KCIS_Xiugang_Taipei

Overview

　　Living in a country where obesity serves as one of the most severe health issues people suffer from, we wanted not only to take this issue and make it our project focus but also to connect our project to the outside world. To achieve this, we initiated events and projects that provided educational opportunities regarding synthetic biology to the public. We arranged sessions both virtually and physically, opening up the doors of synthetic biology to students starting from 9th grade, hoping that the passion for synthetic biology can be spread to these students who will be offered the chance to take related lessons in the following years of their education. We also prepared interactive activities that can present the fascinating nature of synthetic biology in the simplest of ways in terms of biological experiments, making the joy of synthetic biology open for anyone who is willing to spend some time attending the sessions to enjoy. Scrolling down, you will find everything about what we have done throughout the process of initiating this project, as well as all the details you will need to gain a thorough understanding of our work!

Engagement

Amidst the increasing number of COVID cases in Taiwan, our team still managed to communicate with the community through various ways such as social media. We have learned new insights on synthetic biology through interactions with other teams whom we have exchanged ideas with.

Newspaper

Figure 1: Our newspaper page

　　Wanting to share our lab research with the outside world, we developed a newspaper. The iGEM Times is a newspaper paper that involves the gathering of different project descriptions from different teams into one informative paper. In this paper, iGEM teams from all over the world will gather their knowledge that they have developed through their own respective projects, collaboratively creating a magazine fully packed with the newest knowledge regarding synthetic biology. The newspaper will be available in digital form on social media and our website!

Educational Video

Figure 2: How our project checks all the boxes for the market!

Our team created a video introducing the purpose behind our research as well as the basics about how we will be providing a solution to the uncertainty in the methods used to solve obesity. This video was posted on youtube and also on the International HS Network hosted by Korea_HS and ASIJ_Tokyo.

Comic Strip

Figure 3: Our detailed, cute comic design!

People have always had a curious eye that looks for visually appealing things or objects. With this in mind, we wanted to catch the attention of other people, and we believe that we can achieve that through an attractive visual element, and in this case, we designed a comic that illustrates the problem we want to tackle: obesity. The comic is designed to allow for interactive coloring so that people can learn about our project all while enjoying the process of coloring in cute illustrations, and we had it posted on multiple social media platforms and our collaboration platform with iGEM Tec Chihuahua 2022.

Figure 4: Layout of our instagram page!

Instagram account

We also made sure that our instagram account displayed all the necessary information that we would like to convey to the audience. That includes an introduction to iGEM, an introduction to our project, our collaboration experiences, and much more!

Education

Our team focused on sharing our synthetic biology resources with other students who were able to come to our labs in person through educational workshops. To many of the students in Kang Chiao international school who showed interest towards synthetic biology, the study seemed too complicated to approach. Due to this issue, synthetic biology has been a subject that is rarely approached in our school. Hoping to solve this problem, we organized multiple educational workshops in collaboration with other iGEM teams such as NYCU Formosa and GEMS_Taiwan that focused on the basics of synthetic biology. With this, we hope to provide a segway from the life of a person who knows little about genetics and biology to the labs of advanced science and synthetic biology.

We also focused on methods that we could use to expand the basic knowledge of Synthetic Biology in our school and the areas around us, through preparing educational material that we and others could use.

Education Workshop

Open workshop

As students in a school with a vast amount of biology-related equipment, some of which cannot be found anywhere else in the city, we wanted to fully utilize the resources we had in our labs to bring other people to experience the basics of synthetic biology. Knowing this, we hope to achieve this goal through bio-art activities and a DIY gel electrophoresis loading process done with students from our school who were not part of the Synthetic Biology Class but were interested in what it may include. This experience brought many of the younger students to understand and have fun with synthetic biology. Hopefully, this experience will ignite a passion for biology in the hearts of the attendants, leading them to become future iGEM scientists.

Figure 5: Our presentation is linked here!

Figure 6: Our Kahoot is linked here!

Figures 7,8,9 Students listening to an introduction to our projects/making gel electrophoresis samples

Junior Synthetic Biology Class Workshop

While preparing for the competition, we also utilized our knowledge in cloning to educate new members in our new Synthetic Biology Class that started at the beginning of the school year. As a new group of junior students form the next year’s new IGEM team, we spend our time teaching and assisting them in exploring the mechanisms and procedures of cloning. In particular, we delved into the basics of bacterial transformation and had them conduct the experiment themselves. The goal of this workshop is to set a firm foundation for the upcoming IGEM team in our school so they could better ease into the complex world of synthetic biology, allowing them to be able to brainstorm their projects for the future iGEM competitions. Here you can see our schedule for that day!

Figure 10: Presentation used:

Figure 11: Teaching and working process during the process of drawing with bacteria

Response to the workshops:

After we completed the workshops we sent out a survey to the participants to see what we had done that worked well, and where we could improve on the lessons in the future.

KCIS X NYCU

For the workshop that integrated members of the school with no background in synthetic biology, pn a scale of 1-5, the majority of students who participated in the workshop were highly satisfied (17 out of 21 students chose 4 or 5). Out of all activities, the gel electrophoresis experiment and bio art activity are the most popular (18 students choose 4 or 5). This reflects how the hands-on experiment opportunities we offered are popular and welcomed by students despite they never heard of synthetic biology and or bio art. Among the 21 participating students, 16 students responded that they never heard of synthetic biology and bio art before, but after this workshop not only have they learned more about the science behind bio art, they enjoyed and are interested in exploring more about synthetic biology. Through their responses, we can know our workshop is successful as we promoted the diverse use and fun application of synthetic biology.

Figure 12: Feedback for the our first educational workshop

For improvements, some students reported that the specific scientific terms make the workshop hard to understand, some reported that they wish there are more group activities instead of individual work. Our team is aware of these recommendations and improved our teaching approach based upon. For example, we received many mediocre to slightly dissatisfied responses in our delivery of the overall iGEM picture. To tackle this problem, we will include overall descriptions of the event itself, which we failed to execute in this workshop.

KCIS X NYCU

For the workshop that engaged with the junior Synthetic Biology Class that has just started this school year, unlike the previous workshop, in this workshop, although the majority of students (10 out of 11) are highly satisfied with the workshop, the most popular activities are iGEM picturing, bio art lecture, and bio art activity (10 students choose 4 or 5). This shows that a certain population enjoys learning through lecture instead of completely hands-on visualization. Therefore, it is effective for our workshop to include both experiments and lectures, providing participants with different learning methods. All participants said they found this workshop an interesting experience and are willing to participate in similar courses in the future.

Figure 13: Feedback for our second educational workshop

Within the feedback, many students reported that senior student assistants and the visualized theory explanation are helpful. We will be continuing these teaching mechanisms in future events.

Lessons for use in our school

Many of the middle school science teachers do ot have a background in synthetic biology. Our class wanted to create materials that they could use to introduce the concepts across each of the grade levels. These materials could be useful for any school wanting to integrate synthetic biology into lessons in middle school!

7th Grader Lessons

As 7th graders are the youngest group in our school and also one of the only grades that have not yet been exposed to any biological content, we prepared a specially designed presentation that will be less difficult for younger attendees to understand, all while presenting to them the significant issue of obesity in simple words and diagrams. Altogether, this is the best presentation for audiences who have near zero knowledge regarding biology.

Figure 14: Click here for 7th grader slide

8th Grader Lessons

Going up one year, we believe that a slight increase in specificity in the content we cover in educational slides will be acceptable for a group of 8th grade students. In this presentation, we arranged the presentation itself in a slightly different manner, allowing us to insert more detailed information when delivering the presentation. The basic information in the presentation, however, still remains the same due to the lack of biological knowledge in the audience.

Figure 15: Click here for 8th grade slide

9th Grader Lessons

With the normal biology classes arranged during ninth grade in Kang Chiao international school, we believe that lessons can once again go up in professionality. This time, we designed the presentation similar to the previous powerpoints, but we arranged for an experiment regarding DNA extraction at the end of the presentation that will allow the students to try out what they have learned in class by themselves.

Figure 16: Click here for 9th grader slides

Also, along with the experiment, we also designed worksheets for the students to allow them to follow along with the lesson while writing notes down to further reinforce their understanding. We also discussed the effectiveness of our worksheets in the process of creating it with middle school teachers, eventually modifying it to become more engaging. We plan to advance further and work towards integrating our educational content into these teachers’ classes in the second semester.

Figure 17: Click here for 9th grader worksheet and lab description

Outreach Lessons

As a general presentation for future online outreach sessions, we created a powerpoint that includes all of the essentials when it comes to stepping into iGEM or synthetic biology in general. The presentation includes an introduction to the safety precautions when in the lab, the essential equipment and their introductions, and finally a simple experiment involving the making of bacterial competent cells. The presentation is linked below.

Figure 18: Click here for Outreach session slide