Introduction
Our Human Practices is centred around improving
public engagement and tackling the lack of education of synthetic biology
in the UK and overseas. In particular we are targeting education at a
secondary school and university level, focusing on the interdisciplinary
nature of the subject and assessing diversity. We want to highlight the
benefits and potential applications of this new scientific field, as well
as trying to uncover the reasons why synthetic biology doesn’t get as much
positive attention as it should have.
We are working hard to introduce a new synthetic biology
module to The University of Exeter’s curriculum, which will be available
to students as soon as September 2017. For school children we have created
a board game, BioMech, which educates students in key synthetic biology
concepts in an easy to understand and engaging way. Furthermore, we have
visited school and fairs, giving talks and running workshops where we aim
to give children an introduction to what synthetic biology is and how it
already affects their lives for the better.
By interviewing researchers, academics and other
professionals within the scientific community and presenting
their opinions in a fun and educational way, we hope to have
made synthetic biology a more attractive discipline to the general public.
Education: BioMech
We initially had the idea of an educational
synthetic biology board game named BioMech early on
in the summer when we discovered the shocking lack of
synthetic biology education in the United Kingdom. The
aim of BioMech is to introduce secondary and sixth form
students to scientific field in a fun and interactive way.
The game teaches students to plasmid construction, biological
parts and other essential biological concepts like mutation.
Why did we decide to create a board game?
After researching synthetic biology education in the UK,
we discovered that there is a limited number of cheap and nationally
available educational resources for biology, with many teachers needing
to create their own material to inspire students. Furthermore, there is
also no education in synthetic biology for secondary school or A level students.
In response to this we decided to get into contact with Edexcel,
a GCSE and A Level exam board, and enquired the possibility of introducing
synthetic biology in the syllabus. They responded with “iGEM could produce
support resources, for the existing A level, which introduced ideas of
synthetic biology and which could be used as ‘stretch and challenge’
materials by teachers”. At this point we focused our efforts on making
BioMech an easily accessible educational tool that can be used alongside
the current syllabus, building on the cellular biology and genetics that
are currently taught at GCSE and A-Level biology. >
The aim of the game
The game teaches students about plasmid construction,
biological parts and other essential biological concepts like
mutation. The game starts with 10 BioBrick cards for each player
who places 5 cards on the board to construct their plasmid. The
winner of the round is the player that designed the plasmid that
will be most useful in a randomly chosen scenario, the most appropriate
plasmid is determined by card scores and player discussion. After a round,
5 more cards are dealt and the game continues, the winner is the person that
wins the most rounds.
Initial testing at The Judd School (July 2016)
Playing the game
After making an initial prototype the team took the game
to The Judd School, a secondary school in Tonbridge,
United Kingdom, to be tested by a group of GCSE students. We started
off the day by introducing the iGEM project as well as explaining
a few fundamental synthetic biology terms such as BioBricks and
plasmids. After forming two groups, the students began to play
the game under our supervision and quickly grasped the rules.
All of the students got involved with the game, often reacting
enthusiastically whenever a mutation occurred in a cell.
Interviews and Feedback
Even though the game was a hit with the students,
we still wanted to determine if the game was a viable option
as an education resource; the game needed to be able to educate
and inspire students. After the session we conducted a number
of interviews with some of the students, with a few saying that
they were much more likely to study biology after playing the game.
I barely knew about any of this before today, I’m definitely
much more likely to take Biology for A-Level.
We interviewed two teachers at The Judd School to ask if they would
consider using a learning resource such as our own in their lessons
and if they thought the board game would prepare their students for
entering iGEM in the coming years. The head of key stage 3, Dr Courel,
thought that as the game enables students to consider real life applications
for genetically modified organism, and that this would aid the students when
thinking about their own iGEM project. The head of biology at Judd School,
Mrs Andrew’s thought our game would make a great intermediate step between
theory in the classroom, and introducing students to the wet lab.
>
Improvements
The Judd School visit was both a successful and productive,
as we got plenty of high quality feedback from both students and teachers
on how we could improve the game to educate more effectively and reach out
to more schools.
The students suggested a number of minor improvements to
the gameplay through a short survey, the results of this can be found
here. The largest change to our game came after Mrs Andrew’s
asked if she could keep a copy of the game herself. We knew that we could not
afford to give board games out too everyone, so we came up with a new way to
distribute our game at no cost. Our board game BioMech is now online to download
for free on our wiki here, with full printing instructions.
This meant that our original target of making our game accessible to all UK
students was a lot more realistic.
Production
After testing the game at a couple of science conventions
such as the Big Bang Fair South West and Britain Needs
Scientists, we were give feedback to help us make some minor improvements.
After this was complete, we began manufacturing the game.
The unboxing of BioMech can be seen below:
This new version of the game was played by students from
Colyton Grammar School. As part of our initiative
to make BioMech accessible to as many GCSE students as possible
we have began leaving copies of the game at schools free of charge,
in order to benefit the education of synthetic biology for GCSE and
A level students.
Higher Education
Despite the possible applications of synthetic biology
and, as shown by the number of iGEM teams entering each year into
the competition, the interest of both undergraduates, overgraduates
and high school students for the subject is growing, there is very
little synthetic biology education in the UK.
Currently there is no education of
synthetic biology at the University of Exeter and
there are very few synthetic biology courses
and modules across the United Kingdom. However, we
want to target this gap in education of synthetic biology
at a university level.
In response to this, we have decided to
create two new synthetic biology module for 2nd and
3rd year students at our university. In these modules
we will give the students an introduction into
the fundamentals of synthetic biology, covering topics
such as plasmid design and construction, analytical techniques
and DNA constructs and genome integration. We are having a
large focus on biosafety and kill switches since we think this
is a major issue in the field. Furthermore, we want to help
the students to improve their research skills through a student
led journal club that will be run by former iGEM students.
Public Engagement
Desert Island Science
Over the summer we created a series of podcasts in the style
of the BBC radio 4 programme ‘Desert Island Disks’. In this series we we
interview academics and key public science figures, such as Prof. Jim Al-khalili,
Prof, Richard Kitney, Dr. Lynn Rothschild and Prof. John Love, about synthetic biology
and public engagement.
During the interview we ask 'if you were
stuck on a desert island what...'
- 2 songs would you take to listen to
- 1 piece of science equipment would you take
- 1 luxury item would you take
- 1 book to read
- You also have acess to a solar powered beto lab,
and a copy of the iGEM registry with full access to all
the parts
We also ask questions involving synethtic biology, scientific
outreach, edcuation and about their work.
These podcasts aim to be entertaining,
educational and easily accessible. Podcasts are a
great way to reach a wider audience to educate them about
synthetic biology and change any negative views of the topic.
By featuring public science figures from a variety of disciplines,
it will highlight the importance of different subjects in the
interdisciplinary topic of synthetic biology. We hope
this will inspire people from a range of backgrounds
to learn about the subject. The podcasts are available
to listen to on Youtube and SoundCloud for free for everyone.
Westminister iGEM UK meet-up 2016
In August we travelled to Westminster for the
iGEM UK annual meet-up, an opportunity to meet other UK teams,
discuss our ideas and projects and have a chance to practise our
presentation in front of students and academics. Although our
presentation was well received we were also given very important
feedback, such as why we hadn’t incorporated biosafety into our
game and our module. Since then we have rectified these issues.
Furthermore, we were given talks about
the fundamentals of synthetic biology and also about
conducting reliable surveys for our outreach.
We also had the chance to set up a collaboration with Glasgow,
and help out Warwick by directing them to schools and teams that
they could collaborate with or mentor.
Science fairs and work experience students
Big Bang South West
The Big Bang South West Science Fair was one of the first places we tested BioMech.
Our stall at the fair focussed on introducing students and teachers to synthetic biology and
gathering information on how people perceive synthetic biology. Students were aged between 8
and 18, and teachers from a large variety of schools from across the South West.
For the fair, we wanted to show visitors the disciplinary nature of synthetic biology.
We displayed and discussed how physics, chemistry, biology and engineering can be used in synthetic
biology. We created two leaflets: one which explained the basics of Synthetic Biology, and one which
explained the iGEM competition. We created two companion powerpoint presentations to the leaflets
which went in more depth, and played them on loop on two iPads on the stand. As well as this we
premiered a very basic form of BioMech for students and teachers try out. One student told us:
BioMech is more fun than the card games I played at a
card game convention in Birmingham
We also drew inspiration from the ‘Activities Booklet’ created by the William and Mary
iGEM 2015 team. The sweetie DNA construction activity proved incredibly popular amongst the
younger students and gave us an opportunity to talk to them about basic genetics as well as some synthetic biology ideas.
Britain Needs Scientists
The second science fair was Britain Needs Scientists, hosted at the University of Exeter.
This fair was aimed at students aged 16-18 who were interested in STEM careers. Here we focused on
tying the STEM subjects into Synthetic Biology and were able to discuss more complex aspects of synthetic biology
Equality and Diversity
Background
Background:
The fundamental reason for targeting equality
and diversity within science, is that synthetic
biology has the chance to be hierarchically and
systematically equal from the beginning. If those
working in the field can encourage the importance
of diversity to the younger generations, then when
synthetic biology becomes a well established and publicly
recognised field of science, it has the possibility of being
recognised for its progressive nature towards a gender, racial
and socio-economical equality.
Using statistics gained from the Equality and Diversity
office at the University of Exeter, and further statistics
on gender inequality within the College of Life and Environmental
Sciences (CLES) and the College of Engineering Mathematics and
Physical Sciences (CEMPS) provided by Athena Swan, we want
to highlight the problem with inequality and diversity to a wider audience.
How we will achieve this
We aim to achieve this by focusing on three distinct areas:
- Firstly, the initial reaction of students and academics to the
concept of sexism and diversity within science. With this we hope
to gauge whether sexism in science is a widely recognised across
the UK in higher education or if not enough is being done to publicise
the problem. We also want to understand how the definition of diversity
changes across the world.
- Secondly, the work that is being done by academics at the University
of Exeter to both publicise and change the problem of inequality within
science. We want to use the statistics provided by the University Equality,
Diversity and Inclusivity group and the Athena Swan group to understand how
equality and diversity within science has changed over time. Furthermore we
want to begin the discussion of what more can be done.
- Thirdly, the role that students can have in promoted equality and
diversity within various fields. We want to speak to student leaders
about how they view the situation and what they think can be done to
promote not just gender diversity but also diversity in terms of
religion, ethnicity, disability and socio-economic background.
Does sexism in science exist?
We asked members of different iGEM teams their opinions and experiences of sexism in science to try to gauge, on a small scale, whether it is a widely recognised problem.
Although this is a difficult issue, it is one that needs to be resolved. We thought that by asking students without prior warning of the questions we could get a real understanding of their view of the issue without time to formulate a more PC version using data from the internet. We also wanted to capture their genuine reactions to the question of whether sexism in science exists to help us identify whether students are shocked by the idea of sexism in their field or if they have experienced it directly themselves. Obviously this is only small scale, but by asking students from across the UK we may be able to begin to understand how widespread the problem is known.
What is ‘diversity’?
The Gender Study
Paris Bettencourt in 2013 provided a detailed study of gender distribution in synthetic biology and iGEM. They found that women were not as represented as men within iGEM and equally there were fewer female supervisors of iGEM teams. They provided data to suggest that there is a significantly higher proportion of women to men in teams that win prizes compared with teams that don’t. They concluded their study with suggestions of how to improve the gender distribution within synthetic biology and iGEM, proposing that bonus points could given to teams with female supervisors, and iGEM should promote larger teams with more female judges, in the hope that this would improve the gender distribution within teams.
We want to conduct a follow up study, looking at the distribution of male to female students and supervisors in iGEM teams in 2016. We want to compare the statistics to those gathered in 2013 to determine whether Paris Bettencourt’s Gender Study was successful in improving equality within iGEM. If our study shows that there is a significant balancing of the distribution then it could indicate that small, impactful studies, like Paris Bettencourt’s, could be the key to improving gender distribution and diversity within the field and thus more teams should take up the mantle and work to improve equality and diversity. If, however, there is no significant improvement, then we would have to question whether this is due to a lack of follow on studies compounding the data, or if small scale studies, performed by iGEM teams, can ever be enough to make a significant change in the field.
