Team:SJTang/Education
Educational Activities
As part of our efforts to promote synthetic biology, IGEM and understanding of synthetic biology and hydrogen energy, we decided to conduct presentations or seminars at schools that focus on displaying relative knowledge and the general concepts focused in our project. To gain a more comprehensive overview of the public opinions on hydrogen energy, we chose to design a relative questionnaire in both printed paper versions and electronic documents. Furthermore, to ensure the information present in the presentation is efficiently conveyed, we have developed multiple guidelines and standardized instructions to ensure the quality of the whole presentation process.
Our audience includes high school students and several new energy-related enterprises. The small reporting model allows for sufficient time for students and friends to interact, allowing students to consciously consider climate events and sustainable development. At the same time, the public can gain a deeper understanding of the meanings and prospects of synthetic biology and how it plays a significant role in contributing to the development of carbon neutrality today.
Preliminary planning
To further promote our project, popularize synthetic biology and hydrogen energy, we have created a teaching tool, which includes a PowerPoint and a guidebook that can help to promote science stories around synthetic biology and climate action, in which can further magnify the influences of our work.
In-class presentations
Presentations are presented in multiple high schools. A Powerpoint presentation on synthetic biology and bio-hydrogenation was created to encourage students to think more deeply about climate issues, industry restructuring, and energy substitution. In the educational activities, our team gave the students a presentation on what synthetic biology is, how it can be used, and how it is used in our project. Our goal is to introduce the significance of iGEM and to help them gain a better understanding of the topic. We introduce the topic to those students who are not familiar with it. Afterwards, participants successfully obtained a deeper understanding of synthetic biology, as well as the severe challenges we face in environmental protection.
Figure.1Photos taken during in-class presentations conducted at two different schools.
Figure.2Screenshots taken during the online presentation.
Extension Activities
Distributing surveys and questionnaires
After our team edited the questionnaire, we distributed it to the students who attended the education part, as well as to the public through various platforms such as Wechat, QQ, and group chats on Whatsapp to collect people's perspectives and understandings of synthetic biology and hydrogen energy.Through questionnaires, we intend to investigate the opinions and understandings of the public regarding hydrogen and synthetic biology as well as their attitudes towards these topics through an analysis of the public data.
Figure.3Screenshot of how online questionnaire links are distributed on Wechat.
Evaluating the success of using questionnaire
Our team collected 302 questionnaires in total. According to our analysis of the questionnaire results, many of the participants have quite a high certification, but they don't have a good understanding of hydrogen energy, its uses, and how it can be produced, as well as synthetic biology.
The questionnaire asks participants whether they have ever used hydrogen energy before, and nearly half say they haven't, while 35% have no impression of it. The other half of respondents say that hydrogen can only be used in a few fields, a quarter of them are unclear about the question, and even two of them believe that hydrogen cannot be used in any of the fields. Approximately 60% of people are aware that hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water, but only 37% are aware of the method of producing biological hydrogen. About 54% of people think hydrogen is necessary and conducive to environmental protection. Yet, 43% of them believe that the popularity of hydrogen energy depends on other factors, such as technology and social policies.
Nevertheless, hydrogen is becoming one of the most essential energies towards us, and an increasing number of fields will start to apply it. It is a very promising development goal, but most people think it can't play such a big role because most people don't have a comprehensive understanding of hydrogen as the concept of hydrogen is not intuitive to the public.
For more information detailing the analysis of the questionnaire, please see the attachment below:
The audience and we focused on the transportation and storage of hydrogen energy and the advantages of hydrogen energy, as well as the relationship between low-carbon environmental protection and economic development.
Hydrogen energy is a cleaner type of sustainable energy, which does not produce nitrogen oxides, sulphides or dust particles. When technology is advanced enough, carbon dioxide will not be produced. Furthermore, we evaluated the current transportation and storage problems of hydrogen energy: the need for a more mature industrial chain and more financial support.
In addition, we states the idea that low-carbon emission reduction can promote economic development to a certain extent. Low-carbon emission reduction leads to industrial structure reform and replacement in enterprises. This will result in higher quality technological and ecological economic development in the future. We are all looking forward to a green and beautiful future.
Conclusion
Throughout all the activities we have conducted for educational purposes, the aim of popularizing the concepts around synthetic biology and biohydrogen production is achieved, indicating the success of conducting educational activities. This series of activities gave the audience a more comprehensive understanding of the urgency of environmental issues, demonstrating the significance of hydrogen energy in the future markets and giving them a more direct overview of the meaningfulness of development on biohydrogen production. Also, the use of questionnaires as statistical tools greatly contributes much to finding out the general attitude of the public towards the usage of hydrogen energy in the future. It helps the team to gain a more detailed overview of the public's understanding of synthetic biology and their expectations for hydrogen energy development in the future market.