Education

In order to promote the Life Science and Synthetic Biology and iGEM events more widely, we have planned a series of events in schools and collaborated with several teams in order to expand our outreach.

1. In-school education

CKWA is a consistent school from kindergarten to high school, and our team members are in different grades. Based on their own feedback, we found that many students around us are interested in life science and related knowledge, but what they learn from textbooks is very little and does not satisfy their interest. So we planned a series of educational activities, including an event promotion, two lectures and an interesting hands-on experiment content.

1.1 STEM WEEK Exhibition

We took advantage of the school's STEM WEEK in May and applied for a special booth with the school administration. We made two special posters to showcase this year's CKWA team's first participation in the iGEM competition, as well as to introduce interesting knowledge of biology to the audience by combining the students' individual strengths, including interesting content such as the modification of engineered bacteria and the detection of new coronaviruses.

Also, through this event, we invited some students to fill out our electronic questionnaire.
https://www.wjx.cn/vj/hKrhqoJ.aspx

The questionnaire was filled out in Chinese, and the details can be found by visiting the link in the poster. For the convenience of iGEM students, we have synchronized the English version of the content here.

CKWA Biology Study Interest Survey Questionnaire Classmates.

Hello everyone! This survey is to understand your interest in learning biology, and we will launch interesting activities based on the results of this Thank you for your support and cooperation, and welcome to our follow-up activities!

Basic personal information: [matrix text questions]
Grade: ________________________
Nickname: ________________________
1. I like taking biology class. [Single-choice question] *
○ A. Completely match
B. More in line with
C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
2. I spend very little time on biology. [Single-choice] *
○ A.Completely match
B. Quite fit
○ C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
3. I like to continue to look for relevant information outside of class. [Single-choice] *
A. Completely match
B. Quite fit
C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
4. often feel happy when studying biological content.[Single-choice question] *
A. Completely fit
B. Quite fit
○ C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
5. I like to read biology-related books.[Single-choice] *
A. Completely match
B. Quite fit
C. Not sure
D.Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
6. I like to do hands-on biology experiments. [Single-choice] *
○ A.Completely match
B. Quite fit
C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
7. I will not go the extra mile to read biology-related books.[Single-choice]*
A. Completely match
B.Quite fit
C. Not sure
D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
8. To find relevant biological information, I will take the initiative to communicate with my classmates.[Single-choice]*
A. Completely match
B. Quite fit
○ C. Not sure
○ D. Relatively does not match
○ E. Not at all
What kind of extracurricular activities in biology do you like [Multiple choice] *
□ Knowledge lectures
□ Experience sharing
□ Hands-on experiments
What else do you expect from the extracurricular content of biology?
_________________________________

According to the questionnaire, we found that the students were very interested in biology. 125 valid questionnaires were received, including 37 from the primary section and 88 from the secondary section.

We believe that one of the reasons for the high percentage in the middle school section is that there is more biology content in the science classes offered to middle school students, so students are more interested in biology. Another possibility is that because it is an electronic questionnaire, fewer students in the elementary department carry smartphones, which also makes it difficult to collect the questionnaire.

For questions 1-8, we calculated the weighted scores by combining the students' answers.

The overall score of interest in biology was 3.3 for the elementary school and 4.2 for the secondary school (out of 5). We talked with our biology teacher, Ms. Sara, and she believes that part of the reason for this is that the elementary students' interest in biology is actually similar to the middle school students (4.4 vs. 4.5), and the reason for the lower score in the elementary department is the lack of ability to find information outside of class and the lack of hands-on experiments (3.0 vs. 4.1). She will also make some adjustments to the future biology teaching schedule of the elementary department based on the results of our questionnaire, and gave high praise to our questionnaire.

Next, regarding the extracurricular activities of biology, the students in the secondary and primary sections were slightly different, but both were very interested in the hands-on experiments.

The elementary school group was more interested in knowledge lectures than experience sharing, and the feedback showed that the elementary school students were more interested in acquiring new knowledge. Meanwhile, in the last open-ended question, we also received some meaningful responses to the content. For example, questions related to new coronaviruses, especially nucleic acid detection, questions about cells, bacteria and some microbial topics and questions related to genes and genetic diseases were the majority.

Based on this questionnaire, we designed the next activities.

1.2 Lecture on New Coronavirus and its detection

In the two years since the outbreak of the new coronavirus, our students have gone through a series of trials and tribulations, such as quarantine, suspension, online classes, and resumption of classes, and have had many experiences with the nucleic acid test for the new coronavirus. Therefore, we gave a knowledge sharing session to the elementary school students on the topic of neo-coronavirus testing principles.

After the sharing session, the students asked a lot of questions about the neo-coronavirus test and the outbreak. The lecture not only taught the elementary school students about Nucleic acid detection, but also aroused the interest of many students in life science, and in the post-session survey, most of the students gave the comment that they "gained a lot".

1.3 Synthetic biology lecture and iGEM

For the secondary section, we chose to share the experience that was more popular. Many students, including our classmates, were curious about the competition we participated in this year, so we gave a lecture to the middle school team, which included what iGEM is, information about the competition, the topic we chose this year, and some basic knowledge and progress of synthetic biology.

Through this talk, we shared our experience of participating in the competition in the first year to the students, and we hope to have new team members join our iGEM club in 2022.

1.4 Interesting experiments.

In the questionnaire we found that most of the students are interested in biological experiments, of which there are not many experiments that people can participate in at school. In order to further enhance people's interest in life science, understanding microorganisms, molecular biology as well as synthetic biology, we used the experimental conditions of our team to design a set of interesting drawing experiments on transforming fluorescent protein E. coli specifically to attract students to participate.

Using the strains on hand, we conducted the culture and amplification of the bacteria and transformed the fluorescent protein pellet with several fluorescent proteins, including green fluorescent protein.

When the students who participated in the experiment asked why there were only 3 colors of red and green and no other blue, we also explained to the students the difference between different colors of fluorescent proteins. In the subsequent communication, we found out that BIT-China had used blue fluorescent protein pellet, so we contacted them and asked for this plasmid, and measured and expressed it in the lab. We are ready to add this plasmid to our future experiments to improve the fun for everyone.

2. External part

While the on-campus portion of the program is about educating people about our project and biology, the off-campus portion of the program is about learning from high school teams in similar grades as ours, as well as more mature college teams and former iGEM participants like many others.

2.1 Meetup

As a first-time iGEM team, we followed some Chinese iGEM organizations' WeChat public numbers and saw the first iGEM offline Meetup in Beijing recommended by CCIC. During the event, we gained a lot of knowledge and friendship, especially we met several members of CCIC and several university teams, who provided us with a lot of knowledge and technical guidance. We also got to know our partnership teams during this event. This gave us a lot of motivation and confidence for the unknown competition. In addition, we also participated in the China meetup organized by Jiangnan University team and the 8th iGEM China exchange tournament by online participation, these exchange activities are very rewarding for us new teams, and during the exchange time we found that many of our doubts are actually faced by everyone.

2.2 Participate in the Synthetic Biology Festival in Beijing area.

2.2 Participate in the Synthetic Biology Festival in Beijing area.

Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, it was very difficult for us to participate in offline meetups in the following months until October, when we finally attended a synthetic biology festival organized by the keystone team, an offline fair with the participation of several iGEM teams. Since we couldn't go to the finals this year, we wanted to participate in this event to simulate a poster session, to promote our competition to other teams, and to share our work with them.