Introduction

This year, our team tried to bring the young people who are busy with work, young people in the system, and the elderly into the synthetic biology learning community and built a platform for them that is suitable and convenient for them to learn and promote synthetic biology. At the same time, not only the three types of people mentioned above, but we are also adhering to do our best to make people of different ages, occupations, and nationality have a better understanding of synthetic biology.

Group of people
1. Young people
Background

Nowadays, young people in society are increasingly "sinking" into the monotonous life of two points and one line from home to work. The extremely long work time undoubtedly reduces people's interest and time in acquiring knowledge. More often, in the face of the remaining fragmented time of work and life, people spend more energy on meaningless entertainment videos to relieve the fatigue of the day. In this environment, our team tries to promote and help contemporary young people understand and learn synthetic biology through the habit of young people who like to use their spare time to watch public accounts, video clips, comics, and other entertainment forms.

Activities
1. Publishing on the official account

Although the busy lifestyle makes them spend most of their day at work, young people like to browse videos and official accounts in the remaining fragmented time. We have created an official account on Wechat for popularizing science and promoting knowledge related to synthetic biology. We mainly setted up the following columns to help young people learn and have fun.

2. Everyday a new synthetic biology term

This column aimed at young people who do not know much about synthetic biology. We subdivided the general and vast synthetic biology into small phrases and words one by one and increased their enthusiasm for learning by establishing the form of a small noun per day that can be completed in a fraction of the time. At the same time, to help understand these obscure terms in the professional field, we have tried our best to convert academic language into everyday colloquialisms. The production of "Everyday a new synthetic biology term" column to help people without any background understand this book and the meaning of the vocabulary.

3. The latest research summary of synthetic biology (Star express)

This column was created to help those who want to know the latest progress in synthetic biology to have a more cutting-edge, comprehensive, and deeper understanding of biological knowledge. In this column, we have launched a series of popular tweets about synthetic biology. Condensing and summarizing news and journals so people can read them at work or in their spare time.

4. Online Forum

Finally, we also provide a platform for everyone to help each other and facilitate communication. All learners can join the meeting during work or leisure through our online meeting number published on the platform, discuss or quietly listen to the story or profile of the sharer. Without a doubt this meeting has no requirements for all attendees. We aim to make it a mobile chat platform that can join or quit freely.

5. Comic book production

In addition to the official account, another popular form of entertainment among contemporary young people is comics. It is also one of the forms many young people like to pass their free time. For this reason, our team believes that the esoteric knowledge of synthetic biology can be introduced in the form of simple and easy-to-understand comics. We organized the knowledge of synthetic biology into a comic book with well-crafted illustrations, which not only ensures the fun that the cartoons should have but also allows people to learn synthetic biology while reading comics to pass their leisure time. It can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

6. Publishing short videos

Not only these, short videos are now more young people choosing to have fun after work. Therefore, to expand the breadth and depth of our activities, we also created an account on the most popular short video platforms, "Tik Tok" and YouTube to publish synthetic biology knowledge in the form of animation. We hope that through the content we continue to publish, we can attract more people interested in this area to pay more attention after work and start the study of synthetic biology.

7. Kahoot Production

Although contemporary young people are occupied most of the time during working hours, many companies currently also have activities to help employees release pressure and unite. Our team was using similar activities as the entry point, hoping to create a team-based competitive mini-game about synthetic biology. Therefore, we have made a series of Kahoot games about synthetic biology with different levels of difficulty and depth. These helped different groups learn about synthetic biology and propose a feasible solution for the company's ideal activities.

8. Quizlet production

As we mentioned competitive mini-games, we also provided review materials for the topics in the games. Although learners can review articles or daily words from our official account, we have adopted Quizlet to integrate all the review materials used to review and consolidate efficiently. It further compressed the time so people can use the fragmented time for simple review.

2. Adolescent
Background:

Today, adolescents in our national system have an impoverished understanding of synthetic biology. Part of the reason is the lack of promotion and publicity of synthetic biology in the educational system, so some or even most students have never heard of synthetic biology, let alone understand and learn. Therefore, when we realized that the lack of understanding of synthetic biology among most of the population was due to insufficient publicity, our team took on the task of promoting synthetic biology in primary and secondary schools.

Activities:
1. In person promotion

We have explained synthetic biology to high school students in person. After presenting the basic concepts of synthetic biology, we described essential information. To be more intuitive, we shared some practical applications of synthetic biology and gave examples of challenges or problems that we face in real life, encouraging high school students to use our knowledge of synthetic biology for in-depth thinking and discussion. Through this activity, they stimulated their enthusiasm for learning synthetic biology and helped them get in touch with some knowledge they would not usually get in touch with, such as laboratory experience. At the same time, we also carried out small science popularization activities on synthetic biology for more people in various regions and presented them with custom bracelets to commemorate them.

2. Comic book production

The production of comic books not only helped busy young people to learn while having fun in the fragmented time as mentioned above, but also the dissemination of this book expands the age range of propaganda. Teenagers can quickly grasp the knowledge and basic principles of synthetic biology. They can not only use this comic book as their extra-curricular supplementary reading but also use it as the source of their exploration of synthetic biology and increase their interest in learning synthetic biology.

3. Kahoot and Quizlet

The Kahoot games and Quizlet review materials mentioned above also provided materials for primary and secondary school students for class meetings and party games. We also wanted to stimulate young people's passion for synthetic biology learning through game competitions.

3. Elderly

For people in the elderly stage in China, the channels and resources for obtaining information are relatively simple. Due to the weakening of learning and understanding abilities caused by age, a large part of the elderly cannot use electronic devices such as mobile phones or computers to acquire knowledge of synthetic biology. Their access to knowledge comes from the physical newspapers, journals, or books in their lives.

Activities:
1. Distribution of physical books

Since most of the elderly cannot obtain knowledge through the Internet, and it is difficult to change the current status, we chose to use the few ways that the elderly use to obtain information. Therefore, we simplified the content on our official account, and organized it into a simple synthetic biology introductory book. We printed it out, distributed it to the elderly in the community and nursing homes, and also posted this book on the notice board to allow people to look through and communicate.

Conclusion and Outlook:

While working on an inclusive campaign for young people, we realized that if we wanted to engage their interest in learning, we needed to be as compelling as possible in our copy and headlines.

Tips for attracting young people:

  1. 1. The title should try to arouse young people's curiosity through exaggeration and questions.
  2. 2. The content should be as close to current events as possible, so that young people can connect knowledge and life.
  3. 3. Use trending memes all the time to keep tweets interesting.

After we shared with teenagers offline, we also summed up some experiences:

  1. 1. Teenagers prefer games such as Kahoot to arouse their interest in learning in the form of competitive games.
  2. 2. The PPT should be concise, video or pictures, and other elements, too much text will make them lose their interest in reading
  3. 3. After the event, the corresponding sonveniors, such as stationery engraved with synthetic biology, can increase their interest in the event and facilitate the next event.

For the elderly group, the points we need to pay attention to are entirely different from the other two groups

  1. 1. The elderly do not like games such as Kahoot, more videos will have better effects.
  2. 2. The voice should be loud and clear when speaking. Loud enough, speak slowly, and the fonts on the PPT should be large and clear as well.

After completing this series of activities, we realized that the significance of doing activities is not to teach them knowledge but to provide them with the same platform as other groups to obtain related resources. Due to the pressure of society and survival, perhaps the tough life will become the way of life for later generations of young people for a long time to come. I believe that through other organizations, with our team as one of them, the organization can help them break through the time barrier.

At the same time, we will also pay attention to other groups in the future who have obstacles in acquiring knowledge related to synthetic biology and help other groups to establish access to information.