Team:Linkoping Sweden/Communication
Education and Communication
Besides Integrated Human Practice, engaging the public and communicating about science are also important parts of a successful iGEM-project. An important aim of iGEM is also to educate about iGEM, synthetic biology and science in general. In our approach we interacted with the public in different ways.
Our podcast - Attempting Science
The podcast Attempting Science was originally started by the LiU iGEM 2018 team and was successfully continued in 2019. In 2020 the team took a different approach and instead created two animated educational videos for Youtube. In our approach this year we went back to the podcast format, but with our own take on it. We wanted each episode to be interesting and connect to our project in some way. In order for the podcast to be interesting and educational for as many people as possible, we tried to adapt and adjust the terminology used so that almost anyone interested in science could understand or learn something from listening. The podcast was a natural way for us to learn from different stakeholders surrounding our project, as well as communicating about our project to the public. We had guests from the academic world, the industry and another iGEM team. Find the podcast on Spotify and Soundcloud.
Meeting newly admitted university students
During the introductory days, also known as the reception period, at Linköping University, we set up an activity in order to meet with newly enrolled students in programs related to iGEM, specifically the engineering programs Chemical Biology and Technical Biology. Historically, many members of LiU iGEM have been studying at one of these programs. This was done in order to inform both about the research area of synthetic biology as a whole, and also about the student association of LiU iGEM and the iGEM competition overall. Even though newly enrolled students aren't able to join the team instantly, informing early on about the possibility of joining increases the chances of high interest in the future. Multiple people from our team first heard of iGEM during similar events previous years. The students also got to compete in a quiz competition of our own creation (about synthetic biology and the topics of our project) and test out the wet lab technique of gel electrophoresis. The activity was appreciated by the new students and interest in iGEM was high.
Interactive High school visits
To inform and discuss our project and the possibilities of synthetic biology as a whole with people, we reached out to our old high schools in different parts of Sweden. We presented our project and explained the need for an environmentally friendly way of desalinating seawater. Additionally, we defined what synthetic biology actually is and why the potential of this scientific field is basically unlimited, and only our imagination is the limitation. We created informative pamphlets and also an educational memory game .
Moreover, we prepared seminar-like questions, where the students themselves got the opportunity to take on real-world problems using synthetic biology, like the issues of pharmaceuticals in the environment, the ever current topic of climate change and lack of food in many parts of the world. This created a dialogue that was both creative, educational and inspirational to both us and the high school students. The content we prepared for the seminars was adapted for the scientific level of High School students, and since the young students had different study backgrounds, we made it comprehensive to all participants on some level.
Social media presence
In the early stages of our project, the social media focus group had meetings discussing the current social media presence of LiU iGEM and what this year’s team wanted to get out of our social media. We decided that we wanted to improve our social media presence and to be more active on mainly Instagram, but also on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The goal with this was to increase the outreach of our content but also to gain a more interactive community. We continuously posted updates of what our team worked on, and our efforts resulted in a 50% increase in followers and up to 900% increase in likes on our posts. Besides gaining a larger audience, our social media efforts also led to us connecting with people who later turned out to be immensely helpful for our project.
