Overview

In the education part, we focused on three areas.

First, we held five presentations with thousands of attendees. For high school students, we combined the content of the lectures with their familiar knowledge of the Olympic biology competition, which helped them better understand synthetic biology. We also contacted the competition organization Hokuto Gakuyo to help promote the event and increase its impact. For university students, our content is mainly about sharing cutting-edge knowledge. This has attracted many students to the field of synthetic biology.

Secondly, we developed an instruction manual, which was posted on slack and shared with people from different fields. Many people felt the fascination of cross-discipline because of this handbook and thought that their own field knowledge and synthetic biology knowledge could learn from each other.

Third, to further expand our impact, we shared our competition experience and educational videos on social media, which have over 5,000 reads.

1. Education

Joint presentation by ten universities

We held joint public education lectures with teams from ten universities. After careful analysis and consideration, we decided to introduce synthetic biology from the Olympic Biology Competition, a topic close to the competition. This made it easier for many high school students to adapt to the topic. In addition, we contacted the competition tutoring agency Hokuto Hokuyo to better expand our influence. Also, the ten universities established good friendships with each other and had mutual learning and dialogue on each other's projects. Our presentation video was recorded and posted on the Bilibili Synthetic Biology from Scratch account for all to watch for free indefinitely.The website currently has over five thousand overall plays.

The following is the page of our lecture on top of the BiliBili:

Before the course, FAFU team created and distributed a questionnaire. We counted the audience's geographic location as well as age and other information. At the same time, we collected what the students wanted to know, and through the word cloud, it gave us a clearer understanding of what they were interested in.The results are shown in the chart.

The University logos and WeChat avatars of all the participating teams were put together as a backdrop and postcards were made to keep as a souvenir, as shown below.

Joint presentation by twelve universities

Teams from twelve universities, BNUZH-China, JLU-China, BIT, BUCT, NJU-China, FaFu-China, BUCT-China, iBowu, NJMU-China, NPU-CHINA, Sustech_Shenzhen_HCL, BIT-China, were We had a thorough discussion before the lecture, planned the course time and clarified the lecture topic, so that the topic would be interesting to the layman but not too rough and simple for the insider. In the sixteen schools, we introduced the topics of synthetic biology and life, synthetic biology and hair loss treatment, gene editing and production, synthetic biology and medical treatment, synthetic biology and energy use, etc. to many high school and non-synthetic biology majors, which were well received and helped more students ignite their passion for synthetic biology.

Our schedule of presentations is shown below：

Education in Hainan Foreign Languages School affiliated to Beijing Foreign Studies University

We taught ten middle and high school classes about synthetic biology at Hainan Foreign Language School affiliated with BFSU, to expand the children's knowledge within the school. Many children were inspired to learn about biology. The children were excited to participate in discussions and outlooks on synthetic biology topics. are pictures of the session when we conducted the live teaching and pictures of the children during the lesson.

Lecture of IGEM course in Tsinghua University Tsien Class XINSTITUTE

Our team discussed the content of parts design improvement in IGEM with national university students and related teachers in XINSTITUTE. This exchange allowed us to hear the ideas of our fellow teachers from various fields, and also promoted their work in advancing related fields.

Many students in Zero One College asked us for advice on the competition experience and we helped them understand the rules of IGEM. Many students decided to participate in the IGEM competition next year under our promotion.

Above are some photos from our lecture on parts design in IGEM

FAFU Team's offline lecture

This educational exchange was hosted offline by FAFU in their school, with online participation from BIT team and JLU_China team. We firstly introduced what IGEM is and its impact, and responded to the related questions. Further, each team presented and shared their experience on their project content, experiments, and modeling. During this period, the participating students asked questions and expressed their interest in the IGEM competition. Many students got involved in the teams that FAFU is preparing to participate in the IGEM competition next year. undergraduates all thanked us and wished us good luck in this competition, and we wish them well in next year's competition.

2. Instruction Handbook

Introduction

At the beginning of the team's creation, we established a good partnership with Hainan University and carried out a long-term exchange program.

As two IGEM newcomers, we encountered many of the problems that arise for new teams in the early stages. We believe that many problems are common, so we recorded many basic problems encountered in the process of team formation and competition, and gave our solutions to compile this experience manual to provide reference and help for later teams, effectively stimulating the love of synthetic biology among students around us, lowering their threshold to participate in the competition, and promoting their understanding of IGEM events.

Up to now, our two teams have jointly pushed the content of 8 issues of the joint public magazine, as shown in the following figure:

As the project progresses and the content deepens:

1. We first sorted out and completed the 1.0 version manual.
2. On this basis, the two teams jointly invited more teams to join and share to continuously improve and expand this experience manual.
3. Further, we (plan) to publish the handbook as open source in the official community, to become a handbook that will really help future igem teams to learn and advance the development of igem competitions and even synthetic biology.

Our handbook covers eight main topics: IGEM and synthetic biology basics, team formation, division of labor, methods of contacting and communicating efficiently with mentors, methods of selecting topics, overview of HP work, requirements for good artwork and good web pages, and introduction to 3D modeling design.

Handbook show

The PDF :

Reply and Feedback

We have shared the current manual with many people to read, and the following is the feedback we received from different groups.

The team from HananU who participated in writing the content of the manual said, "We learned a lot of experience in writing the manuscript and communicating with each other with the JLU_China team, and it was a very rare and interesting experience exchange opportunity."

The JLU undergraduates who are planning to participate in the competition next year said, "This handbook gives us an opportunity to get an early exposure to synthetic biology knowledge and research, which improves our confidence to participate next year. Some related topics mentioned in it, such as how to contact and communicate with our supervisors, are very helpful for us to participate in the competition next year, and even more helpful for us to carry out scientific research at the graduate level in the future."

Li Tianhong, a veteran IGEMer who has participated in IGEM competitions and is now a team advisor, said, "This handbook is very helpful for students who are completely unaware of IGEM and are preparing to participate in IGEM to quickly grasp the skills and knowledge needed for IGEM, which greatly lowers the threshold for them to participate in the competition. At the same time, such a manual is helpful to help promote IGEM in China. "

We have been leading teams for so many years, and we always wanted to have such a manual to help newcomers understand IGEM quickly, and with this manual, they can do better in the competition. Most of the similar guidebooks that we can find now are for Europe and the US, but this one gives a better picture of the Chinese team's participation in IGEM and is a good guide for those who come later.

The BUCT team that participated in this year's competition said: "This manual made us hate each other. If I had seen this manual before this year's competition, I would have been able to take a lot less detours. For example, if I could have seen the content about 3D modeling in advance, I would have learned this skill faster."

Zhao Xuran, a student studying medicine at China Medical University, said, "This manual helped me understand how the IGEM competition is conducted, and we are currently very interested in the IGEM competition and hope to organize a team to participate next year."

Guo Kai, a student from the School of Electronics at Jilin University, said, "I came across this handbook by chance and realized that biology is so interesting. Many of them, such as AI design, have great relevance to my field of electronics, and I think I might try to participate in the IGEM competition next year.

Thank all teams for participating in the handbook

Many thanks to all the teams listed below who participated in the compilation of the manual. The experience shared by each team below has contributed and supported each other and those who wish to participate in the IGEM competition in the future.

Many thanks to all the teams listed below who participated in the compilation of the manual. The experience shared by each team below has contributed and supported each other and those who wish to participate in the IGEM competition in the future.

3. WeChat official account

We have established a WeChat Official Account to better inform the public about IGEM and synthetic biology. We have recorded the progress of our project and the synthetic biology knowledge we want to popularize to the public, as well as some of our joint journals with Hainan University. Currently, the WeChat official account has been read more than 600 times and we have received many messages from our followers. They said that the WeChat official account has helped them to understand IGEM and synthetic biology more closely, and it will help the next students to participate in IGEM competition.