Educational Pamphlets
We developed pamphlets communicating the principles and philosophy of synthetic biology to audiences of different ages and levels of knowledge. We iterated on a single poster design, tailoring it for both a general audience and a specialised audience, allowing a much broader reach and a natural progression for members of the public comfortable with the initial pamphlet. Through iteration and multiple rounds of feedback, we came to understand the levels of assumed knowledge for a member of the public and came to refine what the key points we wanted the public to take away and what they reasonably would take away, rather than explaining every little detail.
Our Audience
International engagement is now considered a key requirement to succeed in the field of Synthetic Biology in terms of collaboration across sectors and policy consensus [1]. To make our material comprehensible by a larger audience, we translated our leaflets in six languages (English, Portuguese, French Dutch, Italian and Spanish). Moreover, we worked alongside many social education projects in improving and implementing our leaflets to our desired end users. Our international science communication and education was made possible by our previous connections, allowing for cognitive empathy i.e., to understand how the audience thinks, what their prior knowledge is, and what they will take away. We aimed to ensure that the audience maintained their agency, that they could decide themselves what level would be appropriate, rather than assuming.
We first partnered with the Adote Um Aluno (Fig. 3), a program from Rio de Janeiro that offers free private lessons for anyone interested in learning. Teachers are volunteers and have some background in the subject they are teaching. This programme started simply as an act of kindness from its coordinator and grew to having dozens of teachers. We showed our material to coordinator, and he immediately forwarded it to all his biology students giving us incredible feedback on the material.
Project “Adote um Aluno”. This image shows some of the volunteering members and students from the project. In the middle is Silverio Moron, coordinator and founder of “Adote Um Aluno”.
We then offered the material to Pre-Vestibular Morro dos Prazeres in Rio de Janeiro, which specialises in tutoring high school level students for their university entrance exam. Once again, we received praise for the clarity in our description of synthetic biology and how it can be used in solving pressing problems. Both groups were eager to accept given that the material was design to be fully prepared for use and self-contained, without any need to train the teachers.
In the UK, we have shown our material to members of Wessex Inspiration Network, an initiative that has the goal of aiding in the career development of students from underprivileged backgrounds. We have made the connections to work alongside them in the future and we are currently working on a guide choice to make throughout their academic careers. This partnership will continue with future teams at the University of Bath, with many educational opportunities being discussed.
The University of Bath conducts a program called Widening Participation that aims to integrate students from underrepresented areas. We shared our material with one of the teachers involved and we were also offered the opportunity to do a quick presentation on iGEM, synthetic biology and our project specifically. This was to inspire students to join in on this exciting new field and potentially join the competition in future iterations.
Additionally, with our this leaflet translated into six different languages (English, Portuguese, French Dutch, Italian and Spanish) meaning that our material could be implemented in various countries. With the ties we built through our partnership with team BioBrussels, we have will be able to implement this material in programs within Belgium to further the reach of our educational inclusivity project.
References
- Dixon, T.A., et al., A global forum on synthetic biology: the need for international engagement. Nature Communications, 2022. 13(1).