Team:Heidelberg/Communication


Communication





Outreach into the classroom

Workshop Synbio

Our human practices team performed an online workshop for interested students. Originally we wanted to do it in person with exciting experiments for the students, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic and constantly changing regulations, we decided on an online format.
We connected with Aelius Förderwerk e.V., a young dynamic organization, almost exclusively build on a diverse team of more than one hundred volunteers. The organization advocates for more equality in education and therefore offers many opportunities for pupils and students to get help with their educational career in the form of mentoring or organizing workshops.
As science consists not only of the work in the wet- or drylab but also in communicating the knowledge, it was very important to us to spread well-founded knowledge about synthetic biology and genetic engineering, to give a better impression of our work to the younger generation.

Hence, it was a great opportunity for us to make this workshop happen, together with Aelius Förderwerk e.V., as they could help us with contacting a huge amount of schools. Together with them, we offered our course to schools in Germany. Three classes from seventh to tenth grade decided to participate in a workshop and we spent either the morning or afternoon with them online with interactive presentations, quizzes and Q&A sessions, adjusted to the age groups.
The drive behind this workshop is to interest students in different areas of science as the biology of the cell, biotechnology and synthetic biology or medicine.

Furthermore, we want to help the students understand biological problems better by giving them a general overview of the topics they learned in school about DNA, RNA and proteins and how they can be applied in research and drug design. Education about these topics will help to increase acceptance of synthetic biology in the general public, because in many cases skepticism and rejection are the results from a lack of understanding.
The workshop was divided into two parts: first, a part for the basics. We started with a recapitulation of the basics about cell types, DNA, transcription and translation. We then attended to a more complex topic which are possible mutations of the genetic code. Furthermore we discussed the differences between digesting the DNA from unprocessed foods like bananas and actually DNA changing retroviruses to address the importance of a cell nucleus in eukaryotes. The second part focused on the use of synthetic biology and biotechnology in medicine. We started with a short segment where we asked the students what they thought scientists use these basics for. After that we worked on a few tasks of how the students would change the DNA code to get to a different amino acid in a protein. Next we gave a quick introduction about vaccines and applications of recombinant proteins in medicine before wrapping the workshop up with a Q&A session.

Picture 1: Impressions of the workshop.

In a nutshell, it is no secret that science communication is an essential part of science. We experienced that it is a good idea to support existing organizations and collaborate, as this makes the result easier and better.
It is clear that the acceptance of new technologies does not have equal issues in every social class, as it goes hand in hand with the quality of education, which is still lacking equality. Therefore, it is important to be aware of whom science communication reaches, when performing it.

Interview with Dr. Dorothea Kaufmann - Manager of the Center for Learning and Innovation of the University of Hagen and Sagithjan Surendra - Founder and CEO of Aelius Förderwerk e.V.

Digital teaching experiences a rise in popularity and relevance which is promoted by the ongoing global pandemic. This trend opens up many opportunities we tried to use in our online-workshop about Synthetic Biology.
For this workshop, we teamed up with the Aelius Förderwerk which enabled the contact to schools in Germany, where we then talked to pupils in several classes about the principle of vaccinations, how medication can be synthesized using microorganisms and how the DNA makes us to what we are. Additionally, we explained the endless possibilities of synthetic biology and its benefits in medicine and research, including the methods which are used for that.
To evaluate the workshop, we talked with Dr. Kaufmann, the manager of the center for learning and innovation of the university of Hagen, which is primarily focused on distant teaching, and the founder and CEO of Aelius Förderwerk e.V., Mr. Surendra.

Picture 2: Sagithjan Surendra.

We discussed two major points:
    How can the opportunities of online teaching be used, while balancing out the downsides of this form of knowledge transfer?
    What are the best methods to teach online, for example about Synthetic Biology?

Opportunities of Online Teaching and How to Use Them

Next to teaching, working remotely also experiences a huge rise in the pandemic. Aelius works remotely for the most part and Mr. Surendra states that the advantages are huge, as the work is not limited to a region, time shifts are not an issue and the individuals work more efficiently, but the downside is that creative work and motivation suffer from that, which can also be noticed in online teaching.

The organization we worked with concentrates not only on teaching, but also on mentoring, which was used more during the pandemic, as Mr. Surendra describes. He says: “Aelius consists of people that are part of the target group and want to pass on their experiences to the next generation”
Even though Aelius works remotely, Mr. Surendra explains that: “before the pandemic the workshops were held in presence completely, as it worked and we did not see the advantages of online teaching". Therefore, they had to adjust their offers and started distributing technical equipment, such as laptops, to pupils. Furthermore, they noticed that learning motivation was a tough topic during the pandemic and is not covered at all in school, so this was a topic that got special relevance during the pandemic.

Mr. Surendra explains the advantages of online teaching he noticed during the pandemic: “You can reach a bigger target group, and you can try out new workshops-formats which are more complicated offline.” Additionally, he also mentioned the difficulties that are faced: “You cannot just go somewhere, and the materials are provided to you. You have to own a microphone and laptop. That's also how the laptop donation has started. The attention span is extremely low in an online workshop, so you have to motivate the audience. In our offline workshops, everything was for free: The material as well as the food. That is a big motivational factor, you don't have in the online format”.

Dr. Kaufmann also stressed that in such workshops, which are held in school classes, it is critical to realize that even though the speakers are responsible for the content, the teachers are still responsible for the interaction with the pupils. Therefore, it is important to talk to the responsible teachers before the workshop, to ensure this requirement.

Furthermore, she says that it is very helpful to integrate the pupils as much as possible and let them discover things on their own with different possibilities of participation, such as digital whiteboards, or for older pupils, research on different topics and discussion on the results. The latter, according to Dr. Kaufmann, is another added value on data literacy and transports that information on the internet is not always right. This can be a short excursion and meanwhile activates the audience.

Dr. Kaufmann also emphasizes that it is important to also think about the possibility that the audience does not always when the lecturer is saying something. She says: “In school teaching, it is generally useful to involve the pupils, by for example allowing them to mark things on a digital whiteboard, so the knowledge transfer is active, not passive.” Dr. Kaufmann notes that if you already do that at the beginning of the workshop, you awake the audience, so they don’t even get into a sleeping state. Dr. Kaufmann adds that: “Especially in the mediation in schools I would always build on participative, collective, experienced learning.” We also noticed that it helped a lot if we talked more about who we are and showed them the lab and bacteria with mCherry.

According to Dr. Kaufmann it is a fallacy to think that more participative learning takes much more time and that there is not sufficient time for that, as it is all a question of good planning.

Methods to teach online (about Synthetic Biology)

In our workshops, we thought about topics and possibilities to motivate people for an online workshop, for example regarding Synthetic Biology. On that topic, Mr. Surendra says: “You can motivate people by the content of the workshop.”

Dr. Kaufmann stresses the same point: “I remember in my basic lecture about genetics the professor once said if he was an alien he would rather talk to corn than to a human, as it has more genes, to emphasize that the number of genes is not crucial. This has been stuck in my brain for over 20 years now.” Dr. Kaufmann emphasizes that it is important to find an interesting and fascinating question, for example what can be created in the lab nowaways to explain DNA synthesis or how luminous, green mice are made.

Dr. Kaufmann adds that it is very helpful, when talking about a certain topic, to provide all the basics and not leave these out, as you cannot be sure about the knowledge of the audience. In that way, more people can be reached.

This leads to the issue that there is much information which has to be transported, mostly interactively, which takes a lot of time. On that Dr. Kaufmann states that in the end the information which is taught in an interesting way, is kept better and furthermore even short interactive phases have a considerable effect on memorizing this information. So conclusively, it does not necessarily take up much more time, and even if it is worth it to invest more time.
As a thumb rule, Dr. Kaufmann adds, two thirds of the time should be interactive and maximum one third input.

According to Dr. Kaufmann, it is also important to check, if a presentation is used, that the slides mostly contain illustrations and little text and especially that the number of slides is reduced as much as possible. One way to reduce the number of slides, while still transferring information effectively, are educational videos, which are nowadays widely accessible.

Mr. Surendra especially stresses another point: “You can also motivate people technically. There are many possibilities as virtual rooms, where you can walk around with a character, hybrid conferences with an avatar which is equipped with a camera looking at the person who is speaking. These tools give the workshop a great twist, you are not familiar with from the classic online-conference. [...] Additionally, you can try to provide something to the pupils in the real world. For example, we mailed Care-packages to pupils, who participated in a workshop. You give something before the workshop, which then motivates the people for it.”

He explains that an example for our workshop would be to mail something, for example a DNA-Model. When talking about what could draw pupils attention in the topic of Synthetic Biology he mentions: “Making things tangible always works great, for example our workshop on extracting your own DNA had great resonance. So doing something yourself and taking it home with you, is a huge motivation.” As this is difficult to perform online, he explains: “Especially topics which are connected to lab work are very difficult to perform online, as much interactiveness gets lost. So, if possible, I would still perform these kinds of workshops offline.”

The other possibilities are, as explained, online-tools. Mr. Surendra stressed that gamification works very well and there are plenty of online-tools that enable that. He says: “The possibilities of Virtual Reality can be used for such workshops and a lab can be built in VR, but this is of course quite complex. [...] Things like these won’t be used in schools in the short-term, but apart from the high costs in the beginning, the ongoing costs are very low.”

Conclusively, on whether presentations are a bad way to transport information, he says: “Yes. If possible, I would always use gamification.”

Our Take Home Message

To conclude, there are many initial factors that have to be considered in deciding on whether an online format is suitable at all and offline teaching still has many advantages which should not be forgotten about.
Nevertheless, online teaching offers many possibilities if they are used properly. Frontal teaching is neither good offline, nor online.Therefore, when teaching online, classic conferences without interaction with the audience should not be the norm and possibilities to keep the attention and motivation of the audience at a high level should be explored. Lastly, a great possibility to contribute to good science communication and facilitate teaching, online and offline is the development of suitable tools, as there is growing demand.

teaching
Picture 3: Online Meetup screenshot with Dr. Kaufmann (right up), Michelle Emmert (left up) and Silja Malkewitz (middle down).