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Human Practices

With More Humanities, Do More Practices.

In order to understand the extent of the public’s understanding of biology and synthetic biology for planning our Human Practices, we interviewed hundreds of citizens before our projects started. We hope that we can learn the current social situation and get the project inspiration. From the investigation, the problems existing will make our Human Practices significant and targeted. The feedback we received for using will push our project closer to the public.

During the interviews, we asked 3 different questions:

Question1: How much do you know about Biology?

Question2: What is your attitude towards Synthetic Biology?

Question3: What advantages do you want DNA storage to have?

There is no doubt that we will get lots of different feedback. We aimed at getting in touch with more and more people, understanding what they are interested in, making clear what they misunderstand. The results of investigation are showed below.

Fig.1.The degree of understanding pie chart.

In order to know the situation in different age groups, we conducted a more detailed statistical analysis of the survey results. This helped us to take different approaches to people of different ages.

Fig.2.The degree of different ages understanding bar chart.

We can see, the situation is serious. It’s very important and necessary to change it. In this summer, we tried our best to spread the knowledge about Biology and influence more people. As iGEM spirit encouraged us, we are willing to drive more people to learn biology.

Our Approach

During the interview and investigation, we found that many misunderstandings existed in the society nowadays. Even though the problem is universal while our strength is thin, we tried to solve it from little things we can do. Sometimes, little things have large effect.

STEP 01, Propaganda

"Science for all" is a central concept in contemporary science education.

We decided to talk to the public about the knowledge of synthetic biology to understand their views and attitudes towards synthetic biology. There is a wide range of people in community, including people from different industries and people of all ages. So community is a certain representative place to do propaganda. In the meantime, we took forms of posters publicity and leaflets distribution to exert more profound and durable influence on the masses; we interviewed passersby to directly learn about the level of people’s understanding of synthetic biology and change their wrong views. In order to increase the scope of publicity and improve the credibility of the results of the interviews, our footsteps are around every corner in Chengdu. As the communities we interviewed are shown in the picture following.

Fig.3.The places we interviewed.

In addition to conducting interviews and introductions, we had to do focused and targeted propaganda. As we believed that students in primary and middle school are the most people in need to receive some basic education about biology and synthetic biology we paid attention to holding the lecture and activity to arouse their interest in science. In the lecture, we showed synthetic biology and iGEM with stories and videos to more than 200 students in Puyang Junior High School. We built plasmids with functions we wanted together.

As we all know, putting theory into practice is very important. Students in Grades 6 and 7 accompanied by their parents took part in our activity, “To Be Scientist Tomorrow”. We led them to do a little experiment that extracting DNA from banana, but all equipment was used in our daily life (such as dishwashing, storage bags, etc.). All of the kids successfully accomplished the lab driven by interest.

Fig.4.The students are making experiments by themselves.

STEP 02, Edutainment

For many people, biology is a subject that they are unfamiliar with. In society, People lack the mediums to contact with biology. Biology is separate from ordinary people’s life. We decided to adopt a more acceptable way to make more people touch it directly. So, we combined the conceptions of biology with the well-known game-2048.

Fig.5.The attitude of people to learn biology.

We created a new mobile phone game called Bio2048, which encouraged people to learn more about biology in an entertaining way. Not only did we put it onto the Tencent Application of Treasure for ordinary people to download and play, but also pushed its information in our sina microblog and Qzone to collect feedback. Combining it with the education of biology, we aroused students’ interests of study.

Fig.6.The interface of Bio2048.

In order to learn the effect of Bio2048 for improvement and propaganda, we organized a “game-try” activity in the street. Almost 200 people tried our game, and an overseas student impressed us much. He expressed much interest in our game, and got really high score. When we asked him, he said he had touched similar game before, and he made a positive comment on the edutainment form, which made us know that our process is beneficial.

Fig.7.The foreign friend is playing Bio2048.

With everybody’s suggestion and the high praise, we hoped our achievement would be taken into class, because the biology knowledge in game agreed with the contents in book and the students preferred the original class tools. We introduced our outcome to students and teachers who were glad to help us access application in class. Puyang lecture was the first time to take Bio2048 to class. Students had high enthusiasm to play our games. After that, we contacted with educational services to try the game in class.

Fig.8.Bio2048 in class.

STEP 03, Inspiration

During the period that we learned and thought about our project, we considered to take some actions to seek inspiration. We hold a lecture with UESTC-China in Puyang Junior High School. We introduced synthetic biology with some well-known examples at first. Then, it was time for the students to build their own plasmids. They added the functional genes like Bioluminescence gene into the plasmids. So the plasmids carried the information of the light emitting gene. “The plasmid carried the information of biological characteristics” inspired us: was DNA able to carry a wide variety of information? Along this idea, we explored the DNA information storage.

Fig.9.We are building the plasmids together.

When we were designing our software, we hoped the idea would come from the public. After all, the final software achievement will return to life. We did street interviews, from campus to market. We wanted to hear the voice of the public’s imagination to the DNA information storage system. In surprise, we received many useful information from the communication. A young man’s opinion left the deepest impression on us: he nearly had higher expectation for the storage capacity, equipment volume and storage speed. He had special interest in our project and gave us great help to decide the property and function of software.

Fig.10.The interview about Bio101.

Sometimes, we would be restricted in the knowledge we already have. In terms of creativity, we are far from children. To have a future blueprint of our project, we talked with pupils about the DNA information storage in the activity, “To Be Scientists Tomorrow”. They were very active and said they wanted the files would not be lost. Children said what they like, absolutely, their innocence inspired us.

Fig.11.A girl is imaginating about Bio101.

We collected the professors’ suggestions besides the ordinary people. We met and discussed in iGEM Southwest China Union. The participants not only focused on software functions, but also were curious about the algorithms. During the communication, they gave suggestions about the development of software performance from a professional view.

Evaluation of Our Approach

On the way to achieve our goal, we concentrated on the progress of our project and its result. As we found there were the points that were not considered, we decided to change our approach. Throughout this process, we learned evaluation is a result of hard work.

Evaluation of Propaganda

According to various interviews, in fact, most people generally believed something related to synthetic biology is dangerous. So they did not eat genetically modified food as far as possible. We introduced simply about synthetic biology and tried to eliminate their mistakes. Obviously, not all of people can accept us. But we will continue to make efforts to correct the thinking of public.

From the lecture, students knew more about synthetic biology and are all more interested in biology. Creating plasmids by their own hands makes the technology easily understood. Then the activity let children feel biology more directly through doing experiment by themselves. We remember one boy said that experiment is untouchable in ordinary life, today he felt cool and excited. This is what we want to achieve. The activity changed the stereotyped images of biology, and it becomes vivid in masses’ eyes. Young children are new-rising force of our country. Letting them realize the great development prospect and arousing their interests in biology are significant to continue biology studies.

Evaluation of Edutainment

Bio2048 is a special tool to learn biology. We practiced to test its feasibility. We opened a sina microblog to push our project progress and it has already attracted 1030 fans. Many people made comments after trying, and most said that the game was attractive for the combination of knowledge and enjoyment. Some thought that our game was lack of description words, therefore, we added introductions to build a learning mode in the game for easier understanding.

Students in primary and middle school are extremely interested in the way of acquiring new conceptions. Teachers are surprised to see that it isn’t only a kind of edutainment but also an integration of math and biology. In the activity, “To Be Scientists Tomorrow”, we held a Bio2048 game. A parent, as a biology teacher, was delighted in Bio2048, and she thought it was very educational and necessary to be introduced and used in class. Surely, it was a recognition of our work and we are trying our best to realize the idea. We are willing to develop more tools like Bio2048, combining education with interest and focusing on the contents and forms. We believe, our work will influence more people to learn and research biology.

Evaluation of Inspiration

We do Human Practices to practice our thoughts and get inspirations. However, we are surprised to find the effect is bidirectional.

In Puyang lecture, we got the inspiration of our project. At the same time, the operation of building plasmids was an opportunity for the students to stimulate their creativity and imagination. We interviewed the public, it was a way to contact them with science. Some products appear to solve the inconvenience of life. So, everyone should dare to imagine. As to students, their rich imagination was an eye-opener to us. Introducing our ideas to pupils will deepen their understanding of biology and show the great prospects for the development of Biology. These practices arouse people’s interests in biology and make them improve their initiative, especially to the students, who undertake the mission of continuing to move forward.

We can see that our Human Practices are mutually beneficial and win-win.

Impact on Our Scientific Project

Fig.12.Our presentation in iSWU.

Human practice, which is necessary for the birth of a project, means that every design and change should be related to humanity and make more and more practice. Therefore, the impact on our project will be the center we consider and summarize.

When we first tried to make our inspiration come true, we interviewed and asked people for advice, and our instructor, classmates, friends in iGEM Southwest China Union gave us lots of suggestions, which were about icon design, conception definition, user interface, compression algorithm and so on. As the video you can see, the three questions are the origin of our inspiration, which provides continuous ideas and creations for us.

During the interview and invitation, we completed designs, then some interviewers in different occupations including primary school and middle school students, passers-by and teachers, provided their feedback to us, most of which was the feeling of this game and some of them helped us improve our methods.

Benefits shared out

As we put great effort in the design of our project, we want to share what we can do within and beyond iGEM. No one is an island, hence, we believe that we can change a little around ourselves, which can influence more and more people. Different people have different understanding about science, about biology, what we do can make the basic knowledge closer to ordinary people and help them build a valid view of science.

For students

As we believed students in primary and middle school are the most people in need to receive some basic education about biology and synthetic biology to promote their interests. We did a series of activities to achieve this. The students showed great interest to our educational games, during which they hand-on practiced and smiled after they had completed the tasks. We found their enthusiasm grown after the game and they asked us more questions which becomes more imaginative than before. We could feel their happiness when we said goodbye. We believe that the smile is the seed of science rooted in their heart, which we wish can thrive along with them.

For teachers

Nowadays, many Chinese teachers are bothered by how to make knowledge easier to understand and how to push themselves closer to students. Maybe what we did cannot solve problems essentially, however, we trust that the edutainment is one of the most efficient ways to do something better. The way we convey the knowledge to students, such as the game Bio2048 and plasmid model created by hand, can give an inspiration to teachers.

For ordinary people

Ordinary people are liable to misunderstand biology in our investigation. After our propaganda and popularization of biology science, more than 71% people changed their misunderstanding to biology technology. They acknowledged they did not realize that biology and technology was used so widely in everyday life. Otherwise, more than 84% people held a friendly attitude towards tomorrow’s biology development. An old gentleman expressed giant interest about our project Bio101 after our propaganda and was willing to drop in our lab, which surprised us a lot.

Fig.13.The public’s attitude changed after our effort.

Special practice: the show on University’s 60th Anniversary

On September 29th, 2016, here comes the 60th birthday of our university. With our project completed, we grasped the anniversary chance to show our achievement.

Fig.14.We are introducing our project to the foreign visitors.

Schoolfellows took care of the situation of scientific research and were willing to learn the creative works from students. We set an introduction station to demonstrate what we did this summer. We also took Bio101 in this display to let visitors have a try. Most visitors were professional, so our topic of communication was well over our project. We discussed the synthetic biology development trend, we compared electronic computer with biological computer. Schoolfellows said that not only our project but also DNA information storage system could represent a brand new field, which had huge potential and wide prospect.

Fig.15.A visitor is trying our software.

In the 60-year-old celebration, we showed iGEM, our achievement and the burgeoning subject of nowadays technology. Facing the smile and affirmation of school fellows, we felt what we did was so meaningful. At the same time, we hope our partners in UESTC can be on the way for the palace of scientific research all along.