Reaching out to the world
Communication with public audience is an indispensable component of our project. It is the bridge that constructed open dialogue between us and members of society that may benefit from our work. Through this open dialogue, education on what we are doing and the field of synthetic biology can be conducted, and we in turn obtain the opportunity to hear from public audience of their need and feedback. Communication is largely based on differing categories of materials we produced that stimulate interactions and learning, and different materials are also assigned to specific audiences. A single material may only reach to a small group of audience, but with a wide range of distinctive materials, we are able to make our work accessible to much wider and more diverse audience, across age groups, geographical gap and even physical disabilities.
Part of our communication with public audience is based on physical products we created, such as colouring book and boardgame. These tangible objects follow the thread of “hands-on teaching & learning” which effectively achieves the goal of synthetic biology education.
As a cooperation with Team iBOWU, we created a colouring book on the basics of biology and genetics, sold on our synthetic biology fair. Types of cells, organelles, laboratory equipment…numerous drawings are available in the book for our audience to add colour onto. Next to the drawings is information on what the drawing is, its function, and other basic concepts. There are also metaphors and analogies to help connect confusing ideas to daily lives. For example, mitochondria can be compared to an energy factory, and Golgi body can be compared to a mailroom.
The colouring book is a product created for students from Grade 4 to Grade 12. Biology and genetics are normally only taught to senior students so we wanted to expand our audience to include students of younger age. We decided to create coloring book since it is a type of active interaction between author and reader––or “drawer” in a sense. Coloring prompts thinking, which is a fun way to learn, to capture the interest and short attention span of young children in elementary school. Students can fill up the space between lines with colours in their imagination and deepen their understanding of the knowledge being drawn. This can be regarded as a form of non-verbal dialogue where audience develops his (her) unique understanding of the content and then respond to what the author provides him (her) with that understanding. We also added a QR code on the back of the book, which allows us to collect feedback from our audience. In this way, audience can learn from our content and we are also given the opportunity to hear from their voices.
Another interactive product we designed is the boardgame “Bioworld” which is inspired by “The Game of Life” and “Monopoly”. It is about the journey of a cell through different stages of the central dogma of DNA and protein synthesis, presented in cards, tokens and a big map.
The target audience for the boardgame is much wider, from kids to adults, especially household (family) audiences who get to play together. We decided to create this boardgame again using the idea of hands-on learning: playing a boardgame requires thinking and strategy rather than just comprehending words, which stimulates audience to learn deeper. Players can get together to play the game and discuss with each other the rules and strategies, which highly involves biological knowledge. Our written text in the game teaches players about the central dogma of DNA and protein synthesis, and then the players would comply to the rules and demonstrate their comprehension and application of learnt knowledge, which constructs an open dialogue.
As introduced in “Public Education,” the online and offline lectures we held were all supported by well-designed teaching materials such as PowerPoint slides and lesson recordings.
These teaching materials are designed for elementary students, the listeners of the lectures we held. PowerPoint slides are mainly used because they can display beautiful images and sufficient information on what we were presenting. The multiple media we inserted into our slides, including pictures and videos with music, effectively draw the children’s attention and lead them to comprehend the content of the lectures. We told stories and analogies to build up their familiarity with the ideas and concepts; we used vibrant colours and wonderful shapes in nature to demonstrate the beauty of life and biology. By looking at the visual elements presented in front of their eyes, elementary students see examples and real figures of what we taught them using words and thus learn to a deeper extent. The lectures we held include many interactions between us and the children. By responding to their questions and playing games with them, we established a powerful open dialogue to fully support their learning of the content.
Along with the teaching materials, we also made videos of our lectures and audio records. Since a small portion of our students have visual disability, it is more comfortable for them to listen to some of the lecture content instead. This exemplifies how our communication can be reached out to the group with physical barriers.
Communication requires face-to-face interaction with audience which is the most influential and direct way of building a dialogue. Besides lectures, our team held other events like Art Gallery and Synthetic Biology (Synbio) Fair to further encourage face-to-face open dialogues with wider audience.
In September, our team hosted a small art exhibition at Yosemite Grand Hotel, consisting of green fluorescent protein artworks, masterpieces from the children in Gansu we taught online, and artworks from our own team members.
The exhibition is hosted for audience of all age who live in Shunyi, Beijing so that they can come to the exhibition easily. We decided to prepare for this exhibition as we want to expand our audience group to all age groups and recieve more face-to-face interactions. Art Gallery is not limited to a specific age group as everyone can develop his (her) own understanding of the art. By looking at the artworks and listening to our team members’ explanation, the viewers can learn about our project and explore the wonderful field of synthetic biology. During the exhibition, we were able to get feedbacks and also receive compliments from a portion of audience. We created a post-it board for the viewers to post notes and feedback for the exhibition. The board was there to encourage an open dialogue between the audience and us. We were even able to interview a few members of the audience and gained their positive comments on our exhibition and project. Some of these interviewees were majored in genetic engineering and art design, which gained voices of specialty for us.
In October, we hosted Synbio Fair in two places in China: Shenzhen and Beijing. Similar to the art gallery, artworks related to synthetic biology and our project are exhibited for audience to enjoy. Our fair in Beijing is a collaboration with the Team iBOWU and Cyano Studio (another biology-related organization), in which we set up the fair in the popular tourist site 798 art zone. We were able to attract numerous people in the tourist site and introduce our project to them. We also invited the Team of Tsinghua University and the Team ACTG online to join the fair.
The exhibition is hosted for audience of all age who live in Beijing or Shenzhen so that they can come to the exhibition easily. Similar to the Art Gallery, the fair helped us to gain even wider audience and receive larger-scale interactions. Many people were curious about our project from the art they have seen, so we could tell the story of our work to them and have detailed conversation around it. It is an open dialogue for them to learn about our project and synthetic biology, and for us to listen to their comment and improve.
Our team also produced a few other materials online to promote our project and synthetic biology, through social media platforms.
Bilibili is an online video platform in China with 300,000,000 users. Our team has uploaded our PV video on Bilibili so more people are introduced to our project, synthetic biology and iGEM competition. More than 100 people have watched the video.
Visit our Bilibili Account for more information.
WeChat is an online communicating platform in China with over 12,000,000,000 users. We have used the Official Account in WeChat to promote Aromata and synthetic biology. Due to our team’s promotion, the average reads of the articles we posted are about 600, with a maximum of 1000 views. Our team has also collaborated with Team iBOWU-China on a series of articles regarding the history of synthetic biology.
Visit one of our articles for details.
These social media resources help us to reach to more audience online across gap in place and time. We also received comments below the articles and videos, which let us know our audience’s feedback.