Contents
Education and Outreach
Introduction
Our team focused on education due to the lack of synthetic biology in secondary school curricula as well as the stigma that historically surrounds genetically engineered organisms.
We decided to produce multiple resources so our educational efforts would be accessible to numerous groups of scientists and non-scientists. This culminated in the Test Tube Podcast, a card game called Plasmid: Terminator Trouble, school sessions, university sessions, and a constant social media presence.
Throughout our project, we have opened a two-way dialogue with our target audiences which has informed our efforts, primarily through social media and directly with students in sessions in secondary schools and university lectures. This has altered the way we educate, determining how to improve our material to be more engaging, clear, and enjoyable. We hope our work on education has destigmatised synthetic biology and genetic engineering, while also inspiring our audience to learn more about the field.
The Test Tube Podcast
Inspired by the relevance and pull of scientific podcasts, with 11.55 million adults listening in weekly to the BBC Inside Science podcast alone, we were driven to create our very own. The Test Tube Podcast was created with the intention of demystifying the everyday life of research scientists, as well as tackling the basics (and intricacies) of synthetic biology in a fun and accessible way for those interested in science. Publishing our seven episodes online via Spotify, Youtube, Google podcasts, and RadioPublic enabled us to reach a wide online audience. The podcast introduced listeners to many concepts of synthetic biology such as plasmid design, experiment design, biobricks, chassis selection, biosafety, as well as the broader issues surrounding the applications of synthetic biology. We aimed for a fun and lighthearted tone, making this resource suitable for both scientists and non-scientists alike.
| Podcast Episode | Topic Discussion |
|---|---|
| Episode 1: Team Exeter | The basics of synthetic biology (syn-bio), e.g. chasssis and plasmids, Exeter's project including bacteria producing silk and graphene properties, iGEM experiences and the collaborative nature of the competition |
| Episode 2: Team Bochum, Vienna (2 parts) | Synbio brick production to reduce net carbon dioxide emissions, how synbio can be used in manufacturing and environmental projects, lab management and the daily lives of research scientists, synthetic biology secondary school education in Austria |
| Episode 3: Team Sheffield | Directional evolution of specific genes via synbio, a focus on how the scientific community works together, foundatonal advances in science and how iGEM facilitates this, "A day in the life of a research scientist" |
| Episode 4: Inclusivity with Team Leuven | Inclusivity in STEM, focusing on historic scientists who overcame barriers, Exeter and Leuven's research into contemporary barriers, particularly for women and disabled people. Teams also discuss their own journeys with inclusivity in STEM |
| Episode 5: Team Bath | Phosphate bioremediation to produce sustainable fertilizer, how syn-bio could be vital for future environmental projects, the path taken by a new iGEM team. |
| Episode 6: The Bigger Picture (Previous iGEMer) | The team interviewed Dan, a past iGEM competitor from Exeter's 2016 team, Dan discussed how iGEM informed his future career, and how his unique academic and careeer path led him to working in a professional research lab |
Interviewing multiple iGEM teams as special guests provided an exciting collaboration opportunity, as well as extending the proliferation, and therefore audience, of our resource. These analytics have helped inform our team on the success of our materials as well as how to make our podcast more effective.
Distribution Stats
Figure 1 - World map displaying all of the counties that listened to our podcast.
Figure 2 - Statistics displaying the gender and age of our podcast listeners.
We encouraged an open dialogue with our audience by providing our contact details at the end of every episode, enabling the submission of comments or questions. We received feedback on episodes, often via Instagram, and answered any questions at the start of episodes. Audience engagement helped to inform the podcast development and established the most engaging aspects were anecdotes and the discussion of synthetic biology in the context of potential real-world uses. Additionally, audio editing took heavy inspiration from podcast episode analytics, identifying that episodes with a greater emphasis on humour and relaxed chat tended to succeed more, leading to us introduce a “a day in the life of a research scientist” segment in which teams are welcomed to share humorous experiences in the lab.
Card game - Terminator Trouble
As our podcast had a broader audience, we decided to produce a simple game to focus on familiarising a younger audience with simple synthetic biology terms and concepts. With a focus on plasmid components- a key part of synthetic biology- we wanted this game to fit the trends in recent popular games, acting as a social game with the opportunity for humour and storytelling.
Figure 3 - Cards from our Plasmid Terminator Trouble" game
The game focuses on the widely popular social deception genre of games. Throughout the game each player is given a secret role and aim, and must work towards this goal while avoiding being eliminated by other players. This game requires cooperation and open discussion surrounding synbio concepts resulting in an effective and enjoyable method of learning science. More specifically, this game familiarises players directly with terms such as plasmid, promoter, terminator, GFP, antibiotic, and deletion. Furthermore, the instruction manual produced ties the rules of the game directly with the science behind each component as well as synthetic biology as a whole, including a section on the process of transformation and examples of where synthetic biology has already benefited the broader population.
School Visits
The Test Tube Podcast and our social media engagement, combined with personal experiences, revealed that synthetic biology is severely underrepresented in secondary school curricula. As a rapidly growing field of science, we felt passionate that the younger generation should be well versed in the potential future of this area to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues, what it can do for them, as well as what they could potentially contribute to it. Therefore, we addressed this issue directly, by going to schools and engaging in two-way discussions about the field of synthetic biology.
For this purpose, we have successfully reached out to and arranged guest speaker sessions with four schools, namely Frankfurt International School in Germany (7 classes), Chipping Norton School in England (2 classes), American International School of Guangzhou in China (1 class), and Academy for Science and Foreign Language in America (1 class). The students that we engaged with were generally at an age between 13-18 and therefore had different levels of knowledge regarding the fields of synthetic biology and general biology. Our lessons therefore varied, as they had to be modified and adapted according to the students' preexisting knowledge on biology.
The sessions generally began with a presentation broadly introducing the idea of synthetic biology, with questions encouraged throughout. New concepts such as ‘Plasmid construction’, ‘SynBio tools’, and ‘Chassis’ were introduced and more familiar concepts like ‘DNA’, ‘Plasmid’, and ‘Antibiotic Resistant Gene’ were revisited through a presentation.
Figure 4 - Presentation at Chipping Norton School
We decided upon a presentation since many students would be familiar, and therefore comfortable, with this style of teaching, but the added opportunity for direct engagement and conversational fluidity created room for a more open dialogue. By providing an interesting and inspiring presentation with a variety of examples, we encouraged students to explore their interests more in the world of synthetic biology. In addition, each student received a worksheet that aimed to solidify their understanding and knowledge of what they were taught in the presentation. They were asked to fill out this worksheet alongside the presentation and had opportunities to complete it afterwards if they required more time.
We then provided a quick-fire project design sheet, in which students were given a short time to come up with a pitch for an iGEM-style project. We encouraged group discussion with conversations surrounding the possible benefits and drawbacks of taking a synbio approach to projects as well as the pros and cons of selecting for design components such as a chassis. This allows students to utilise critical thinking to evaluate the possibilities of synthetic biology, while also taking on an engineering mindset where problem solving is at the core of experimental design.
Figure 5 - Discussing 'Plasmid-Design' Worksheet at Frankfurt International School
We engaged with each student to discuss and develop their synthetic biology idea, whilst also evaluating future possibilities, improvements, and current methods based on their generated iGEM-style project design.
At the end of these sessions, the students were given a feedback survey they could fill out at their leisure, giving us an indication of how well they understood what we were teaching. The survey included questions such as "Has this lesson changed your views on synthetic biology & genetic modification? If yes, in what ways?"; "Did you find this lesson helpful/interesting? Any concrete examples that you may have found interesting?"; and "Do you have any suggestions for improvement?". This allowed following sessions to be modified in reflection on this feedback cycle. Students provided some of the following feedback:
Figure 6 - Responses from Feedback Survey
Based on further feedback regarding the difficulty level of the lessons, we were able to modify our presentations for later visits. For instance, we found that students in Grade 10 and 11 generally didn't have a deep understanding of many biological processes, such as DNA translation and transcription, as we had initially expected. In response to this, we modified our presentations for these age groups by reducing the focus on synthetic biology to allow more time for explaining biological terms and concepts more in depth. Whilst doing so, we still encouraged students to then look at these newly introduced concepts from a SynBio-oriented perspective.
All these resources are available to download from this and have been distributed widely on our social media, allowing teachers free access to these resources.
Figure 7 - Completed 'Plasmid-Design' Worksheets from School visits
University Talks
Inspired by the lack of a synthetic biology module at our university, we decided to deliver talks in Bioscience and Medical Sciences modules. We spoke to Year 2 students from both the Experimental design and Statistics module and are scheduled to speak to students in the Research skills and Bioethic module on 14/10/2022.
With these presentations, we aimed to inspire a deeper interest and understanding of synthetic biology within an audience who are already active participants in the sciences. Our presentation takes into account the scientific understanding of our audience and reflects the level of knowledge second year students taking these modules will have.
Included in our talk is an introduction to synthetic biology, a discussion about our project in the context of bioethics and responsible research, as well as addressing how students can get involved with future iGEM teams. By doing so, we are giving more students the opportunity to get a taste of a field of research that is not currently accessible to them. We facilitate any further questions surrounding our presentation and the opportunities of iGEM by taking questions throughout and remaining in the lecture hall after the talk. After the first talk, we were approached by multiple students afterwards, who were keen in getting involved in future iGEM competitions or interested in learning more about our project specifically. This gave us an appropriate time to signpost them to further education materials we have produced and we made sure to provide them with a pathway to access both the 2023 iGEM team and the field of synthetic biology as a whole.
Social Media Outreach
Throughout our project, we have had a constant and broad social media presence. We focussed primarily on Instagram due to its interactive features providing opportunities for two-way communication. We have posted educational content ranging from scientific infographicsto resource signposting and mini quizzes. Furthermore, we have given our audience an insight into the daily routines of scientists, along with the trial and error that comes along with the unexpected nature of lab work.
Social media engagement also helped us to inform other educational outreach efforts. For example, audience votes and opinion polls have often informed the direction of discussions undertaken on the Test Tube Podcast. Additionally, we polled what proportion of our audience accessed an education in synthetic biology at their secondary school institutions. After discovering that a very small proportion had this opportunity, we were inspired to enter schools, in order to inspire an interest in this field from a younger age. With a larger proportion of school children interested in entering this field, university courses would therefore be more likely to cater to this demand- and thus the provision of more synthetic biology modules or even degrees are more likely in the future.
Overall, social media presence has been vital for informing other educational projects, as well as acting as our primary audience participation pathway. It has enabled a clear and open dialogue between our team and our end users, with constant interaction informing the direction we have decided to take our educational efforts in.
