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 focussed 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 to 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.
