Education and Science Communication

Summary:

Education and Communication constitute one of the most important roles in our project as it not only allows us to share our project with the general public, but also enables others to learn more about the uncharted areas such as biochemistry and synthetic biology as well as molecular biology experiments, etc. In our work on human social practice, we have found that many people hold a biased perception of our project due to lack of enough knowledge about synthetic biology and biology. Therefore, we plan to focus on scientific promotion and develop high-quality educational materials.The main work we have done is listed as follows:
1. Create virtual laboratory courses and prepare teaching manuals for teachers.
2. Invite high school students and teachers to test our lab courses, and evaluate that to what extent they master what they have learned before and after the test.
3. In order to bring a joyful learning experience, we have specially designed a game to simulate the experimental process for students.
4. We publicized our project and the test result of our virtual lab offline so that the general public could interact with us better.

We believe that our efforts to educate the public can benefit our community and beyond.

Development background:

With the development of science and technology and the progress of society, interdisciplinary fields are getting more and more honored. Increasing disciplines need experiment biological and molecular knowledge and trials. Top biological competitions like iGEM also require participants to master certain basic knowledge of biomolecular cloning.In addition, many international standardized examinations such as AP also include biomolecular experimental techniques and apply them to real experiments.Therefore, more and more people need to conduct various biological experiments. However, although the traditional experimental courses can allow students to experience the operational procedures , there are still many disadvantages:
1. From the perspective of students, due to the limited materials, students are usually divided into groups with several people using a set of experimental tools together, so not everyone can experience the complete experimental process. Thus students cannot comprehend each step thoroughly.
2. For teachers, preparation for experiment courses often requires a lot of time and efforts, and they must pay more attention to students to ensure that they are doing the experiment in a standard and safe manner.
3. Finally, for the school itself, the reagents and equipment needed for the experiment are often very expensive, so it is necessary to appoint a specific teacher to mange laboratory instruments and equipment.Therefore, many schools tends to adopt video teaching or teacher demonstration or other relatively low-cost ways. But that may cause the students to get distracted easily and they cannot watch each experimental step clearly. Thus, students cannot get a good command of the details of the experiment.
4. In recent years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the laboratory flux is limited, and major laboratories have more stringent restrictions in terms of the personnel access so fewer people can experience biomolecular experiments in person.

Therefore, we want to find a better educational method for biomolecular experiments to solve the problems mentioned above.After a series of investigations and discussions with teachers and several experts, we decided to organize a team to develop the virtual laboratory project.We hope that our project can effectively train students in basic biological experiments, let the students preview, improve the successful real experiments rate, and popularize synthetic biology, biochemistry and experimental science to the general public, consequently contributing to a high-quality and efficient education.

The advantages of our educational materials:

From the perspective of practical application, virtual laboratory is more flexible and secure than traditional laboratory. The lively teaching scene can provide students with immersive and interactive one-to-one experience with flexible time and safe operation.The experimental data is available to teachers and parents in real time. It is not demanding in terms of the site and hardware with low comprehensive procurement cost and convenient deployment, and it is able to be widely promoted.The AI experiment assistant and real-time data management and analysis system equipped with the platform can help users better understand the functions and operational methods of the virtual laboratory.In this way, the problems mentioned above such as insufficient equipment and teachers, difficulties in collecting teaching data and statistics, high cost of laboratory reagents and consumables, and laboratory safety management can be solved. Meanwhile, students' learning interests can be stimulated and teachers' workload can be reduced, thus enhancing the educational quality of schools.

Analysis of Virtual laboratory

Introduction

Virtual laboratory traced back to Professor William Wolfe of the University of Virginia in 1989, who first proposed to develop industry-leading virtual laboratory through professional, efficient and leading technical means to stimulate students’ learning interest in biology and create an immersive learning experiment. Due to the limited time, with the help of our teachers and supporting institutions, we only completed the simple development of the enzyme digestion virtual laboratory in molecular cloning.However, we carried out two-way dialogue with the target educational group and completed the preliminary teaching test and analysis, laying a good foundation for us to complete the rest of the work in the future.

We collected 78 questionnaires in total.Our questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first part was the basic information about our respondents and their subjective feelings on the learning materials.The other is the objective test of key points after finishing the virtual experiment. We want to figure out the how much can students benefit from virtual experiment. At the same time, we also handed out traditional learning materials for testing to make comparison.The respondents were divided into two groups: one group used traditional learning materials and completed the test questions while the other group used virtual experiment and completed the same test questions.

Analysis results

1. The first part: the respondents’ subjective feelings and feedback

1）Age range

Our target group is mainly made up of high school students or freshmen students so most respondents are under 18 years old who account for around 82%. College students that come from the iGEM account for about 10% and the last group is teachers who account for only 8%.

2）gender

53% of our respondents were male and 47% were female with an approximately 1:1 ratio, which aims to eliminate the influence of gender differences on the data. It is generally accepted that women are not as interested in virtual worlds or games as men do.

3）Educational background

After conducting the survey around our country, our respondents were mostly high school students, which may bring positive impact on our data as many high school students show more interests in life sciences and are willing to pursue a career in synthetic biology after passing the tests.

4) Study time involved in biology courses

Our virtual lab is centered around molecular cloning experiments in synthetic biology, so it's important to understand the biological background of our interviewees to witness their self-improvement via our educational products. Our test subjects are mainly students from grades 10-12. Their cumulative learning time in biology ranges from 3 months to 2 years and the number of such students accounts for 80%. This target group is also very effective to offer feedback on our products.In addition, 12% of our respondents are biology teachers and their opinions and suggestions also matters a lot.

5) The most satisfying part of the testing process

During the whole learning experience of the virtual experiment of enzyme digestion, we asked our respondents to list two or more factors (choose at least two items) that made them most satisfied in the virtual laboratory to evaluate in what aspects that we have done well.As shown in the figure, 33% to 55% of the respondents were satisfied with all our options, and most of them were satisfied with our virtual experiment, showing that they really enjoyed the learning experience process. However, it also suggests that we should further optimize our virtual lab project. As shown in the picture:

When we further checked what they feel satisfied with our virtual laboratory, we found that they were mostly satisfied with the operational interface and experimental content, showing that the respondents were very interested in the teaching form and content of the virtual experiment(as shown in the figure below). However, our primary version is far from mature in terms of the picture quality, music and color that still cannot meet students’ requirements. And we will be committed to making further improvements.

6) Did our virtual experiment motivate the participants

We were encouraged by the fact that 70 of our 78 respondents (90%) believed that the virtual experiment could stimulate their interest in synthetic biology, so we asked them how would such interest affect their future choice. As we expected most participants in our survey to be high school students, we hoped that our teaching materials would motivate them more to consider pursue a career in biochemistry, biology, synthetic biology, or any of the other related fields discussed in the book.About 60% said that the virtual lab is helpful for learning, and half of them said that it is fun. 22% think it is interesting but not helpful to study and maybe it can be used as an interesting way to promote science. Another 10% thought it is boring and useless.Another 10% or so chose something else, and part of the response from such group is not valid. (as shown in the picture below)

2. The second part: analysis of the testers' learning quality

In addition, we selected 20 science high school students without any biological background as our target subjects and they were divided into two groups. One group learned the key points of enzyme digestion in molecular cloning through the traditional teaching method (molecular cloning manual) and completed the test questions（Science Communication Test).The other learned by themselves through a virtual experiment and completed the same test questions.Then we compared two groups.There were 10 questions in total and our subjects learned by virtual lab scored 4.7 on average while the other group scored 4 on average.According to our current test, the learning materials in the virtual laboratory turn to be better than those in the traditional way. Check the figure shown below:

Others: Online and offline promotion

In addition to conducting online scientific promotion activities, we conducted offline field outreach activities as well, delivered lectures on synthetic biology and molecular cloning experimental techniques at high schools.In the lecture, we shared some basic synthetic biology knowledge and principles and how to make bio-ink for 3D printing to solve the problem of wound repair via such technology.We were surprised to find that our iGEM experience lightened many students, who were attracted by the comprehensiveness and breakthrough of the competition.

In addition, to make it easier for the public to access our project and relevant information online, we created an Wechat account,the most commonly used social media platform, where we posted informative articles. For those who are interested in the iGEM competition or our project, we provide comprehensive articles centering on synthetic biology and our project working principles. Check the overview and latest updates on our social media platform listed below.