We found two important issues when we were working on our project, and we would like to do something for them. One is about laboratory animals. Jumping on the bandwagon of ending animal testing, our government designates the authority to be in charge of this issue and implement several policies, hoping to introduce topics and problems related to the public. However, people still lack awareness of these problems, not to mention the hybridoma wasted due to this evolution. The other is about the popularity of synthetic biology. Since synthetic biology is an emerging field, school education in Taiwan seldom mentions this promising subject. Not only is synthetic biology a trend in the future, but it has also combated numerous problems in our daily lives. We considered public education about those two issues necessary, and we hope we can give out our influence.
We designed a series of activities that target the audience from children to young adults. Though Taiwan is still under the threat of COVID-19, we have successfully carried out our activities under pandemic prevention regulations. In the future, both laboratory animal issues and synthetic biology will be significantly concerned in science. Therefore, we hope to arouse the awareness of people interested in or majoring in science and push more people to do their best for a better world. We would also like to effectively spread our ideas through the internet in the modern technological world. Thus, we seized this opportunity and reach as many groups as possible to maximize our influence.
For elementary school students, we started our activities by making self-painted animations and writing an ear-catching theme song to introduce synthetic biology and our project idea. Considering that the children are too little to understand some complicated issues and their moral concepts are still under construction, we turned to these ways and try to fit their preferences.
For junior and senior high school students, we provided two kinds of lectures and launched several vlogs. We designed the lectures according to their age and different degree of understanding of biology and delivered pretests and posttests to see the learning effect. As for the intriguing vlogs, they introduced our team's daily lives to pique their interest.
For young adults, we set up a podcast channel, a social media accounts and provided a lecture. We designed the episodes based on our project, synthetic biology, and laboratory animal issues. We wish to make our audience gradually understand what our entire project mainly focuses on. At the same time, we also posted considerable knowledge about synthetic biology on our Facebook and Instagram for learning and reference.
In addition to promoting iGEM and synthetic biology in a more fascinating and friendly way, we decided to create a team mascot, Cellamon. They are adorable creatures that we made up with images of who love synthetic biology and are passionate about sharing relevant knowledge. They play an essential part in our scientific animation, theme song music videos, as well as social media posts. We wholeheartedly anticipate that they can help us attract more attention to the projects.
We carried out a variety of educational activities to raise the public’s awareness of synthetic biology and the reduction of laboratory animals. Our plan started from arousing kids’ interest in synthetic biology to giving students and younger adults an insight into the problems of laboratory animal reduction and our project. We tried our best to extend to the scope of the audience so that every individual can have a chance to understand synthetic biology and iGEM. Through these efforts, we hope the two issues can be noticed and appropriately solved.
With Cellamons as the unique virtual hosts, our self-painted animation becomes more appealing to our audience, especially elementary school students.
When it comes to sharing the iGEM and synthetic biology, we released two series: “Learning with Cellamon” and “A Day with Cellamon.” What’s more, in order to widen our audiences, we dubbed our animation in English. Still, we put on subtitles in both Mandarin and English so that it would be more understandable to the audience here in Taiwan. With the adorable videos, we tried our best to make people feel engaged while gaining knowledge in our video.
In the “Learning with Cellamon,” information about iGEM and the popular science of synthetic biology will be demonstrated. The first episode is about the introduction of iGEM. To give the audience a rough idea of iGEM and our work, we presented past projects that the former CSMU team had done. The second episode is about the introduction of synthetic biology. In case scientific knowledge is too broad and abstract to the public, we also put in some examples of applications of synthetic biology in different areas.
Next, in the series of “A day with Cellamon,” we have Cellamons as our little ambassadors and reveal the daily routine in different departments in a 60-sec animation. It is an undemanding, amusing short series that tells how an iGEM team works for all ages. We hope it could give those interested in the competition easier access to the information.
After uploading the videos to YouTube and Instagram, we were glad to see much positive feedback, saying how the adorable characters successfully grab their eyeballs and how the plain explanations help them absorb the knowledge. We also physically shared the series of “A day with Cellamon” with some elementary school students and managed to pique their interest in science. We are honored by how our efforts could have some influence on society.
Since synthetic biology is not a prevalent subject to most people currently, we came up with the idea to write a song about synthetic biology. In addition to professional knowledge, we also promote our team's values in the lyrics. Ｗe hope the delightful and catchy melody can attract more people interested in iGEM.
We had our teammates sing the songs together. As for the music video, we would record some videos about the competition experience in France as the main content and add the Cellamon to make it more attractive.
After we launched the music video “Theme Song of Synthetic Biology,” numerous people came to give recognition to our efforts. Many peers around our members told us that their younger sisters, brothers, and even themselves got earworms from this song. They also came to us for more information about the iGEM competition and synthetic biology.
Apart from these efforts, a “worldwide version“ theme song was also recorded as a bonus promotion. We translated the lyrics into English and invite iGEM teams at home and abroad to sing along with us. We aimed to make people worldwide know more about iGEM and synthetic biology through the song, and even children can enjoy the melody and have fun. For more information, please see the Collaboration page.
Now, the videos were the version with lyrics only. Therefore, we planed to launch a formal video on our Youtube channel at the end of this year. We hope to record the whole process when we attended the Grand Jamboree in the video to introduce anyone who may be interested in iGEM with the insight of this competition.
We decided to share our experience, and some simple concepts about synthetic biology with junior high students since courses about basic biological knowledge usually start at that point. Firstly, we encourage all our members to get in touch with their alma maters. San Min junior high is the first to answer the call. Thanks to Ms. Kuo, we get to have the chance to interact with her students.
To begin with, our members give the students a simple overview, including the history of synthetic biology, the rules of iGEM, the duties of different departments, etc. Next, we continue with an advanced introduction to synthetic biology as well as information about experiment design. Then, several projects in the dry lab, such as data representation, would be introduced. Last but not least, we explain the terms and some common methods to carry out human practice activities, including questionnaires and interviews. Our efforts in education and public engagement will also be shared in this section. With vivid metaphors and lively teaching methods, we hope the content is more accessible to the student.
We also prepare a pretest-posttest design. These two surveys aim to look into the improvement of their awareness of synthetic biology. There are two sections in our surveys. One is to see if the students understand the knowledge we gave them, which consists of true-false and multiple-choice questions. The other section aims to see how students' thoughts change after sharing. The result shows that the student's average score rose from 63 to 83 out of 100. The statistics are extracted and presented below.
Protest
Posttest
The percentage of students unfamiliar with synthetic biology declined significantly from 86% to 7%. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who did not understand hybridoma technology fell from 90% to 7%. These statistics show that students surely know and learn more about the two main topics after the lectures.
We also provided a chance for senior high students interested in iGEM or synthetic biology. The former part of the lecture introduced iGEM, works for different departments, and animal-derived antibody issues. Then, we invited a professor from our college to explain the rationale for mAb production. Moreover, we designed some games based on related concepts to enhance their image of what they had been taught.
A pretest and a posttest were also conducted to know the students' acquisition level. The questions listed down are some of the questions in our survey:
The results of the surveys, which are demonstrated below, show the effect of our lectures and students’ improvement. We even made those who are not that into synthetic biology more curious about it. We are pretty proud that we can inspire their attentiveness.
It is not a one-way educational activity but a mutual achievement. It is nice to see the participants being so active and cheerful in the activities. Ｗe were also grateful to receive comments and advice from the students and improved our project based on them.
Unlike activities that share the general idea of iGEM, we focused on the life of our team members in the manner of vlogs. Many students may not have a chance to join a laboratory and do biomedical research. They might think antibody manufacturing is far from daily life and that the software or hardware is not practical in our life. Therefore, we recorded vlogs on our Youtube channel, making it easier to break the fourth wall and narrow the distance between audiences and our team.
The audience can see how we prepare for the competition through the vlogs. For instance, in the wet lab session, we showed them how the equipment works and how the experiments are carried out. When it comes to the vlog of the dry lab, we demonstrated the software and hardware we used. As for the episode of human practice, we performed how did we carry out the podcast recording and meetup conference with other iGEM teams. Best of all, the host and our team members would interact with our audience, aiming to make the professional knowledge more down-to-earth to our audiences. Ｗe hope such a connection could make the iGEM competition more real and attainable for the audience.
For those who prefer learning through listening, our team had also created a podcast channel. Through the programs, we led our listeners into the fantastic world of synthetic biology and told them some interesting facts about iGEM as well as our project.
Our podcasts were pre-recorded in Mandarin. We aimed to promote this scientific knowledge and our personal experiences to Mandarin speakers, especially the younger public in Taiwan. Also, to catered to audiences with different preferences, we divided these programs into two categories. One introduced the main concepts of our product through storytelling and talked about some background knowledge of our subject. The other simply focused on exploring each member’s thoughts on iGEM through daily chats. That’s why the length of the show can vary from 5 to 35 minutes.
We even arranged a collaborative project with the NCHU iGEM team in Taichung, Taiwan. It’s a special episode interviewing and exchanging thoughts with their leaders, hoping to give our listeners a different point of view.
Through planning and recording the Podcast, we thought and organized again the content of our subject, making it easier for the audience to understand. We hope to share the issue of animal use in the laboratory and some knowledge about iGEM and synthetic biology with them simply and excitingly. It was also an opportunity for self-examination, allowing us to think more deeply about the value and importance of our project.
We did enjoy the whole process very much, and we looked forward to the Podcasts we made diligently being heard by more people. It was lucky for us to indeed get some feedback from our audiences. As for the details of the feedback, most of them are encouraging words, such as describing our show as “interesting“ and “thought-provoking”.
As of October 7, we got 590 total views and an average rating of 5 stars from all 14 episodes and one trailer, with the majority of the reviews coming from our young adult listeners. These results were in line with our expectations, but there was one surprise: our show even reached 24th and 25th place in the Science category in Taiwan and Hong Kong at one point!
The positive responses not only let us view our shows from another perspective but also made us realize that our local presence is much greater than we used to think; let us reflect on what else we can do in the field of synthetic biology.
Posts on social media are also a great conduit to reach out to the public. To ensure they do receive correct information, we had done considerable background research for every topic we covered. Also, we covered all of our information in both Chinese and English, hoping to make the content accessible to global followers.
We mainly use Instagram and Facebook to share our information. Besides introducing our team, iGEM, and sponsors, we also had Cellamons as special demonstrators to bring professional knowledge closer to people's daily life. We launched two series of popular science articles, "Learn with Cellamon" and "Mon's note." In "Learn with Cellamon," Cellamons introduced synthetic biology to the audience in three aspects: Human Practices, Dry Lab, and Wet Lab. As for "Mon's note," we used the notes organized by Cellamons as an eye-catching point, which shared medical knowledge, synthetic biology applications, SDGs concepts, etc., with the public. In addition to posts, we also used Instagram Stories to share our iGEMers' daily life and to promote other educational projects, such as online workshops, animations, and so on.
We are always grateful and relieved when followers stroked enthusiastic responses to our posts. Some followers said that the mascots did enhance their interests in synthetic biology and iGEM competitions. Such results boosted our confidence. We determined that no matter how small our steps might be, we should still try our best to make some contribution to the science world.
We held two sharing meetings cooperating with the National Museum of Natural Science at Chung Shan Medical University for medical school students. Through our presentation, they understood iGEM competition, hybridoma technology, monoclonal antibody application, and laboratory animal debates. Moreover, we hope to guide them into possible application and research tactics of synthetic biology, not just understanding. We also collected their feedback from the questionnaire we made. Since they will engage in the field of medicine or biotechnology in the future, we valued their opinions about animal-derived antibodies. The following questions are some of the questions in our questionnaire:
