As already mentioned in the introduction to our human practices, informing and educating people is a major part of our work.
In order to achieve this task in the best way possible, we went to a Pint of Science event in Heidelberg on the 9th of
May to receive help from an expert.
Philipp Schrögel, a research coordinator from Käte Hamburgs Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS)
was there to give a speech about science communication. The key point of his speech was that scientists and experts instructing
other people what to do in regard to climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic is not effective and the solution is much more
complex than that.
Applied to our human practices work, the takeaway message was that lecturing the general public about facts they
don’t necessarily understand won’t yield the desired results. In this way, science will appear distant and unappealing
for the average person. He stated that usually people who listen to these science talks are scientists. Hence, the problem
with science communication and education is that it rarely reaches those without an academic background.
Another aspect was science education in schools. In Germany, there are different high schools for different graduation levels. If one wishes to attend university, the highest graduation level, the Abitur, is required. Philipp Schrögel informed us that this separation of students leads to most educational outreach efforts focusing merely on the schools that prepare students for academia. The schools which focus on lower levels of graduation are often neglected, even though there are for instance many professions in STEM one can also carry out without a university degree which are just as important to science.
For these reasons, our main goal this year in education and communication was not to promote science where it is abundantly promoted already, but to bring science closer to those people that have previously never, or only scarcely come into contact with science, and show them how interesting and inspiring synthetic biology can be.
As part of our education program, we decided to provide a workshop at a “Gemeinschaftsschule”, a school combining all three systems where
students of all graduation levels are represented in each class. In addition to that, we also prepared a workshop for children in
elementary school to raise their interest for science from an early age on.
To make sure that we would pick the right topics and adjust the level of difficulty for the workshops adequately each time,
we not only talked to the teachers, but also had multiple interviews with Shweta Gaikwad, an education officer at EMBL’s Science Education
and Public Engagement (SEPE) office who is responsible for projects in science education.
At the same time, we also thought of a way to reach people of all backgrounds. As Philipp Schrögel said, mainly people with a scientific background listen to scientific talks. If the people won’t come to the talk, we decided to bring the talk to the people. This is why we organised an informational science booth in the old town of Heidelberg. Thus, people of all kinds were able to learn about synthetic biology right in the middle of a shopping trip, while sightseeing, or a date at a restaurant just by walking past our booth.
In order to reach those people who do not want to leave their homes because of the pandemic, and to also expand our range of impact, we chose to moreover provide an online alternative. We created an online quiz about the herpes simplex virus, so that people could prove their knowledge on this topic and in the process learn more about the virus and its effects on human health.
Throughout all these projects, we had the chance to exchange knowledge and opinions with many different people, hoping that we could share valuable information while also getting new insights and novel perspectives on the topic ourselves.