Education

# Outline

# Game education

Synthetic Biology, as an extended category of biology, has some knowledge and training. Concerning this year's training of the Fudan team in 2021, we are trying our best to carry out training, which is more conducive to communication and more suited to people's interests through games. Therefore, we have compiled statistics and analyses on the educational pages of iGEM over the last three years, designed some interesting mutual games, and determined the design concepts of iGEM team games in the future.

# Break the barriers

This year, we also released videos from bilibili and WeChat official account and other platforms to show you the iGEM lab and personnel to break the stereotype of synthetic biology laboratory and set up an interactive question and answer interface on the video platform. So that more people can participate in the related fields of synthetic biology. We also cooperated with*"sunshine home"*to bring the knowledge of synthetic biology to the disabled and further popularize the knowledge of synthetic biology to the public. We also contacted the No. 1 middle school in Huangzhong District, Xining City, Qinghai Province and cooperated with the "dream Qinghai" project team of Fudan University and the "women" project team of the Chinese University of Hong Kong to popularize the knowledge of synthetic biology to students in remote areas of China. All of these broke the stereotype about synthetic biology and some of the audiences wanted to pursue a career in synthetic biology in the future.

# Beyond the lab

In this year's practice, we have the honor to contact several teaching support teams of Fudan University. With the problem we found in the lecture we gave to the students in theremote area, we did many investigations and understood that although China has achieved a great victory in poverty alleviation, there are still deficiencies in the level of educational infrastructure in some remote areas. Combined with local conditions, we made a method that can experiment only with small objects around them.

GO TO THE PUBLIC

This year, our education aimed to break the high academic barrier of synthetic biology with the form of mutual games, show it to the public and let everyone participate in the work of synthetic biology with an extra view about the remote areas.

Our education part started from the foundation of the project. How to attract more people to learn the knowledge of synthetic biology? How to enhance more people's interest in synthetic biology? How to make synthetic biology take off the coat of high academics and be known by people from all walks of life? To solve these big problems, we have developed "game education", "break the barrier" and "beyond the lab "this year, so that synthetic biology can enter the lives of the masses in the form of games in line with the interests of the public.

# Origin

At first, through the BIOS course of Fudan University, we popularized the knowledge of synthetic biology and iGEM to the freshmen, conveyed the great ideas of iGEM about benefiting the society and paying attention to social problems, and called on every one to engage in the related fields of synthetic biology in the future, which achieved good responses.

Figure 1. the BIOS course lecture

In the dialogue with the students, we heard many students' desire to engage in synthetic biology. However, we also received many doubts and complaints. "Why didn't I receive such knowledge when I was a child in my hometown?" "Why didn't my parents understand this knowledge?" These questions are consistent with our thoughts. Most of the targeted people in the previous education were college students interested in synthetic biology research, but they did not pay much attention to the public in all walks of life, which are very unfamiliar with the concept and technology of synthetic biology. How can we extend the knowledge of synthetic biology to their lives? This became the development point of our education this year.

# Game education

"The game is the reflection of man's free nature and the pursuit of divinity"------ Plato

# Considering the form

How to educate the knowledge about synthetic biology to the public? Our first consideration is the form of education. If it is a knowledge-based lecture, the audience can only be intellectuals, and the academic forms such as lectures take too long, which is not suitable for the rapid and convenient needs of the public to obtain information. If it is an offline activity, the audiences are just passers-by interested in synthetic biology. However, the time cost of this form is too large, and it has regional restrictions, which is hard to solve.

To further discuss the form of education, we just researched for many documents to find a more suitable way to popularize synthetic biology. We found a word called "game theory", which had been discussed by philosophers in the past. In the ancient time, Heraclitus had said "the world is the game of God", and Plato also told us that "the game is the reflection of man's free nature and the pursuit of divinity", and for Schiller, he also said that "the game is not only the fundamental feature of aesthetic activities but also an important mark for man to get rid of the animal state and achieve human nature". The form of the game was described as the essence of human nature in the theory of philosophers, which can release the freedom of human nature and make people develop towards divinity. Also, there are a lot of video games that tried to integrate scientific theories into games. For example, the video game enigma could popularize the principle of Newton, and the video game Surge also included the popularization of much professional knowledge of physics. [1]

After finding this information, we just thought that If we want synthetic biology to go to all parts of the country, online popularization combined with the Internet is the best choice. It can not only spread education to thousands of families but also meet the current management of COVID-19 prevention and control. We discussed which can be the best form online, and we concluded that with the rapid development of the Internet, online games have become the best way for most people to kill time, and the number of people using mobile Internet in China has reached 986 million. [2] Publishing games that people are familiar with can stimulate the public's interest and popularize the knowledge of synthetic biology rapidly.

# Summary of the previous teams

After the main forms have been determined, we also found that the former teams of iGEM had also designed many forms of games based on education, which can be summarized since there were no statistical data about the previous games. We browsed all the Wiki pages of each team of iGEM in recent three years and selected 57 games (document 1), including card games, secret room escape, web platform games, and so on, which spent us around three months because the searching and selection progression is too hard. Finally, we gained this document. [if you want to read it more clearly, you are welcome to download the file]

Figure 2. the summary of the previous iGEM games

However, we found that game education just began to develop rapidly in the iGEM competition in recent two years, and there are many problems, such as the single-game form, the vacancy of the game audience, and the lack of innovation in game design. From the Figure we summarized, there were 98% of games focused on education for teenagers. Especially for infants, middle-aged and more elderly people, there is no relevant game design on the iGEM website, so we tried our best to create some interesting and mutual learning games to fill the blank.

Figure 3. the analysis of the audience

# The games we created

As mentioned before, we designed four new games to fill the vacancy based on the iGEM games' problems and our original intention and make the games more interesting to popularize the knowledge of synthetic biology.

The first is the "synthetic biology" game for the national public, especially office workers and students. The game is based on the " synthesizing big watermelon" game that was popular all over China in June this year. Players can operate on multiple platforms such as WeChat and websites. In the game, players need to manually select the falling position of various biological components. The collision of the two components can become a higher-level component, and the synthetic biology popular science content for new components will pop up. Players gain both knowledge and happiness in the process of the game. At the same time, considering the eyesight problems of the middle-aged and elderly, the font adjustment function was designed in the game, so that people could watch the popular science content more clearly.
This game runs at https://tomghostsmith.github.io/SynBio/.

The second is the "building blocks" game for infants and children who cannot operate mobile phones. Through the plate design of various gene synthesis components, the game allows children to master some of the most basic synthetic biology knowledge while assembling components.

Figure 4. the "building blocks" game

The third is the "Greedy Snake" game for middle-aged people and students. The game combines the original greedy Snake game which has been created for around 20 years with 20 kinds of amino acids. The players drive the snake to swallow various amino acids to make the snake grow longer in the game. Each time a new amino acid is swallowed, the relevant knowledge of the amino acid will pop up, including structure, function in the human body, and relevant food in which the amino acid is rich. The players can not only enjoy the game but also gain knowledge of synthetic biology and healthy life.
The second game runs at https://tomghostsmith.github.io/GreedySnake/main.html

Finally, mahjong is also a game for the middle-aged and the elderly. The game combined the principles of primitive Chinese mahjong and synthetic biology knowledge. Players can "touch" or "eat" various synthetic biological elements, such as DNA and RNA. The game is a four-person game, which not only promotes the connection between the elderly but also popularizes the knowledge of synthetic biology.

Figure 5. the "mahjong" game

# The suggestions about the future teams

After designing the four games, we just sent our games to the public and prepared the questionnaire for their feedbacks.

Figure 6. the feedbacks we received

In general, the players were satisfied with the interesting biological games and found that synthetic biology is closed to daily life, which makes them much interested in the subject and willing to join in the research about synthetic biology. This is so different from the jobs we did before. Through the games, we received three times more feedbacks than the previous offline publicity activities.

And we built an effective two-way dialogue between the teenagers and the teams(adults), from which we received some suggestions and adjusted our games so that the games can be more suitable for the public. For example, some teenagers reported that there were network delays in the game, so we optimized the network loading of the game. Some teenagers reported that we could make some brochures for more understanding, so we also made related designs.

Also, we hope that our work can become a start point for the future iGEM teams and they can continue to develop our games and make more innovations in language, rule refinement, pattern design, and aesthetics, to create more iGEM synthetic biology games. In addition, for the future iGEM synthetic biology games, we also hope that the future iGEM teams can design the games based on the following criteria.

KAFAL rules

Knowledge of the game: the game needs to meet the basic biological principles, and no exaggerated and unscientific processes are allowed;
Audiences analysis of the game: the game needs to consider the game audience and carry out targeted design, rather than focusing solely on the youth group;
Fun of the game: the game should retain some fun characteristics, so that people can find joy through the game, rather than blindly popularizing knowledge;
Aesthetic design of the game: the game needs to consider the aesthetic creation, which needs to be carried out based on science, and terrorist and bloody elements are not allowed;
Language of the game: the game needs to consider the international audiences and can be designed in multiple languages if the members have time and ability.

# Break the barriers

“We must break the stereotype about synthetic biology.”

# Break the stereotype about the lab

After designing the game, we continue to explore ways to bring synthetic biology to the public. Combined with the public's unfamiliar and high academic attitude towards iGEM and synthetic biology, we decided to break this barrier and show the daily life in iGEM laboratory to the public in the form of videos, which can not only give the public a visual experience but also make the public break their stereotypes in an interesting atmosphere.

We placed our videos in the lab on the platform of bilibili, WeChat official account, and so on. In the background of the interview, we showed the daily activities of the 2021 Fudan iGEM lab to the public. The current volume has exceeded 5000+ times, and we had received many comments on our video content, including "new understanding of the laboratory", "I really didn't expect that the laboratory could be so interesting" and so on. At the same time, the public can send some questions and comments in the comment area below the video to discuss the problems in the laboratory and have a mutual dialogue. We will also give correct solutions and drive the public to think more.

Figure 7. the video on the bilibili https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1uT4y1f7BQ

# The contact with the “Sunshine Home”

In addition, we also consider transferring the knowledge of synthetic biology to disabled people, who are not paid attention to by our education members. Although they have some physical obstacles, this cannot become a barrier against their learning of biological knowledge. We contacted the "sunshine house" to bring the basic knowledge of synthetic biology to people with cognitive impairment. In the sunshine house, we showed them the games we designed and videos we produced and led them to appreciate the world of synthetic biology. In the end, we hoped that they can have a brilliant future.

Figure 8. the "Sunshine Home" contact

(we covered the faces because of the policy)

# Spread and cooperation

In the "hundred clubs" activity of Fudan University, we also participated in the activity and popularized the basic knowledge of synthetic biology and iGEM to everyone, to eliminate the stereotype of the high academic nature of synthetic biology. We also gained the students who plan to participate in the iGEM competition next year.

Figure 9. the activity in Fudan University

We also introduced the basic knowledge of synthetic biology online to the students of No. 1 middle school in Huangzhong District, Xining City, Qinghai Province through traditional forms of education, in combination with the "dream Qinghai" practice team of Fudan University and the "Women" project team of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We were happy to hear that the students who have heard our lecture had a big interest in synthetic biology and some of them even want to pursue a career in synthetic biology.

Moreover, we also found that there is some lack of education in the remote areas from the feedbacks we received，which made us think of more ways to educate people in the remote areas. It needs the combination of online lectures and offline guidance to achieve the effect of education.

Figure 10. the cooperation with the two teams

# Beyond the lab

“Let people in poor and remote areas receive timely and effective treatment.” ------Xi Jinping

# The remote areas

Combined with the problem of women's health in remote areas in our project and our concern for remote areas' education, we just thought that we need to have selective and targeted implementation schemes. The schools and universities in remote areas may not have clean and well-equipped laboratories, which needs our research. Therefore, we contacted a large number of summer teaching support practice teams of Fudan University to search for the conditions about these areas, which includes Huangzhong District, Xining City, Qinghai Province, Huangliu Town, Ledong Li Autonomous County, Hainan Province, and Changjiang Li Autonomous County, Hainan Province, Yanshou County, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, Qian'an County, Songyuan City, Jilin Province.

Figure 11. the condition about the remote areas

# In the remote areas

The results confirmed our expectations. Although China has achieved the goal of comprehensively eradicating poverty, there are still gaps in laboratory infrastructure construction in some remote areas, which is that there are no standard laboratories in some areas and some regional laboratories are still under construction. There is also a shortage of detection reagents in local hospitals. Under the conditions of blocked information and undeveloped medical science popularization, a large number of people do not understand the method of Candida albicans detection at all. These conditions greatly limit the popularization of our project and local development.

# The solution

Combined with our project scheme and synthetic biology education, we have designed the necessary facilities of our project into a Candida albicans detection kit according to the most basic local conditions, to popularize the detection knowledge to more people in remote areas, including the test agents required for detection, detection temperature control system, detection steps, etc. We wrote an instruction about the method. At the end of the manual, we also placed a website, from which can watch the specific operation video produced by us. The public can make the results of Candida albicans detection at home only according to the contents described in the manual, which greatly promoted the construction of synthetic biology in remote areas.

Figure 12. the instruction we made

In summary, we have carried out a thorough design and planned for all details through the mode of finding problems - conducting research - data analysis - solving problems this year. Through games, we have obtained more audiences and more feedback than ordinary educational forms. We have built a mutual dialogue platform for effective communication between teenagers and the team members (adults). In feedbacks, we saw people have increased interests in synthetic biology and are hoping to have a healthier life due to progress in synthetic biology. In addition, through videos and lectures, we continuously popularized synthetic biology to a broad audience, especially to those previously untouched young people. We were very pleased to see that due to our work, those children want to know more about synthetic biology and some of them even want to pursue a career in synthetic biology. Our efforts have extended synthetic biology to more areas and to cover more ages. We hope our effects could be a starting point for others to bring more interesting and inspiring games to education. Wish the future synthetic biology education will spread all over the world!

[1] National Bureau of Statistics of China. Statistical bulletin of national economic and social development of the people's Republic of China in 2020 ~ ([1) [n]. People's Daily, 2021-03-01 (010)

[2] Feng Xiang. Development overview and trend of foreign popular science games [a]. China Research Institute for science popularization. Innovation of science and technology communication and development of science and culture - Exploration of Chinese popular science theory and practice - Proceedings of the 19th national popular science theory seminar and 2012 International Forum on science and technology communication in the Asia Pacific Region [C]. China Institute of popular science (China Research Institute for science popularization): China Institute of popular science, 2012:6

Thanks for the contributions:

Social practice team of "Build Dreams in Qinghai", Fudan University

Expedition Club, Fudan University

"Women" practice project team, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Our source websites for game analysis (and you are warmly welcomed to download the file by clicking here.)

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Aalto-Helsinki/Education

https://2018.igem.org/Team:NYMU-Taipei/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:BUAP_Mexico/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:CU/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Evry_Paris-Saclay/Public_Engagement#P2

https://2019.igem.org/Team:FAU_Erlangen/Human_Practices

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Fudan-TSI/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:HK_GTC/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:IISER_Kolkata/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:KCL_UK/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Montpellier/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Nantes/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:NCHU_Taichung/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:NCKU_Tainan/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:OUC-China/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Pittsburgh/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Poitiers/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:REC-CHENNAI/Public-Engagement-HP

https://2019.igem.org/Team:SCU-China/Public/Board-Game

https://2019.igem.org/Team:ShanghaiTech_China/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:SJTU-software/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:SMMU-China/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Sorbonne_U_Paris/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Sydney_Australia/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/Team:Tec-Monterrey/Public_Engagement

https://2019.igem.org/wiki/index.php?title=Team:GO_Paris-Saclay/HP/iGame

https://2020.igem.org/Team:CPU_CHINA/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Edinburgh/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Estonia_TUIT/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Fudan/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:HKUST/Education#heading-3

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Ionis_Paris/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:LINKS_China/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Mingdao/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:MIT_MAHE/Education#Game

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Montpellier/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Moscow/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Nanjing_NFLS/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Nantes/Education#boardgame

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Nantes/Education#escapeegame

https://2020.igem.org/Team:NEFU_China/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Nottingham/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:PuiChing_Macau/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:PYMS_GZ_China/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark/Human_Practices/Card_game

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Stockholm/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Technion-Israel/Human_Practices

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Thessaly/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:Tongji_Software/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:TU_Darmstadt/Education

https://2020.igem.org/Team:ZJUT_China_B/Education#EE

https://2021.igem.org/Team:Stockholm/Education