Team:KEYSTONE/Education
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Overview
Goals
In the first year (2020) of Keystone iGEM, our goal was quantitative-based: to influence as many people in the country as possible. However, this year (2021) our objective is qualitatively based: to provide guaranteed education to students and school-related personnel in Beijing through offering tailored products.
Pictures: Vintage-style video game, creative segments in the Official WeChat Account.
This change in aim originates from two factors that severely limit our development in Public Education:
1. The COVID-19 pandemic =====>> e.g., school regulations does not permit large gathering =====>> the synthetic biology fair has to be closed to only Keystone members =====>> barrier of general education.
2. Lack of technological skills within members =====>> e.g., lots of skills needed to be learned prior to implementation =====>> input output efficiency =====>> barrier of digital education
In response to these factors, our new PE strategy would:
1. Not be influenced by another COVID-19 struck in China.
2. Maximumly utilize existing professional skills.
3. Achieve high efficiency
Mission statement
Our activates serves to educate students and school related personnel in which the envisaged result is their ambition toward biology, and thus will be demonstrated through their activate participation in our team events.
To achieve this, we shall (1) narrow down the distance between science and their lives, (2) attract attention on rubber waste problem, (3) improve their overall educational status on synthetic biology, and (4) promote our team events.
We shall provide balanced education to two groups of student bodies: ones with voluntary interests (sciences students, [non] humanities and arts students), and one without voluntary interests.
More specifically, we will create a set of online educational services tailored to Middle School and High School students in Beijing.
Vision statement
We want the attention of --- not just science lovers --- but people with diverse fields of interest to understand our project and synthetic biology as a whole. We want them to have a sufficient understanding of the scientific concepts that build up our project, and the real-life applications of it in interdisciplinary out of science. Overall, there will be no student on this campus, who has not interacted with the Keystone iGEMers.
Video Game
After discussions, our team have agreed that a more popular advertising channel is needed for us to truly connect with our targeted audience with more influences. Hence, in order to further enlarge the range of targeted audience that would be aware of synthetic biology via our public education, our team has made a video game designed to spread and advocate this field.
Video game is a mainstream entertainment that is well-accepted by Keystone members, especially students in a smaller age range. Creating a video game could make sure that we cover the smaller members in the Keystone community too, when we are implementing our advocacy of synthetic biology. Even if our other pathways of bonding with the audience has a possibility to be boring for smaller members, we believe that a half-entertaining and half-educational video game could achieve the same goal, while covering this sector of our audience.
The video game introduces the basics to biology, which focuses on the replication of DNA. The player has to pass through three major stages to complete this mission.
Product realization process
Phase 1: Game Orientation
The entire team agreed on making a game to advertise synthetic biology, and thus we began the game design. After brainstorming the basic biological knowledge that we want to include, we have decided that the most crucial and necessary area to be explained in the game is DNA replication. Based on this initial design, we proceeded to the next phase: implementation.
Phase 2: implementation-Design
Our game takes place in a laboratory of a doctor, who will instruct the player throughout the process of playing. The player has the mission to complete the process of DNA replication. To make this game more challenging, we divided DNA replication into three parts: transcription, priming, and translation.
Stage 1: DNA Duplication
The bottom of the page represents the template for DNA replication, and the player must pair the bases following the order of the template by switching the four bullets (representing the four bases of ATCG). Only A bullets can shoot down T, and only C bullets can shoot down G, vice versa. This is an action that represents extension.
Stage 2: Transcription
In the second stage, the players have to connect the dots on the screen while constantly running forward in the cell, doing the job of RNA polymerase. In this stage, the pairing elements changes from ATCG to AUCG, forming a single stranded RNA.
Stage 3: Translation
The last stage is about translation. The player moves around to collecting fragments to achieve translation. The game gives out missions for the player, telling them which amino acid to synthesize. Based on the sequences that the player has connected, he/she can synthesize different types of amino acids to complete his mission.
Phase 3: implementation-Coding
The implementation of the project requires a large extent of coding skills. Peter, who is mainly responsible for the coding of wiki and technological areas, founded this game. He came up with a basic structure of the game, with the three stages readily designed and coded.
Phase 4: Beautification-Characters & Props
Since our team’s artistic style this year is designed to be vintage and electronic (like the video games in the 90s), all of our drawings were drawn in pixel style, with largely contrasting and saturated colors. We have designed five characters with different and specialized abilities in the game.
To begin with, there is a female character, who is the princess of Aqua. She has a bubbly and bright personality. She mainly represents the water element and has the power to heal herself as her special skill.
The second character that we designed is an Asian character, who represents the element of Earth. She is a mysterious magician from Asia, who maintains a magical power. Her theme color is designed to be yellow to suit her features of representing the earth.
We also beautified the characters by creating another character of fire. He is an agile, swift, and straight-forward person. Thus, his attacking power is very high. He is a knight designed with the theme color of red, with a fireball in his hand as his weapon.
Another character that we have designed is a knight with the element of metal. The character has a metal sword in his hand as a weapon and has a theme color of silver. Even though he doesn’t have any magical powers (which means all of his attacks are physical), he still has an extremely high defense rate.
The last character is a synthetic biologist, and she/he uses magic potions as her weapon to attack.
Note： our member （Suri） specifically designed this character with her/his hair is tied up, all of the buttons of his/her lab coat buttoned, and her trousers covering up her skin to fulfill the lab safety requirements.
Outcome
We have exhibited our game in the Synthetic Biologic Fair that we have conducted and set a booth to experience this game. Many audience that are smaller in age, e.g., in primary and lower secondary school were attracted by the game, and some of our science teachers were also interested and passionate to try it out.
After interviewing one of the Grade 8 students that played our game, she told us, “I gained a lot of new information about DNA replication and synthetic biology that I didn’t know. This game passes on the knowledge that seems to be boring to us in a much more interesting way, and I am willing to learn more about synthetic biology after this fair and this experience!”
Therefore, our video game is very successful at achieving our goal of reaching both voluntary science members (e.g., science teachers and students), and voluntary non-science members (e.g., the public with no basic information on synthetic biology).
Periphery Goods
The protagonist in our periphery goods is E. coli, which is the most common small bacterium in biological experiments. Our design begins in the laboratory, and when coupled with some familiar life elements of keystone students, we made these lovely "rubber eaters".
"These E. coli are actually very cute and chubby. Its surroundings can let more people understand complex or boring biological knowledge, so I try to make them more lovely and more like us, so that everyone can resonate."
-Periphery goods artist, Melissa Gao
Our Periphery goods include cloth bag, notebooks and stickers, which are popular products other student organizations sold in the past. We added respirator masks to our list in response to its increase in demand because of the COVID pandemic.
The goods were sold in four locations: WeChat Official Account, Keystone Friday morning break Oct.15th, The Environmentalism fair on Oct.15th, and The Synbiotic Fair on Oct.16th to minimize the amount of unsold waste product. They were advertised through a WeChat article, posters around campus, and on our school assemblies.
Goods with our mascot
To buy our products, purchasers need to fill out a Microsoft Forms to choose and pay for their preferences. We explicitly requested the buyers to choose and pay for their purchases voluntarily in the Forms, creating a quicker, error free distribution chain that is not restricted by distance purchases.
Designs
One of our iGEMer was able to locate a student artist volunteer who was willing to realize our ideas. we recount our design inspirations in the form of five separate tales. These stories describe the lives of Keystone secondary students and reflects the psychological status of this population. The purpose is for costumers to relate to each story and thus see that science isn’t so far away from them personally.
“The first small bacterium we drew is called "tourism bacteria". The small bacteria in the picture are pasted on the surface of Petri dish, waiting curiously for the cultivation of culture medium. It looks like a student climbing on the porthole and looking out of a plane.”
“Among the peripheral products, the fourth small bacterium with the highest appearance rate is called "E. coli with full rubber". Like everyone at Keystone, this E. coli is a famous foodie. He ate all the rubber snacks in the canteen and belched loudly.”
In addition, we even connected our designs to the most controversy campus news. Obviously, we stood on the student’s side of the argument:
“The last E. coli is called "school uniform bacteria". Under its sparse-hair head is an unforgettable dark blue school uniform coat. Since the beginning of the 2021 school year, the school has erased this dress from the school uniform style in order to unify the dress. However, with the existence of this small bacterium, this dark blue school uniform full of memory will always be with us.”
Other E. coli mascots include:
E. coli during online learning
A swimming E. coli
Products
We reached out to local merchants and negotiated the initial price, estimated the selling price, and calculated the income price. Below is our finance calculation:Style, quantity, cost, pre-sale price and estimated income of Periphery.
A: There are 60 cloth bags, a total of 582 RMB, with a single cost of 9.7 and a selling price of 20 yuan.
B: The notebook is 70 copies, with a total of 976 RMB, a single cost of 13.9 and a selling price of 15 yuan.
C: There are 50 stickers, 100 RMB in total, with a single cost of 3.0 and a selling price of 8 yuan.
D: There are 70 masks, a total of 77rmb, with a single cost of 1.1 and a selling price of 5 yuan.
Total: 250 peripheral, four kinds. The current income is 1733 yuan, the expected income is 3000 yuan = 1267 yuan.
Calculation process:
Income 3000 (1200 + 1050 + 400 + 350) - cost 1733 (582 + 973 + 150 + 77) = 1217 yuan.
Implementation and Analysis
The two-day sale on the Environmentalism Fair and Syn-bio Fair was a great success, where we sold our products in our project booth. Notably, our products served as a bridge for public education, through which we promoted our project and passion for synthetic biology. The crowds of customers attracted to our products and our project were remarkable. With much items sold, we were able to achieve a break-even in our profit.
With the statistical help of Microsoft Forms, we observed the following costumer preferences. This would help our iGEM team next year to estimate the amount of merchandise they should produce:
- Most sold were respirator masks (sold 100%) and stickers (sold around 80%).
- Medium sold were notebooks (sold around 45%).
- Least sold were cloth bags (only sold around 20%).
- People preferred the Type A Purple notebook comparing to Type B Green notebook.
WeChat Official Account
Our Official WeChat Account was established on September 24th, 2021. Up to this day, we have influenced up to 1140 people, with 82 subscribed users. Averagely, we have 3 to 4 new subscribers every day, and lost 0 users in total. These people most likely accessed the account through our appearance in school assemblies, social media posts, the two fairs and the posters on campus, through QR codes and article demos.
Implementation
WeChat account has three advantages: First it is convenient (e.g., existing platform) and easily accessible to users cross geographically (e.g., users from other side of the world). Second it allows us to present content in flexible media forms (e.g., photos, gifs, drawings, words, videos). And third it is a method for us to organize our resources (e.g., create folders to sort photos) and execute statistical analysis (e.g., customer preferences).
When accessing our Official Account, users will see two types of information: articles and functions. The four categories of articles are: “Lab at Home” series, “Graphic: The Evolution of Rubber” trilogy, “Simple Biology Tips” course series, and “Events / Promotions / Sales / News”. The three types of functions include: Periphery goods online store, Keystone 2021 emojis, and comments area.
When presenting our contents to readers, we mimicked popular social medias such as Tok-tok and Kuai-Kan into using paintings and videos. An example of an integrated media series is “Graphic: The Evolution of Rubber”, where the whole article is made from drawing cells. The colour combinations changed from the first article: green (organic and natural) to the second article: dark yellow (industrialization and synthetic) to the third article: blue (our solution).
We customized articles from student perspectives, based on our education level, socioeconomic status, settings, time period, etc. out of which there are several of niches we predicted and successfully captured. For example, the “Lab at Home” were published during the Chinese National Holidays break (October 1) when many students stayed at home due to the pandemic. In a time period like this, there is a niche in demand for a meaningful activity that could be carried out in home condition. The first article “Shock! DNA can be extracted at home” responded greatly to this market niche —— 50 views in the first 3 hours of publishment.
Syn Bio-Fair
Our syn bio fair took place in the Keystone Academy Primary School on October 16th, 2021. The Keystone iGEMers invited five schools and up to 13 guess speakers to participate. Due to restriction of the COVID-19, this event was opened only to the Keystone community. However, with a minimized crowd, we were able to categorize our target population into four study groups and make sure that each is satisfied. The study groups are “The Teachers”, “Other iGEMers”, “Active Listeners”, and “Businesspeople”.
“The Teachers” are the group which can evaluate our project and outcomes in a more professional perspective of academical sights. Through this we can gain constructive and valid feedbacks and comments on our project and define aspects of improvements. “Other IGEMers” are the people who we can communicate fairly to and provide benefits toward both directions. Through this we can acquire a wilder view on what are other people doing that are aiming to aid the world. “Businesspeople” are our potential clients who we can collaborate with, provide more supports to our project in future and chance to extend future business partnership. “Active listeners” are the most important component of our target audience of this fair. Our aim is to deliver as much synbio knowledge toward the massive public and these are the representatives.
The highlight of this exchange meeting is the synthetic biology video game created by our iGEMer Peter. We also used multimedia display screens to share important messages, such as PowerPoint presentations, with our listeners. These highlights were created to strengthen the visitors’ experience throughout the event. We also sold our exquisite hand drawn merchandise on the exhibition site with limited quantity to eliminate wastes, which fortunately were all sold out at the end of the exhibition.
We have interviewed an eighth-grade guest who came to our syn-bio fair, and she said, “after visiting different booths set by each team, I realized that there are many applications of synthetic biology in real life. I found these projects to be really interesting, and I am definitely willing to learn more about synthetic biology.”
Presentations
To educate the people with non-voluntary interests, we chose to (1) make assembly presentations, (2) hang posters around the campus and (3) publicly display our project promotional video.
We joined the Head of School presentation on September 24th and the Grade Level meetings for G9, G10, G11, G12 on the week of October 11th with PowerPoint presentations and written scripts.
The 15 A3 posters are hanged in popular places: outside the cafeteria, in dorm elevators, on the staircase walls. For environmental purposes, we printed our posters using paper form the recycling bin, where one side of the paper was either used for writing or used to print another poster.
the posters hanging around the campus
The Keystone Academy Programs office gave us permission to display our Promotional Video onto four Televisions around campus. Students orally reported enjoying watching the PVs, especially when their classmates are on them.
our promotional video being played around the campus
Key take-aways from our Public Education:
- Set qualitative based goals.
- Break down target population into focus groups and analyze the demands of each group.
- Utilize integrated medias to provoke user interests and keep user experience active.
- Seek existing market platforms to increase view flow and minimize efforts.
- Analyze customer preferences to create more tailored products.