our goal was to find out what the public thought on that specific point and we discovered that most of the people were really in favour of microbiology and synthetic biology being a major impact on the success of long-distance space missions.
In addition to our video game, our exhibition was a means of creating new vocations. With this in mind, we asked the public if they would be interested in following the path we had chosen for our iGEMINI project: working in synthetic biology for space application or in biology in general. We were very delighted to see that more than 60% of people think or want to move into this biotechnology field.
“The exhibition was interesting, I learned things I didn't know, or very little, such as the loss of taste in space and how to remedy it. The contribution of microbiology in space exploration shows that science is part of our future and that microbiology could help to meet future challenges. The exhibition gave me an insight into what microbiology can be used for in the world of tomorrow and opened me up to a wider field of study!” Testimony of Aroha Boutin, a first year biology student from Bordeaux, who was present at our exhibition at the “Cité de l’espace”.
Using engineered microorganisms implies sometimes using genetically modified microorganisms and their products in our daily life. We wanted to get an opinion from the general public on this often sensitive and controversial issue. 85% of the people would be willing to use these products or microorganisms and the majority only if it is a necessity.
The several feedback from the public allowed us to point out our mistakes and our strengths in the conception of this exhibition. Overall, the public were very delighted to meet us and were very positive about our exhibition:
However, some comments reflected how we could improve our exhibition, for examples:
Depending on the background of the audience, our posters were constructive enough to educate and inform people. Feedbacks informed us of the strengths and weaknesses of our posters that we have taken into account and that future iGEM teams should consider.
The Science Festival (“Fête de la science” in French) is a science fair organized all over the country for the general public and school children to discover science through animations, encounters and emotions. Through a collaboration with the CROUS (regional centers of university and school works), we organized this exposition in the context of “Fête de la Science” in a restaurant called “l’Esplanade” that is located on the campus of Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse, France). The target public was mainly scientific professors from the Paul Sabatier University and visiting researchers. We could not organize a vernissage as planned because sanitary restrictions went more strict some days before the date.
Conclusion
Through this exhibition, we were able to give the public the necessary knowledge to understand and visualize the possible links between the stakes of space for the years to come and microbiology. We had the chance to create a dialogue with the public, which helped us to improve our media and our approach. In particular, we have awakened the interest and curiosity of many young people, which was one of our objectives. Perhaps we even have created vocations!
Virtual exhibition
Exploring the role of microbiology and synthetic biology in space and making it accessible for everyone despite the sanitary situation.
Virtual exhibition
Aim: cover the entire world with an online exhibition in French and in English
Target: worldwide people
Where and when? on our wiki, online
Important note: make it interactive (quiz, "find out more")
Dont forget to take pictures if mission is completed!
English version
Click here for fullscreen version.
Version française
Cliquez ici pour la version en plein écran.
Due to the current sanitary situations, our aim was to allow people that could not attend our exhibition and reach people from all over France and the World to be able to benefit from our exhibition. Reaching an international and different public was important for us as many countries are involved in space exploration and space synthetic biology.
The general content of this exhibition is closely related as what we did in libraries, “Cité de l’Espace” and “L’Esplanade” but with a lot of effort putting into added information. We have strengthened our exhibition with quiz, “Did you know” and “To know more about it” sections. Readers, if they wish, are able to learn in depth about the topics that interest them most through a user-friendly interface. We also included some pictures taken by the Astroclub association (INSA Toulouse) in order to carry a student initiative and immerse the public into the cosmos.
We have shared with the iGEM community and beyond our online exhibition translated in French and English and received many pictures from our followers from all ages on social media from France, Finland, Sweden, Spain, England, Scoland, Wales, Argentina and Australia.
Conclusion
Through this exhibition, we were able to give the public the necessary knowledge to understand and visualize the possible links between the stakes of space for the years to come and microbiology. This year has been special for all of us but it is important, and especially nowadays, to create new online reach outs compatible with the current situation. We made our exhibition inclusive and accessible for everyone around the world for people that have access to the internet and we are proud to have created new ways of reaching out to the public while spreading our message which highlight the role of synthetic biology in space missions.
Promoting our project
Keeping the general public informed about our iGEMINI project through social media, press articles, events and video support. Showing that students from Toulouse undertook projects to solve challenging problems.
iGEMINI has been consequently active on social media, especially Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We understand that in today’s society, social media have become the most popular tools to engage people while maintaining contact with the public. The team has used these platforms to reach and engage people from France and other iGEM teams. We decided to include our followers during our project discovery using quizzes and a short trailer to make them guess which issue we wanted to tackle. A series of quizzes allowed followers to discover little by little the subject of our 2020 iGEM project and our Instagram account even received more than three hundred additional subscriptions over the summer. Our goal was to involve as much as possible the public in our project. For this, we created a competition to find a name for our mascot, Cosmos. The winner got a iGEMINI T-shirt.
Press and newspapers are great ways to reach the public and explain our activities. It is also a very good vector to create interest, especially among wannabe scientists and inhabitants of our region, Occitanie. Regional articles are good carriers to inform that students from Toulouse participate in the iGEM competition. It is also a very useful way to prove to people that science is related to society and/or current problems. Here in below are the articles published about our subject when we started to deliver our press release.
“La Dépêche du Midi” is a French regional daily newspaper. It is unique in that it is published in Toulouse and has 17 different local editions for the different areas of the Occitanie area. It is a very famous newspaper in the south of France and we were included in both online and written formats.
France 3 Occitanie” is one of the 13 regional and territorial directorates of France 3 (France Télévisions group), which includes two local branches in Occitanie: France 3 Languedoc-Roussillon and France 3 Midi-Pyrénées. France 3 Occitanie has written an article on our project as well as shot a report that has appeared on TV in the regional France 3 Occitanie TV news on the 31st of August.
“La Tribune” is a French economic and financial newspaper created in January 1985. iGEMINI appeared online in the innovation section.
“20 minutes” is a daily free generalist newspaper that aims to give quick and concise information about a whole range of topics. They wrote an online article about our project in the regional section of the newspaper. Thanks to them, we were able to reach the inhabitants of the region
“Actu.fr” is a site published by the Publihebdos Group, a French press group working in the Regional Weekly Press and Local Daily Press. The group's objectives are to provide information and services to local communities in a humanist and democratic way. The group operates in 9 regions in France through the publication of 93 local news weekly newspapers.
“L'Opinion Indépendante” is a French weekly newspaper that deals with local news specific to the department of Haute-Garonne.
Conclusion
Interactions with several journalists were a good exercise to learn how to clearly and efficiently communicate on and promote our project and what we are doing in the lab while not missing the scientific content and make it more understandable for people that do not have a scientific background.
The promotion video (presented in our "Home page") is one of the deliverables of the iGEM competition and allowed us to present our project to the general public. Our aim was to explain the issue we wanted to tackle and the solution we brought with microbiology and synthetic biology to a defined problem. The content of this video has been deeply considered together with Rémy Leroy (director of both of our deliverables videos) and the whole team to efficiently communicate our project to a broad audience.
We wanted to get closer to a narrative style for this promotional video. The challenge was to create a video that was both narrative and explanatory while not missing scientific content. We decided to tell two things at the same time: the voice-over and some footage explaining the project while the image tells us the story of a team of researchers who, thanks to their discovery, allow the development of long-distance space travel, symbolized by the take-off of the rocket at the end of the video.
The video is available with subtitles in 5 languages (English, French, Spanish, Ukranian and Russian) to reach as many people as we could. This video has been shared on our social media (Instagram, Facebook and Youtube) as well as diffused during two of our exhibitions at the “Cité de l’Espace” and L’Esplanade. During these exhibitions this video helped the public to understand how synthetic biology can help long-duration space travel with a real applied project and allowed us to introduce our iGEMINI project and the iGEM competition to the general public.
Exposciences
The Science Fair is an event that brings together young people between the ages of 5 and 25 to present research projects, including in biology. This year, due to the sanitary conditions, the Exposcience took place online from 5th to 6th of June 2020. This experience allowed us to collect the first feedback from the general public regarding our project. This was our first experience of science popularization and making our project understandable to all. Our final quiz during this presentation confirmed to us that our audience was paying attention to our talk. These first feedbacks, globally positive, allowed us to mature and adapt our project in order to increase its acceptability. This was our first occasion to create new vocations among the youngest public present.
IBISBA meeting
We have been invited to the IBISBA (Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator) annual meeting to present our iGEMINI project with two other iGEM teams: Aalto-Helsinki iGEM and iGEM Wageningen. This meeting allowed us to practice our oral presentation in front of people from all around Europe and answer specific questions.
Biosphere event
Biotransfer is an event proposed and organized by the student association of the biochemistry department of INSA. It will take place on the 26th of January 2021. The aim of this event is to bring together experts on Astrobiology in the form of conferences and debates to promote opportunities and innovations in biology. Our iGEMINI project seemed to inspire this association and we had the pleasure of accepting their request to participate and present our iGEMINI project and experience and to bring our exhibition.
Several speakers from different fields of biotechnology will be present such as Mickaël Baqué, former INSA and researcher in Berlin who works on extremophilic organisms (mainly cyanobacteria) and if these organisms would survive in conditions of space or other planets. Hervé Cottin, astrochemist at the UPEC of Paris and president of the French Society of Exobiology will also present a conference on hypotheses to explain the appearance of life on earth.
Overall Conclusion
Over the course of our several exhibitions, we have practiced science communication with people of all ages and education levels and different scientific backgrounds not only to inform them about our project but to engage them in space synthetic biology, which we think is a truly promising and exciting scientific field. We promoted dialogue through our different interventions: exhibition at the “Cité de l’espace”, discussion session during our online conference and intervention in highschool. We also promoted mutual learning through our game-based educational tool adapted to the needs in French highschool and studied the beneficial potential application of this tool throughout the world. We have also produced tools on which future iGEM teams can build on in order to create their own new video games, or follow our advice to develop their exhibition. Finally, we are proud to have created new ways of bridging the gap between synthetic biology and space research.
References
[1]
L. R. Kimmons, M. Liu, J. Kang, and L. Santana, “Attitude, Achievement, and Gender in a Middle School Science-Based Ludic Simulation for Learning,” Journal of Educational Technology Systems, vol. 40, pp. 341–370, Jan. 2011, doi: 10.2190/ET.40.4.b.
[2]
M. Liu, J. A. Rosenblum, L. Horton, and J. Kang, “Designing Science Learning with Game-Based Approaches,” Computers in the Schools, vol. 31, no. 1–2, pp. 84–102, Apr. 2014, doi: 10.1080/07380569.2014.879776.
[3]
M. Liu, L. Horton, J. Olmanson, and P. Toprac, Motivational Multimedia: Examining Students’ Learning and Motivation as They Use a Multimedia Enriched Learning Environment. 2011.
For all our surveys:
[4]
“Best Practices for Survey Research - AAPOR.” https://www.aapor.org/Standards-Ethics/Best-Practices.aspx#best10 (accessed Oct. 17, 2020).
For our itinerant and online exhibitions:
[5]
L. Carter et al., “Status of ISS Water Management and Recovery,” p. 15.
[6]
K. Rainey, “Top 10 Ways ISS Is Helping Get Us To Mars,” NASA, Sep. 15, 2015. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/iss_helps_get_to_mars (accessed Oct. 09, 2020).
[7]
E. Vitug, “Space Synthetic Biology (SynBio),” NASA, Apr. 07, 2020. http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/game_changing_development/projects/SynBio (accessed Oct. 13, 2020).
[8]
“104840main_eclss.pdf.” Accessed: Oct. 09, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/pdf/104840main_eclss.pdf.
[9]
“Biologie-A-Z.pdf.” Accessed: Oct. 09, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://www.cvc.universite-paris-saclay.fr/IMG/pdf/Biologie-A-Z.pdf.
[10]
“CLEANING WATER - Student Section,” p. 6.
[11]
“International Space Station Benefits for Humanity, 3rd edition.,” p. 236.
[12]
“International Space Station Facilities Research in Space 2017 and Beyond,” p. 57.
