Education and Workshops
Educational Goals
Science Quest

Building off previous QGEM outreach teams, we continued the four-year relationship with a local Kingston summer camp, Science Quest. Science Quest is a not-for-profit organization operating out of the Queen’s University campus in Kingston, Ontario. Through educational programming, this summer camp aims to engage and empower youth between 4 to 15 years old. Science Quest and QGEM share a similar goal of striving to spark an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) among youth.

For this year's interactive workshop, we wanted to develop a lesson that included biology, technology, and hands-on learning. Thus, we developed a one-hour workshop titled, Design Your Own Microbot. Initially, students were given a lesson about the components of a basic electrical circuit and its assembly, the definition of a microbe, and the consequences of waterborne diseases caused by microbes. Students were then given the opportunity to apply this new knowledge. They were given instructions on how to create small vibrating robots and the following materials:

They created these robots to resemble microbes, and thus, the term Microbots was coined. Throughout the building process, students were encouraged to follow the engineering design cycle. As instructors, we reinforced the idea of designing their microbot, building their vision, placing the battery in the circuit to see how their microbot moves, and then removing the battery to reevaluate if their microbot produced their intended result. Once all the students were happy with their microbots, they came together, inserted their batteries, and displayed their work to their peers!

Following the conclusion of the activity, QGEM finished the workshop by relating their activity to the real world. This led to an educational slideshow regarding the strife of Canadian Indigenous communities whose drinking water is contaminated by microbes. As well, we concluded the presentation with a description of how QGEM aims to help support Indigenous communities during the Drinking Water Crisis. Our team gauged this as a successful workshop due to the excited engagement of all members and the emails from Science Quest counsellors stating that the students continued to talk about the workshop all week!

Overall, our goal was to address the following learning outcomes:

Queen’s Enrichment Studies Unit

Despite Science Quest providing us the opportunity to educate children on biology and technology, we wanted to expand our educational efforts to a slightly older demographic. Consequently, we also partnered with the Queen’s Enrichment Studies Unit (ESU) to provide workshops for their students, ages thirteen to seventeen. For over thirty years, the ESU has connected students with challenging and inspiring academics alongside the dynamic learning and living environment of university life. Our team was inspired by the ESU’s inclusive environment and unmatched mix of opportunities. The ESU team strongly aligns with the QGEM values of nurturing curiosity, fostering development, and enriching the potential of all students.

For this partnership, we established a workshop titled, WaterWorks. To begin, QGEM gave the students a presentation outlining how our community obtains drinking water, why water must be filtered, and the tragedy of the Canadian Indigenous Drinking Water Crisis. This presentation included an interactive question and answer section to emphasize important facts, such as:

In groups of two to three people, students worked together to try to create a water filter using household items. While working together, the students used their problem-solving skills to design, build, test, and learn from their water filters as they added layers and layers of material to increase the efficacy of their projects. By the end of the workshop, students had filtered out all the visible dirt from the water.

This workshop led to a discussion about invisible containments in water sources. This discussion wrapped up the workshop. Our eam found the workshop to be very successful due to the excited engagement of all members and the interest we saw from students during our Q&A session!

Overall, our goal was to address the following learning outcomes:

Connections Engineering Outreach

To continue pursuing our educational goals, QGEM also partnered with another summer camp, Connections Engineering Outreach. This summer camp was established in 2014, after the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) at Queen’s University recognized the impact the University could have on STEM learning in the Kingston community. The primary focus of Connections is to provide experiential learning opportunities for students from kindergarten to grade twelve. This summer we worked with their Engineering the Body and Beyond program for students ages fourteen to seventeen. This unique collaboration warranted the creation of a third interactive workshop titled, Discover Your Own DNA. We began these workshops with a presentation describing microbes, DNA, and the power of genetic engineering. Most importantly, we discussed the safety precautions of the experiment, such as wearing gloves and a mask, danger of transmitting diseases through saliva, properly discarding samples, and disinfecting surfaces after the experiment. At this time students were given the opportunity to decide whether they would like to continue with the experiment, after being informed of the consequences should they not follow the safety precautions. Luckily, all students followed the rules laid out by QGEM, resulting in a safe laboratory experience.

The students were guided through the DNA extraction process by the QGEM team, using the following instructions:

All students were successful in extracting DNA from their saliva. The students thoroughly enjoyed being able to finally see an object that they had only ever studied as a concept in school. On an educational note, we continued the session by discussing the importance of the reagents used in the experiment.

Following the conclusion of this discussion, QGEM finished the workshop by relating their activity to the real world. This led to a few slides regarding the strife of Canadian Indigenous communities whose drinking water is contaminated by microbes. As well, we concluded the presentation with a description of how QGEM aims to help support Indigenous communities during the Drinking Water Crisis. Our team gauged this as a successful workshop due to the excited engagement of all members and the emails from Connections Engineering counsellors stating that the students continued to talk about the workshop all week!

Overall, our goal was to address the following learning outcomes:

Girls SySTEM

Lastly, we wanted to expand our reach beyond summer camps and beyond the borders of our campus, and thus, we partnered with Girls SySTEM. Their program aims to increase diversity in the science technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce by pairing students in grades seven to twelve with mentors who are professionals in STEM. Both QGEM 2022 and Girls SySTEM aim to inspire the next generation of STEM innovators through real-life experiences. We both believe that giving students the tools to understand and explore STEM is synonymous with providing them with the tools to change the world!

For this virtual event, we modified our pre-existing WaterWorks workshop to be suitable for online communication We began the workshop with an interactive demonstration titled, Water Everywhere. The goal of this demonstration was for students to learn how water is distributed across Earth. Students were shown a 1L measuring cup of water and asked what percentage of the water they believed resided in the following locations:

For visual representation, 971 mL of water was poured into a vessel representing the oceans, 22 mL of water was frozen to represent the polar ice caps, 3 mL of water was poured into 250 mL of soil to represent groundwater, and 3 mL of water was poured into another vessel representing freshwater. Lastly, an eyedropper was used to take a few drops from the freshwater vessel. It was explained to the audience that due to pollution and accessibility barriers, only the freshwater in the eyedropper is available for human use and consumption.

This demonstration led to a presentation outlining how water is provided to communities in our region, why water must be treated, and the consequences of consuming untreated water. This presentation included a discussion on the benefits and harms of microbes, and most importantly the health side effects of microbial infections. Accordingly, participants were informed of the alarming statistics regarding the Canadian Indigenous Drinking Water Crisis, such as, 73% of First Nations' water systems being at high or medium risk of contamination.

Following the presentation we split the participants into breakout rooms, each with one representative from QGEM to build a water filter to treat contaminated water. To virtually perform the WaterWorks workshop in an interactive way, our team displayed the available materials to their group and asked them how they wanted to make their water filter. The QGEM representatives acted as the hands to build the water filter, while the participants acted together as the brain to put it together. Once the filter was built, all groups congregated in the main Zoom sessionto see how well each group’s filter was at filtering the visible containments. We concluded the presentation with a description of how QGEM aims to help support Indigenous communities during the Drinking Water Crisis. Our team gauged this as a successful workshop due to the eager engagement of all members and the interest we saw from students during our Q&A session!

Overall, our goal was to address the following learning outcomes:

Sustainable Outreach Program

Every year iGEM teams from all around the world begin reaching out to stakeholders, creating educational initiatives, and setting the groundwork for their team's communication with the world. However, there is not a lot of information on how a team should begin these practices. Thus, the QGEM 2022 team set out to develop a sustainable outreach plan that could be built upon by future QGEM teams.

Throughout the summer, our team developed a priority list of stakeholders. We created this list by assessing who could help us within our university, who we could help the most within our community, and who in the community would be interested in our project. For example, the first organization we contacted was the Office of Indigenous Initiatives (OII) at Queen’s University. We met with Al Doxtator and Aaron St. Pierre who gave us feedback on our initial project, outlined their personal experiences with the Canadian Indigenous drinking water crisis, and were able to give us suggestions on communities who would benefit from our device. After meeting with the OII we felt confident in contacting other local stakeholders.

Another important aspect of the QGEM outreach program is education. Our team this year focused on building relationships with Kingston summer camps that operate on the Queen’s University campus. We spent time building rapport with the Outreach leads at Science Quest, Queen’s Enrichment Studies Unit, and Connections Engineering. Building these relationships this summer will allow future QGEM teams to continue providing educational workshops at these programs with ease. Our team began branching outside of our campus by partnering with a mentorship program, Girls SySTEM. Hopefully next year, with the ease of these existing relationships, the next QGEM team will be able to use their time to expand their efforts to organization outside of the university's campus.

For our program to be considered successful we also tried to interact with a wide demographic group. For our educational workshops this was done by ensuring we reached an audience that included both elementary and secondary school students, as well as, students with a variety of interests. For instance, students at all-girls camps, engineering-specific camps, etc. This year we utilized our social media to reach the local Kingston community. This was achieved by following a large number of locally owned businesses and asking them to share our posts with their audiences. For example, The Keep Refillery shared one of our World Water Week posts to their Instagram Story. We performed several social media campaigns and virtual events that gained international attention, which are discussed on our Social Media and Collaboration/Partnership pages.

Points for Future QGEM Teams: