Science Communication
Nowadays, science communication closely relates to media outreach to children, students, and everyone else who is eager to learn science. It is crucial to help those people build a way to a larger field of possibilities in science and technology. Thus, we decided that it is important to make engaging scientific content on our social media pages, inviting various professionals and sharing cool facts and stories.
Among such activities were events that we held offline on our campus for freshmen and others like speed dating with professors, guest talks with research assistants and professors, and a series of posts related to the 8th March - Women in STEM.
UNIVERSITY
Speed dating
Speed dating was organized to help students learn more about the research topics and possibilities and even find a perfect match - a lab with an exciting study. On the other hand, professors had an opportunity to talk to the students in person after two years of the pandemic.
Guest talk
Guest talk gathered professors and their research assistants who shared their views regarding the hot topics in biology, chemistry, and other fields, with students wondering about starting their research career and the nuances of this job.
Women in STEM
Strong women in STEM shared their stories about their research careers, what difficulties they faced, and how they overcame them. It was purely an inspirational session for young girls in science.
SCHOOL
Lectures
Moreover, we realized how important it is to talk to these children in person and conducted lectures about biology and its perspectives in different schools in Astana and Almaty cities.
Last year, we learned that education should be accessible to everyone. We started by visiting a school gymnasium no. 10 in Astana city with special classes for visually impaired students. We learned the nuances of working with them and talked about the basic concepts of molecular biology, genetics, and synthetic biology. Such lectures helped students perceive the fundamental understanding of life sciences they had never obtained before. That was due to the lack of materials and literature explicitly created for them. Moreover, we visited school No. 4, named after N. Ostrovsky in Almaty city, where we conducted the same lectures and observed the teaching methods, sitting in the classes with students and receiving their feedback afterward. We even filmed an interview with those teachers and students to share it with the public, emphasizing the unequal opportunities and lack of basic materials for education.
Summer Camp
To engage high school students in scientific spheres, we conducted a second Summer Camp for the first time held offline at Nazarbayev University. This event was three days long, free of charge, and gathered students interested in science and biology. Forty-two school students participated in the Summer Camp. They were provided with high-quality lectures from the professors of our university and famous local experts in science, lab tours, interactive games, and scientific activities. Unlike last year, we decided to add one more group for visually impaired students from all over Kazakhstan. Finally, we adapted the whole teaching materials and camp program for them, following the knowledge and experience we received from visiting schools and interviews.
Summer Camp allowed children to perceive the general understanding of science and even implement it in practice during interactive sessions where they conducted simple experiments and learned how to promote to the public the importance of scientific communication. According to the feedback from the participants, it was a golden opportunity for them to embrace themselves in the world of science and realize that it is not a complicated activity for super bright kids but a truly achievable, valuable, and prospective field of human activities.
Workshop
After visiting the schools for visually impaired students, we wanted to communicate with them more and talk more about the basics of science. Thus, we conducted a workshop on animal cell composition for the 6th-grade students. These children were entirely visually impaired, but we were already trained to work with them and developed a unique class. We were simultaneously describing the parts of the cells and creating their models from playdough with the children. They could remember not only our words but also tactile representations of the cell and its compartments. This way, we obtained 11 models of the cells and created an installation from them for our exhibition. Children had a great time interacting with each other and learning the parts of the cell better and faster than in school. That showed us how important it is to develop unique approaches to teaching science.
Lectures
Below, you can find link to the reportages filmed from those two schools (school gymnasium no.10 in Astana city and school no.4 in Almaty city) where students share their experience studying in their schools.
Additionally, we visited a secondary school for students from socially vulnerable categories, BINOM, on their weekly program " Smart Thursday" to give a talk about the wonders of synthetic biology and how high schoolers can also get involved in iGEM
Summer Camp
Our Science Communication was exemplified in 3 specific programs of the Summer Camp:
1. Introduction to the synthetic biology & iGEM
2. Experimental design & Science communication.
3. Choosing career path
The first day of the scientific camp introduced students to the camp rules, the university campus, and the concepts of the Synthetic Biology and iGEM competition. During this day, we explained the importance of science and how the world is constructed using modern technology and advancing scientific knowledge. We have invited the university's administration to motivate students to apply to the university and pursue their education in scientific fields. iGEM alumni from our university shared their perspectives on synthetic biology and academic paths. The first part of the day was devoted to lectures. After lunch, students were engaged in an interactive session - learning the basics of science communication by creating posters and presenting them to a large audience. Moreover, after the campus and lab tours, we conducted a simple experiment - DNA extraction of bananas.
During the second day of the Summer Camp, professors and invited speakers conducted lectures about the fundamentals of scientific methods, how to design experiments, and creating popular science content. These lectures helped students dive deeper into the experiments' core, modeling, and interpretation of the results. Moreover, they had an opportunity to see what authentic scientific posters look like and elaborated on how to make them understandable and popular for everyone. Finally, after lunch, we conducted a stress relief session, during which students came up with potential creative solutions to current problems in science and nature, presenting them uniquely and attractively for our next event - the BioArt exhibition.
On the last day, we focused more on where to go with obtained knowledge and understanding of science. Invited speakers and professors shared possible career paths in Medicine, Industry, and Entrepreneurship. But, of course, the main focus was related to Academia, pursuing education and research after graduation. During the closing ceremony, we gave feedback to students on their performance and received theirs on the camp mode and their impressions. In addition, every member received a memorable present and a certificate of participation. They also had an opportunity to talk with professors and university admission representatives.
BEYOND
Board game
Pursuing making science and education accessible and engaging for everyone, we created a board game, “BioSis,” on four main fields of biology: cytology, molecular biology, microbiology, and synthetic biology. Every student, including visually impaired ones, can play this game since the rules and instructions are written in the Braille script, and the board itself is fully tactile. The principle is the same as in Monopoly but with school-level questions in Biology. The one who gained more correct answers than anybody else wins!
Inclusivity experts and fully visually impaired adults were also able to play it and completely understood the game. They provided their feedback, and according to it, the changes were implemented. Now, the game is ready and can be transferred to schools as interactive studying material.
It can be seen with the naked eye that there is a sharp deficit of interactive and valuable games related to main biology topics, especially in Russian and Kazakh languages, and almost zero are adapted to visually impaired students. Thus, this game can not only become a favorite way of learning science but also raise awareness about the shortage and low quality of materials for visually impaired kids. Below, you can find the studying materials that students currently use: the first one is a cell model; the second one is a book; and the last one is a tactile material.
BioArt exhibition
One of the main events of the year that our team organized was the BioArt exhibition “In Vivo: Human Diversity.” That was the first charitable and inclusive BioArt exhibition in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Here, we decided to present art reflecting on human diversity through the prism of biological sciences. The description of every exhibit was written in Braille, and some of the works were tactile, meaning that the visitors could touch them and learn more about their structure. Moreover, the exhibition was accompanied by audio descriptions that directed visually impaired people through and described what was depicted in the pictures.
Professional bio-artists from all over the country presented their artworks. Also, our students presented works created in the laboratories to show how we see the labs to the public and prove that science is a fascinating and beautiful activity. We also printed out 3D models of real-size human brains, hearts, and other biological objects. Gladly, international artists from the iGEM community and beyond proposed to exhibit their works.
Moreover, we invited the children we work with and mostly communicated with from the school with groups for visually impaired students. Finally, we showed them the exhibition and obtained whether they were comfortable with reading the Braille and touching the exhibits. Finally, since the exhibition was planned and created with experts in this field, children had no problem accessing and understanding the whole idea of the exhibition and each piece of art.
The exhibition is planned to be held twice. The first was at Nazarbayev University from Sept 26 to Oct 2, and the second, larger one, in the Kulanshi Forte Bank artspace - the largest and most prestigious art platform in Kazakhstan, from Oct 27 to Nov 10.
All the works are set for sale, and the raised funds will be used to improve the education of visually impaired students within our charitable project Remisee.
Please, visit the curatorial statement to meet our exhibition online!
