Team:UCL/Education
Education
Overview
Our first attempt at communicating science was carried out through a series of webinars for high school students: ‘Zooming on Biology’. (see Zooming on Biology bit)
Expanding on our Zooming on Biology webinars, which were kept very broad encompassing various bio-related majors, we wanted to present the more specific field of synthetic biology to high schoolers. This was achieved through two major events. The first was the University of London Taster Day during which the department of Biochemical Engineering at UCL set up a 2-hour slot for us to present to an audience of 15-18-year-old students. We structured our presentation into three sections (link to slides): an introduction of what is synthetic biology, followed by an overview of synbio’s potential with some specific impressive examples, and finally an introduction to how to do synbio including the tools we use and the process we follow. This enabled us to introduce our project to them as a 2020 example of synthetic biology. Throughout the presentation, we had interactive polls in place to promote a two-way discussion. These were very effective in getting our audience’s opinion and we took this opportunity to ask our audience what their thoughts were on our project (see more in human practices). Following this presentation, we wished to make this material available to more high school students and specifically those from a less well-off background. We came across the In2Science UK programme, which aims to support disadvantaged and underrepresented young people progress to degrees and careers in STEM. This year the programme welcomed over 600 pupils who satisfied specific criteria such as attending a non-selective state-funded school. Of these 600 participants, 83% had no family history of higher education, 77% were from a minority ethnicity and 63% were female. We got in contact with this organisation and collaborated with them to host two webinars as part of the programme. Our first webinar was a remake of our series ‘Zooming on Biology’ compressed into one, and our second was a compressed version of our introduction to synthetic biology and our project. We used the same principle of interactive polls for this second webinar which produced very fruitful discussions and our young audience made very interesting points.
After these series of successful webinars, talks, presentations, we wished to change medium. One day, we received an advert for a new science magazine just starting up, at the University of Manchester (?). Its aim is to promote engineering to young students through various material and they were looking for content for their new episode. Jumping on the opportunity, we reached out and offered some content on synthetic biology, seen as bioengineering. A few email exchanges later, it was decided we would write a short fictional story introducing our synthetic biology project. We wanted to make it fun to read, with graphics around the story. We also included some fact boxes where our readers could get a snapshot and learn about a specific element of synthetic biology. In an aim to expand our audience and communicate science to a different range of listeners and readers, we reached out to various organisations and met with two, Algalita (a US non-profit organisation based in southern California) and Plastic Oceans Europe (a European non-profit organisation). Both companies aim to communicate the global issue of marine plastic pollution to young people and have various educational platforms and materials available. We suggested a collaboration where we could promote their work to the iGEM community and provide additional material on the synthetic biology's potential to help solve this global problem. In return, we would be able to use their platform to expand our reach.
Requirements from iGEM:
Gold Medal Criterion #6
Develop and implement science communication, education, and/or outreach materials related to synthetic biology.
Some questions to help guide you:
- How did you determine the type of materials you produced?
- Who is your target audience and how will your materials be used by that audience?
- How will your materials encourage an open dialogue with your audience?
- How did you make your materials accessible to a wider audience?
Zooming in on Biology
Activity descriptions
Uol Taster Day
Activity descriptions
In2Science
Activity descriptions
Default Contents Below!!!
★ ALERT!
This page is used by the judges to evaluate your team for the medal criterion or award listed below.
Delete this box in order to be evaluated for this medal criterion and/or award. See more information at Instructions for Pages for awards.
Education
Gold Medal Criterion #6
Develop and implement science communication, education, and/or outreach materials related to synthetic biology.
All activities must follow Safety policies for Human Subjects Research.
Please see the 2020 Medals Page for more information.
Best Education Special Prize
To compete for the Best Education prize, please describe your work on this page and also fill out the description on the judging form. Please note you can compete for both the Gold Medal criterion #6 and the Best Education prize with this page.