The future of synthetic biology depends on educating the next generation of scientists. For this reason, the William and Mary iGEM team has made education a large focus of our project, specifically focusing on topics related to fieldable synthetic biology, chassis selection, and the importance of computation. We had a number of target audiences, including middle and high schoolers, college students, alumni, and current researchers, with a special focus on inspiring younger audiences to engage with synthetic biology. For a detailed and more comprehensive list of all of our educational materials and events, please visit our Education & Communication page.
Inclusivity and fostering two-way communication were vital to how our team approached education this year.
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Inclusivity: All of our educational deliverables have been uploaded on our wiki to be downloaded and accessed for free by any educator or student. The creation of accessible educational materials is crucial for including under-resourced groups into scientific dialogue. Additionally, many of our educational events targeted underrepresented groups in science. We hosted Camp Eager, a summer camp dedicated to STEM education for underrepresented youth, and also engaged with female alumni during William and Mary’s Women’s Weekend.
- Two-Way Communication: Not only do we hope to educate our target audiences and foster dialogue within these groups, but we also hope to learn from these groups by engaging with them directly. Our Re-Terraforming Earth board game went through two assessment phases, where we tested its educational success and asked for feedback. Assessing the effectiveness of educational tools is an important strategy for learning how to better communicate synthetic biology concepts. Additionally, from creating hands-on and engaging educational activities (such as assigning students the role of different synbio parts and biological constructs and walking them through the process of transformation), we were able to communicate directly with the communities we were working with, rather than simply lecturing them.
Our main educational deliverable is [1] our Re-Terraforming Earth board game which we tested with two different target audiences and incorporated several rounds of feedback and assessment results into the final product. Other educational materials produced include [2] both a literature review and an educational video about chassis selection, and [3] a synthetic biology informational booklet with information and advice for young students as well as teachers looking to get involved with synthetic biology. We also [4] hosted a number of engaging events throughout the season, including but not limited to teaching high schoolers how to perform a gel electrophoresis, grouping middle schoolers into a human circuit to educate them about synbio parts, and giving tours of our lab.
Below are detailed descriptions of our educational deliverables and events, with accompanying information about how we met our educational goals, and our goals of fostering inclusivity and two way communication.
Re-Terraforming Earth Board Game
Goal: To create an engaging and accessible educational deliverable that introduces foundational concepts of molecular biology, synthetic biology, fieldbaility, and chassis selection. Additionally, to raise awareness of global problems and solutions.
Approach: We created a board game based on the board game Terraforming Mars (by Jacob Fryxelius with graphic design by Isaac Fryxelius and artwork by Isaac Fryxelius and Daniel Fryxelius). Our board game, called Re-Terraforming Earth, is centered around making Earth more habitable by decreasing pollution, decreasing greenhouse gas production, and increasing food security, highlighting synthetic biology constructs as the major solution to these global problems. In the game, players accrue cards with actionable steps to alleviate these three parameters, most of which are heavily related to synthetic biology. Some of these cards are circuit parts that can be assembled as a complete circuit into a chassis to be deployed into target sites on the main board. For a detailed description of game instructions and to access the downloadable instruction booklet, game boards, and cards, please visit our Education & Communication page.
Two-Way Communication: To ensure our game is a successful educational tool, we evaluated its educational impact with two different target audiences, high school students and college students. With the high school students, due to their limited prior knowledge of synthetic biology, we assessed our impact with a pre- and post- assessment. With the college students enrolled in William and Mary’s ‘Bioengineering and Synthetic Biology’ course, we assessed our game with a detailed feedback form.
What Students Learned:
High Schoolers:
Synthetic biology parts 
- on the pre-quiz, none of the 15 students could name a single part of a synthetic circuit (average of 0%), but on the post quiz, an average of 3.6 out of 4 (90%) parts were named. It is worth noting that misspellings or variations of words were counted as correct (such as a student putting ‘coder’ instead of ‘coding region’), and also that the incorrect inclusion of ‘chassis’ as a part of a circuit did not affect their score.
The positive potential of synthetic biology - at the onset of the game, 14 out of 15 students felt either neutral or positive about synthetic biology, with 1 student believing synthetic biology is bad because “it disrupts the natural order and is therefore out of place”. After the game, all 15 students felt either positively or neutral about synthetic biology, with the aforementioned student writing, “it can be useful to fix issues we have created”.
College Students Enrolled in ‘Bioengineering and Synthetic Biology’:
Students learned about the importance of chassis selection, with
one student writing, “I learned that certain chassis don’t work with other parts”.
Students learned new potential applications of synthetic biology. One student said “I learned about many different ways that synbio could change the world. We learned of problems that could be fixed by this field”.
Students indicated that they learned about ethical dilemmas in the field of synthetic biology and potential solutions to mitigate these issues. One student said they “definitely” learned something from the game as “the ethical dilemma cards are a good motive for discussion”.
Since these students were already familiar with synthetic biology, one student remarked “I did not necessarily learn anything new, but I do think it helped reaffirm some topics”.
What we learned from this experience:
We learned the importance of very clearly and visually explaining instructions. During our first assessment session, the high schoolers were confused about how to play the game and relied very heavily on our team members in order to progress through the game. Because of this, we created a powerpoint presentation explaining the rules with visual aids for our second assessment session with the college students. This assessment went much more smoothly. Because of this, we incorporated more visual aids into our official instruction manual in order to make that more clear. Students also asked for a simplified visual aid with abridged rules to keep in front of them while playing, which is something we plan on implementing in future iterations of the game.
We also learned about catering to different group dynamics. We noticed some groups were very amicably competitive, and were motivated to engage in the game out of a desire to win more points than their group mates. Other groups were much more collaborative. We watched one of the groups of college students defy the original rules of the game by buying and selling circuit parts to each other in order to more quickly solve their global parameters. Someone from this group later wrote in the feedback form that “allowing players to exchange parts of circuit with one another… would allow players to create more interesting and unique circuits”. Because of this, we plan to add a section to the instruction manual with “alternative versions” of playing the game. One version would be more collaborative, and we also plan on making a version that is much shorter and simpler as we also received feedback that this would be helpful.
Inclusivity:
To make our game as accessible as possible, we have explained fundamental biological concepts, such as what DNA and proteins are as well as the central dogma of biology, in our instructional manual. We did not want prior knowledge or experience level to hinder anybody from participating in this game. Additionally, we have uploaded all of our materials (the boards, cards, and instruction manual) on the Education & Communication page of our wiki so that there are no monetary barriers preventing anybody from participating in this game. We are very excited to disseminate this free game as widely as we can, and continue to incorporate feedback into our design.
Production of Comprehensive Literature Review on Chassis Selection and Educational Video on Chassis Selection
Goal: To raise awareness about the importance of chassis selection to fieldable synthetic biology.
Approach: We had two main target audiences in mind for our efforts to raise awareness about the importance of chassis selection - current synthetic biologists and younger students who will become the next generation of synthetic biologists. To this end, we created a comprehensive academic literature review about the past, present, and future of chassis selection in synthetic biology targeted towards researchers, and we produced an introductory video about chassis and why they are important that was published on Hopkins iGEM and East Coast BioCrew iGEM’s YouTube Channels as part of our collaboration with them. You can access both of these materials on our Education & Communication page.
Two-Way Communication: We are in the process of assessing the effectiveness of our video channel collaboration with Hopkins and BioCrew. For this collaboration, we created a video on chassis selection and Hopkins created video tutorials on minipreps, PCR, and gel electrophoresis. We are distributing a feedback form for these videos to assertain whether they are informative and enjoyable educational materials, and BioCrew is assisting with the distribution of this survey. When we analyze this data, we will learn how to more effectively create educational videos in the future.
Inclusivity: We have published both of these educational materials for free on the Education & Communication page of our wiki. Freely publishing an educational video will allow young students without extensive prior knowledge to learn about synthetic biology, as it explains important background information about the central dogma. Additionally, many scholarly reviews are kept behind paywalls. In order to promote access to scientific materials, we have uploaded our academic review online for free as well. Financial disadvantage should not prevent anybody from accessing knowledge.
Educational Booklet: SynBio and You
Goal: To introduce young students unfamiliar with synthetic biology concepts to key concepts and resources to help them get involved, and to assist teachers in engaging their class in synthetic biology lessons.
Approach: Our educational booklet, titled SynBio and You, explains the field of synthetic biology, including the basics of biology and computation, at a level appropriate to a middle and high school age group. It encourages students to get involved in synthetic biology through their own personal research and to seek out learning experiences. The booklet concludes with some ideas for teachers to get their students interested in synbio through interactive learning. To access the booklet, please visit our Education & Communication page.
Two-Way Communication: Three educational activities that worked really well for us this year (assigning students roles as parts of a synbio circuit and having them transform themselves into a group of students acting as a cell, creating synthetic circuits out of candy onto sugar cookies, and having students play our Re-Terraforming Earth Game) were all incorporated into our SynBio and You booklet. While engaging in these activities ourselves with the students, we could tell they were visibly engaged. After performing the ‘human circuit’ activity with students from Camp Eager, their counselor told us that the students told her that iGEM was their favorite activity during their day trip to William and Mary. After play-testing Re-Terraforming Earth, one of the high school students asked us to send her a copy of the game so that she could play it with their family. Positive feedback like this was very encouraging, and is what motivated us to select these three activities in particular for our booklet.
Inclusivity: As previously expressed for the above deliverables, providing free and easily understandable educational materials is imperative to enhancing diversity and inclusion in synthetic biology. Our booklet also directs students to other resources they may benefit from. Additionally, SynBio and You encourages teachers to educate their students using dynamic, interactive, hands-on learning activities. While lecture-style teaching is more common, it can be very difficult for some students to remain attentive to this type of lesson. We hope that our booklet inspires more inclusive lesson planning that enables more students to engage with material.
Educational Events
Goal: To engage directly with various communities to excite them about synthetic biology, computation, and science over all.
Approach: We held a number of educational events throughout the iGEM season, including but not limited to [1] a synbio field trip with Camp EAGER where we gave a tour of our lab, demonstrated the uses of various lab equipment, and grouped middle and high school students into a human circuit that walked through the process of transforming themselves as a plasmid into a student-made cell, [2] a field trip with high school students where we taught them how to perform gel electrophoresis and interpret the results of this assay, [3] a tour of the lab and explanation of our project to female alumni for women’s weekend, [4] a synbio cookie and kahoot event for college students where we presented information about synthetic biology, had students create circuits out of candy parts onto cookies, and then compete in a friendly competition to see who knew the most about synthetic biology, [5] testing our Re-Terraforming Earth board game with high school and college classes as outlined above, and [6] presenting our research at our university’s Biomath Journal Club. To learn more about our educational events, please visit our Education & Communication page.
Two-Way Communication: As outlined in previous sections above, comprehensive assessment and feedback from our Re-Terraforming Earth events greatly contributed to edits we made to the game as well as future plans we have to expand and improve the game. Additionally, by engaging with students during these events and hearing feedback about what students enjoyed, we were able to select our most successful and reproducible events for inclusion in our SynBio and You booklet. Additionally, our presentation at William and Mary’s Biomath Journal Club greatly improved our ability to communicate about our project and results based on the feedback of students and faculty at the event. While many were not very familiar with synthetic biology, they all were very knowledgeable about math modeling, and provided important insight into how to communicate whether or not our models were successful that greatly benefited our team. These events all were held in person, where we had the opportunity to engage directly with attendees. We are very appreciative of everyone who attended any of our educational events this year.
Inclusivity: Since students are primarily exposed to lecture-style teaching, which can be difficult to remain engaged with, we tried to make all of our events hands-on in order to be inclusive of students with diverse learning styles. Additionally, we tried to engage with groups that are typically underrepresented in the sciences. For example, camp EAGER is a STEM summer camp focused on introducing underrepresented youth, such as girls and students of color, to the sciences. Additionally, we gave a tour of our lab during Women’s Weekend at W&M to encourage more gender diversity in STEM. We also wanted to engage people from as many disciplines as possible, which is why we made math, computer science, and biology so fundamental to our educational materials, and why we reached out specifically to the BioMath Journal Club on campus.
