Team:NYMU-Taipei/HP/Silver-Outreach
8/6 Meetup in NYMU
Yang-Ming’s first time holding interschool meetup!
8/6 cannot be forgotten by every Yang-Ming student in iGEM. Having participating in iGEM for ten years in a row, this is our first time hosting 6 school for a interschool meetup. See How can we help teams interact with other teams at the Jamboree? World Café can be helpful
2 weeks before the meetup, CGU(Chang Gung University), NCTU(National Chiao Tung University), NTHU(National Tsing Hua University), NCCU(National Chung Cheng University) and us decided to have a meetup, and since we were familiar with TAS and we were going to be a meeting with TU(Tongji University), we proposed the bold idea of holding this meetup in NYMU. Thankfully, they accepted it and we got to prepare for all this.
We had presentation time in the morning, and hold the world café in the afternoon. Every team got all prepared, they were all engaged that keeping asking for suggestion during the break time. Since everyone understood that the objective of this meetup was ‘connection’, they were willing to break the ice and talk to strangers, who were then a new friend. This was such encouraging and inspiring for one first holding meetup.
In the lunch time, friends from different team move the tables and sat together. In the afternoon, we host a world café, the outcome is very fruitful.
How can we help teams interact with other teams at the Jamboree?
World Café can be helpful
At 7/26, I received email from Rosa, iGEM HQ. She told me that iGEM HQ was in the process of compiling all the ideas from around the world to help increase interaction in Jamboree. And I was glad that my proposed World Café is appreciated. In the document I am going to share with you the World Café we have in Taiwan, NYMU.
We held a Meetup welcoming 6 schools in Eastern Asia at 8/6, where we would like all the participants to communicate and share their ideas. That time, I thought of the World Café which can be helpful in enhancing the interaction between people who are unfamiliar with each other.
Thus, I put World Café into our meetup. In 8/6 afternoon, it was astonishing that all the participants were engaging in their talks and could not stop sharing their ideas in common. The atmosphere was far from icy. Every team was so creative that a team even came up with the idea of making an airplane with poster.
Before the Meetup, thankfully, I designed a survey for all the participants to better the Meetup (It is NYMU’s first time holding Meetup) and for feedback of World Café since I thought the result can be helpful for iGEM HQ and all iGEMers wanting to hold a conference or meetup aiming at increasing interaction. Below are the result of 31 responses from the participants. The survey was originally in Chinese, my team member Tom Liu and I translated the question and choices into English.
First, we would like to know if participants had ever joined in World Café. If most of the participants had experienced over it, then they’ll be skillful and know how to play. The outcome shows that most of the participants don’t have related experience of World Café, which turns out that the survey can provide helpful information for iGEM community, most of which, as far as I am concerned, don’t have related experience over World Café either.
We had several topics ranging synthetic biology, education, entrepreneurship, disciplinary learning, bio-medicine and big data. We did another survey right before the meetup to collect participants’ interests so as to design appropriate topics. The result turned out that most of the participants are interdisciplinary learners, enjoy independent music, interested in entrepreneurship…. We did a graph by software Tableau to show the outcome of the survey in the morning of the meetup.
We have 4 round in World Café. There are 12 tables with different questions. The following chart shows that most of the participants are satisfied with the topics.
Since there can be questions that participants had never engaged in, we wonder whether those topics peak their interests during World Cafe. The result shows that most of them are quite satisfactory.
Each round of World Café started with introduction. The introduction parts are supposed to break the ice, aiding shy people to tell their stories. We can infer from the chart that introduction is helpful for topic discussion, and it successfully encourages people to engage in further talks in break time.
We also wonder whether participants felt comfortable in discussion, the following chart shows that most of them shared pleasant time in topic discussion.
We also wonder what leads to harmonious talks. Self-introduction, interests in subject, friends, members with leadership and knowing the objective of World Café are factors that leads to intriguing talks.
On the other hand, knowing what leads to inharmonious talks is important, too. Unfamiliar members and interests are the main cause. It is important for the iGEM community to break the ice, arrange introduction prior to discussion or group people in a way so that there are friends in the same group can be essential to a harmonious topic discussion.
New things, innovative ideas, stepping into unfamiliar field are what we can give to all iGEMers.
The last 3 questions are designed to know what do they think of World Café.
First, we want to know that are they willing to participate in another World Café activity after this experience? 70% of the participants are positive to this question.
The below chart definitely encourages me. They thought it is deserve it
It may be the most important result in this document. 77% of participants would suggest iGEM to apply World Café as a way to promoter interaction and talks. Well, it is worth noted that 1 person did not think so, we would add an extra question for this part next time.
The outcome of this survey is fruitful. It showed us that World Café is helpful for topic discussion, catalyze more talks, which is what the NYMU iGEM meetup, as well as iGEM HQ and iGEM community, want to achieve. If World Café can work good on people with different interests, can it help facilitate people of all works? Can World Café help knowledge and information transfer between scientist and general public, to better both understanding of each other? These are the question that can be answered and I do believe the answer to be positive.
Acknowledgements
8/6 Meetup in NYMU
Yang-Ming’s first time holding interschool meetup!
8/6 is a day that cannot be forgotten by any Yang-Ming student in iGEM. Having participating in iGEM for ten years in a row, this is our first time hosting a 6 school interschool meetup. See How can we help teams interact with other teams at the Jamboree? World Café can be helpful
2 weeks before the meetup, CGU(Chang Gung University), NCTU(National Chiao Tung University), NTHU(National Tsing Hua University), NCCU(National Chung Cheng University) and us decided to have a meetup, and since we were familiar with TAS and we were going to be a meeting with TU(Tongji University), we proposed the bold idea of holding this 6 school meetup in NYMU. Thankfully, they accepted it and we started to prepare for the meetup.
We had presentation sections in the morning, and held the world café in the afternoon. Every team was well prepared. They were so fully engaged that they kept giving us suggestions during the break time. Since everyone understood that the objective of this meetup was "connection", they were willing to break the ice and talk to strangers, who quickly became new friends. This was very encouraging and inspiring for us since it was our first time holding a meetup.
During lunch time, people from different teams moved tables and sat together. In the afternoon, we host a world café, the outcome is very fruitful.
How can we help teams interact with other teams at the Jamboree?
World Café can be helpful
On 7/26, we received an email from Rosa, iGEM HQ. She told me that iGEM HQ was in the process of compiling all the ideas from around the world to help increase inter-team interaction in Jamboree. We were glad that our World Café is appreciated. In the document we are going to share with you the World Café we have hosted in NYMU, Taiwan.
We held a Meetup entertaining 6 schools from East Asia on 8/6. Since the main reason of hosting this conference was to encourage communication and the sharing of ideas between iGEM teams, we thought World Café was the perfect way to achieve our goal.
Thus, we put World Café into the schedule of our meetup. In the afternoon on 8/6, we were surprised by the willingness of people from different teams to share ideas with eachother. The atmosphere was far from icy. The creativity of the participants were awesome, one participating team even suggested that we should make giant paper airplanes to write our ideas on.
Before the Meetup, thankfully, We designed a survey for all the participants acquire feedback in hopes to improve future meetups, since we have had no previous experience of holding such conferences. We also included a section dedicated to World Café feedback because we believe that the data gathered from this conference could help other iGEM team that wants to host idea-exchange meetups, like this one, in the future. The 31 survey responses from the participants of our meetup. The survey was originally in Chinese, Two of our team members, Tom Liu and Aaron Kao, translated it into English.
We were interested to see if any of the participants have participated in World Café before our meetup. The outcome shows that most of the participants don’t have World Café related experience.
We had several topics including synthetic biology, education, entrepreneurship, disciplinary learning, bio-medicine, and big data. We did another survey right before the meetup to collect participants’ interests to design appropriate topics. The result shows that most of the participants are interdisciplinary learners, enjoy independent music, and are interested in entrepreneurship. We constructed a graph with the software Tableau to show the outcome of the survey in the morning of the meetup.
We had 4 round in World Café. There were 12 tables with different questions. The following chart shows that most of the participants are satisfied with the topics we have provided.
Since there can be topics that participants had limited to no knowledge about, we wonder if those topics peak their interests during World Cafe. The result shows that most of them are quite satisfied.
Each round of World Café started with introduction. The introduction parts are supposed to encourage shy people to share their stories. We can infer from the chart that introduction was helpful for topic discussion and it successfully encourages people to engage in further talks during break time.
We also wonder whether participants felt comfortable in discussion, the following chart shows that most of them shared a pleasant time in topic discussion.
We were also interested in what leads to pleasant conversations. Self-introduction, interests in the subject, friends, members with leadership skills and knowledge of the objectives of World Café are factors that leads to intriguing talks.
On the other hand, knowing what leads to unengaging talks is important too. Unfamiliar members and disinterest in the subject matter are the main causes. It is important for the hosting team to break the ice, arrange introduction prior to discussion or group people in a way so that there are friends in the same group can be essential to a engaging topic discussion.
New things, innovative ideas, stepping into unfamiliar field are what we can give to all iGEMers.
The last 3 questions are designed gather the participant's opinions of World Café.
First, we want to know that are they willing to participate in another World Café activity after this experience. Results show that 70% of the participants are willing to participate in similar activities in the future.
The data the chart below definitely encourages us.
This may be the most important result in this document. 77% of participants would suggest iGEM to apply World Café as a way to promoter interaction and talks. Well, it is also worth noting that 1 participant did not think so, we would add an extra question to unveil the reason behind this in future surveys.
The outcome of this survey is fruitful. It showed us that World Café is indeed helpful for increasing topic discussion, which is what the NYMU iGEM meetup, as well as iGEM HQ and iGEM community, want to achieve. If World Café can bring people with different interests together, can it help facilitate people of all works? Can World Café help knowledge and information transfer between scientist and general public, to better both understanding of each other? These are the question that can be answered and we believe the answer is yes.
Acknowledgements
