Team:XJTLU-CHINA/Communication
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communication
Overview
The aim of our Education and Communication is to be targeted, sustainable and extensive. Specifically, our content for education should be cogitative which may leave an impressive impact on audience so that we can motivate more people to join the science community and make progress together.
In order to better achieve these three points，we designed a questionnaire to ask the public about this and received a total of 448 responses. Nearly 80% of them want to know about iGEM and the project through Wechat public account tweets, 60% of them are more interested in video platform (eg. Bilibili), and nearly 50% of them know about iGEM through the narration of relatives and friends. In addition, 43.75% of through the school or community publicity, which means that our education needs to influence more people through these means, so we did:
- iGEM Quarterly
- Online Education Public Course: Synthetic Biology
- Taught about Food Safety and Basic Biology to Primary School
- Taught High School Students about SynBio
- Workshop at Youth Museum
- Lecture on Synthetic Biology
What did we do
iGEM Quarterly
By collaborating with the iGEM Club, we obtained a growing influence and attention inside XJTLU. Thanks to iGEM club for their promotion of our team and their contribution to HP work. We know their demands of science education in the engagement with the iGEM club is as follows :
1. What we do in iGEM
2. Experience of senior students
3. Cytobiology
4. Synthetic biology
5. Basic knowledge of biology
6. Biology article recommendation
So that, we developed a package of quarterlies targeting biology lovers to encourage them to step in and explore by themselves and spread awareness about biology, we have already wrote two quarterlies following demands.
Firstly, we presented with pictures and texts of the specific content and awards of the XJTLU-CHINA from 2015 to 2021,
Secondly，Interview with former iGEM members, studying their experience and reduce our chances of making the same mistakes .
Then, show basic knowledge of biology, and understand the current development of biology and international frontier knowledge.
Last, recommend useful biological articles and books to enrich their extra-curricular life and master more biological knowledge at the same time.
Based on questionnaire, we also put our quarterly into Wechat public account tweets, more than 500 people read and show their interest in it. And we sincerely hope these potential students can join us, becoming the future generation of iGEMers. Thanks our iGEM club members help us to write it. In accordance with the iGEM spirit, the quarterly is of course free to print out for anyone looking through this page!
Online Education Public Course: Synthetic Biology
From the Beginning Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the popularity of online course, as an alternative to offline teaching, we launched the popular science course "Synthetic Biology " and “what’s novel coronavirus” for the public.
More than 5200 audiences watch our Synthetic Biology course and had been "liked" more than 260 times.
Audience says: “For the layman, this is the most detailed and vivid video I have ever seen, great, how to contact you , looking forward to continuous updates!!” That gave us great motivation and video is a good way to spread knowledge.
Educated with Hanlin Primary School
To further share our learnings, we contacted Hanlin primary school. On October 8th, we made a real-time offline lesson for the students of Grade 6. Based on our questionnaire, We know that most people do not know enough about some common sense of food safety and do not pay enough attention to the physical discomfort after eating unsafe food. We hope to cultivate awareness of food safety and nutrition from an early age.
In class, we introduced them to food safety, showed them how to prevent the occurrence of foodborne diseases, and also introduced them to the current usages of synthesis biology.
Lecture for Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University Affiliated School
Middle school students are at a formative stage of their lives where what they learn can impact their perception and understanding of the world as they age. Therefore, an early understanding and appreciation of synthetic biology amongst high school students is important.
In the lecture, we first introduced the fantastic biology world. Then we elaborated on what is synthetic biology about and what is iGEM Foundation. Of course, we propaganda our team and our project. And also introduced them to the current usages of synthesis biology. By providing examples of how biological science is applied in real world situations through synthetic biology, it is hoped that high school students will be inspired to pursue synthetic biology and be able to apply it to real life situations. We also recorded a video about the process of phage works and our project this year. The content included phage invasion route, transfection and lysis. We sent the video to their school. Their students watched the video and their teachers also gave us extremely positive feedbacks and comments from students.
Workshop at Suzhou Science & Technology Museum For Yourth
In September 2021, we held a science workshop titled "food safety and nutrition health" in Suzhou Science & Technology Museum for Youth. Why did we hold this activity? As we focused on the reading of journals and news reports related to foodborne disease, we found that there is a huge gap between the understanding of the general public and the scientific fact of the difference. Therefore, we chose focus on food safety, which have a relatively high-risk rate among children, as the workshop topic. We hoped to promote correct understanding of foodborne disease among the youngsters and their parents.
The workshop focused on the definition, characteristic, pathogenic factors, treating method of the foodborne disease. It also contained how we should prepare food before eating and what should we do if we get food poisoning, which is the first-aid method. There were about 100 attendees, including primary school students and their parents. In our lecture, we employed a video briefly introducing foodborne and interactive demonstration for the audiences. The teachers at the museum and the audiences gave good reputation towards the lecture, for it introduce this topic to the public very concisely. It provided the public with solid knowledge that can’t be easily learnt from the media.
Lecture on Synthetic Biology
We decided to enhance the influence of the iGEM competition and synthesis biology at XJTLU. So we provide an iGEM club to develop interests and skills in out-of-class science. On September 30th, we held a meeting in our university to popularize synthetic biology and present our projects to the entire school, trying to absorb new force.
As we spoke, students from a variety of majors, including potential iGEMers, listened attentively. Our purpose was to explain what synthetic biology is in detail, such as how synthetic biologists work, and what we acquired over the course of this year's research. They are fascinated by the world we describe as synthetic biology.
During question time, they asked a lot of questions, wondering how they would need to join us. We were surprised by their enthusiasm and it seems that we have succeeded in getting more people involved in synthetic biology.
