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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
>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.
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 planning manufacturing the game. The problem with manufacturing the game was that we didn’t have the funds to do it ourselves. However, we were very fortunate in the fact that Dr Mark Ramsdale was willing to give us the necessary funds for us to print 16 copies of the board game, in order for us to distribute these to schools, in a widening participation activity for the university. We then started to look into schools to distribute the board game to, which became extremely difficult as term finished shortly after. Despite the fact that we have the ability to distribute the game at no cost, with the downloadable version of BioMech developed, we wanted to give local schools, schools that have helped us along the way and under-achieving schools physical copies of BioMech. This would act as a thank you to the schools that have helped us on the way, but also provide an accessible resource to schools who may not have access to high-quality, modern teaching resources like our board game.
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.
The Colyton Grammar School visit occurred on 18/07/16. Four of our team members – Alice, Andy, Joel and Jack – ran a one hour board game session with a class of 26 Year 9 students, falling at the lower end of of our target demographic (14-18). In an attempt to better understand how BioMech had been received, we conducted a survey with the students. The raw data (PDFs of surveys) and the full data analysis are available upon request.
Of the 23 responses to question 7 - “Did our board game change your perception of synthetic biology? If so, how?” - 78.3% were positive answers that indicated the respondent had enjoyed the game and had learned from the game. Answers included “It helped me remember most of the information because it was fun and engaging” and “It was a fun way for learning about synthetic biology”.
The criticisms however were that it was difficult for the students to understand how the game works without having had a demonstration done in front of them, first. Because of this feedback, we aim to create instructional demonstration videos to accompany the downloadable, online version of BioMech in an attempt to make BioMech more sustainably accessible without the need for our team to be there.
We demonstrated this in a year 9 physics lesson and in both the presentation and activities with the students, we were able to highlight the physics applications alongside the biology ones. It is interesting, therefore, how well received the game was to both the teacher and the students considering that prior to our lesson with them, they might have assumed that synthetic biology is a purely biology-based field. Consequently, we want to stress that BioMech is a board game that can be, and has been, used in non-biology based lessons and we think is a great resource for teachers and students to engage with the field.
Having tested the board game in the Judd School, Colyton Grammar School and two separate science fairs, as well as making BioMech available to download for free, we are looking to the future, to what we can do next. We plan on making BioMech as accessible as possible, thus are looking to create a Braille overlay version of the game, so that those people with or without sight can play simultaneously, and it not affect the game. We are also looking to make versions of BioMech suitable for those suffering for colour-blindness and have instructions written in multiple languages. We don’t want to exclude anyone from playing and using BioMech in schools, as we want to encourage any and all students to take an interest in synthetic biology.
We have also sent copies of BioMech to a number of schools in the UK and even in the US. Copies were sent to The Judd School and Colyton Grammar school, as a thank you for helping us develop BioMech throughout the progress however copies were sent to St Peter’s school in Bournemouth and Bishop Wand C of E school. The teachers of these schools are going to give us feedback on how the game works and what improvements we can make to make it more accessible and engaging for students. It is our hope that we continue to improve and adapt BioMech so that it can be implemented in as many schools as possible and become an essential teaching resource for high schools wanting to learn more about synthetic biology.
Mrs Hayley Andrews of The Judd School recommended we get in touch with The Institute of Research in Schools as well as the National Science Learning Centre to give BioMech the best possible chance of becoming implemented in schools. As a ‘future use of the game’, Hayley Andrews suggested that we could use BioMech as starter educational tool for students at schools wanting to take part in iGEM. As it introduces students to the fundamental principles of synthetic biology: plasmid design, biobricks as well as essential, more complex principles of biology like mutation - it would act as an engaging resource for high schools. Consequently, after the iGEM jamboree, we hope to continue to work on BioMech in order to distribute it to as many schools that need it, and try to encourage more schools to take part in the iGEM competition. The Judd School are planning on taking part next year and we have already established good rapport and potential for collaboration in the future.
Synthetic biology is a new and exciting scientific field, with applications within medicine, the environment and energy. It is an interdisciplinary subject, combining biology, engineering and physics. As shown by the number of iGEM teams entering each year into the competition, the interest of both university and high school students for the subject is growing. Despite this, there is a severe lack of 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 decided to create a new synthetic biology module for 2nd year students at our university. In this modules we will teach students about the creation of new biological systems and how they can be used to advance current technologies, with a focus on biosafety and kill switches. The course will also introduce students to the practical techniques commonly used in synthetic biology, with completion of the course students will be able to independently construct a biological system, such as a biosensor, from a list of parts available. The module will cover topics such as microbial growth, gene regulation, circuit design and logic gates, plasmid design, biosafety, kill switches, DNA constructs and genome integration. 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.
We hope that in creating this module we can educate students about key skills, applications and problems in synthetic biology. This will help advance the subject further in the future and solve some of the problems highlighted by both the 2016 Exeter iGEM team and other iGEM teams and academics and researchers.The module will be open to second year bioscience and natural science students at the University of Exeter from 2017.
As another part of our human practices, we wanted to focus on engaging the general public with all sciences but significantly, with synthetic biology. In particular, we have created 'Desert Island...Science?' based on the format of the popular 'Desert Island Discs' radio show. This asks guests to choose two songs; one book; one luxury item; and a piece of lab equipment to take with them to a desert island. We also speak with them about their thoughts on a range of scientific topics, including the future of synthetic biology; the importance of collaboration between different scientific disciplines; and the promotion of STEM fields to all members of the public.
The guests we chose represent a range of areas of expertise, including Prof. Richard Kitney, Co-Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation; and prominent theoretical physicist Prof. Jim Al-Khalili.
Prof. Kitney is a biomedical systems engineering professor at Imperial College London and has been a pioneer of the field of synthetic biology for over a decade. During his episode of 'Desert Island... Science?', we spoke to him about using our human practices work in engaging young people with synthetic biology and our iGEM project and he has this to say:
We're just at the start of this revolution in engineering and biology, the sooner you can get young people interested in this field and, in my opinion, the whole of science and engineering, the better
It was really gratifying to hear a very prominent and important figure in synthetic biology confirm that our education and public engagement work is important and needed for furthering the field of synthetic biology. Prof. Kitney’s comments reflected a view that was shared by many parents and teachers at the science fairs and schools we visited: new, educational resources for aiding teachers and students in topics such as synthetic biology are necessary and these resources don’t have to be limited to GCSE-aged students and above. In the future, we could look into creating a version of our board game suitable for younger students, and a version suitable to older students, to improve the accessibility to a wider audience.
On the subject of engaging the general public, he said that:enthusiasm is the most important thing
in learning more about this exciting new field of science; which is something we want to encourage in all outreach work.
Another figure we spoke to was Professor Jim Al-Khalili, who works in the field of quantum biology as well as promoting equality and diversity in science. We spoke with him about improving the interaction and collaboration between different scientific disciplines, to which he said:
Synthetic biology is a very good example of where a multidisciplinary approach is absolutely vital
Having a prominent public figure, like Prof. Al-Khalili, highlight the importance of synthetic biology for science and research, we hope would relieve some of the biases and stereotypes associated with the field. As synthetic
is synonymous with artificial
and biology
is synonymous with life
, we can understand why many people we have spoken to, especially shown in the visit to the Judd School, think that synthetic biology involves designer life
. If more public figures can comment on the positive aspects of synthetic biology, then it is our hope that the public can begin to see what synthetic biology can do for each of the individual, core subjects that make up it.
On the subject of equality and diversity within science he said:
we still have a long way to go... If 1 in 5 undergraduate physics students are female then 1 in 5 physics professors should be female - that's where the problem is and it just gets worse and worse as you go up the career ladder
This was a view that was highlighted with many of the physics students interviewed in the equality and diversity work, as well as many of the academics. The Institute of Physics recognizes gender distribution in physics as a major problem from base to senior level and if more public figures, like Prof. Al-Khalili, and more students publicise the problem, then it could encourage more time and money to be spent on fixing the issue.
By posting the podcasts on both YouTube and Soundcloud, we opened a two-way dialogue with the public, allowing them to ask questions and learn more. As well as this, we wanted to help ‘humanize’ academics and researchers by helping members of the public to gain a deeper understanding of the scientific research being done today. By reaching out to prominent researchers of academia, prominent researchers of industry and prominent public figures, we hoped to engage the public with synthetic biology and science in general at all the key areas.
We hope that by framing these important questions in modern science in a relaxed and informal manner, the general public will be much more likely to engage with these issues and learn more about research in the field of synthetic biology and other scientific disciplines.
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 collaborations with Glasgow and Edinburgh in addition to helping Warwick by directing them to schools and teams that they could collaborate with or mentor.
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 the field. Students were aged between 8 and 18, and there were teachers from a large variety of schools from across the South West.
For the fair, we wanted to show visitors the interdisciplinary nature of synthetic biology. We discussed how physics, chemistry, biology and engineering make up synthetic biology and demonstrated multiple applications within each of the core sciences. We created two leaflets: one which explained the basics of synthetic biology, and one which explained the iGEM competition. We made 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 our educational synthetic biology board game, 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
BioMech was well received by children of all ages, with the younger ones particularly enjoying the simplicity of the game and the clean aesthetics, whilst the older ones took a great interest in the descriptions of all the components as well as the mechanics the game offers. The fair provided us with some honest feedback from the children on our board game that we then kept in mind when designing our final version of the now highly user friendly and interactive version of BioMech.
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.
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.
Barnaby was a year 10 work experience student who joined the team from 06.06.16 to 13.06.16. As we hadn’t started working in the lab at this point, Barnaby helped with our Human Practises. Barnaby was in our target age range for BioMech, meaning his voice was invaluable in designing the game and writing out the rules - he told us from his view what would be engaging, what would be too complicated, and played a large role in shaping the game.
Juliet was a year 12 work experience student who joined the team from 18.07.16 to 29.07.16. Juliet worked predominantly with the lab team given her strong interest in Biology, and was incredibly helpful. She helped specifically with important duties like making plates and media for experiments done by the team, but was also a helping hand for early cloning strategies. Due to Juliet being with us for two weeks and joining us later in the project, she was able to integrate with the team more and engage with the project to a greater extent than Barnaby was able to. At the end of her work experience with us, she gave us a card which said:
The past two weeks have been without question the most enjoyable and useful work experience I have had!
Our time with Juliet was a reminder of the direct impact our work could have on school students and gave us the drive to work harder on improving education and public engagement with synthetic biology.
George was a year 12 work experience student who joined the team from 01.08.16 to 12.08.16. George, like Juliet, worked predominantly with the lab team as he had a strong interest in Biology and had A Level knowledge. George also integrated very well with the team as he was with us for two weeks, and developed a vested interest in following the project after he left us.
Our time with each work experience was very useful for both progress in the lab or human practices, and helping us better understand our target demographic. Barnaby was particularly useful, being a GCSE student himself, for feedback on early versions of the board game. His insight was supported by students at the Judd School and thus we were able to improve and better the board game from the criticism and feedback of those it might affect. Both Juliet’s and George’s help in the lab was invaluable, at a time where we were particularly busy, however their individual feedback of the human practices work, allowed us to improve and develop our work on public engagement. We therefore recommend that more iGEM teams take on work experience students as the experience itself is both mutually beneficial and very enjoyable.
We were very fortunate, on the 31st July 2016, to meet Professor Richard Dawkins in Exeter and managed to ask him some questions on his research and how best to engage with the public on topics within science. We filmed the interview, which can be found here: Professor Dawkins was in Exeter as he was speaking at an behavioural ecology conference held at the university. Prof. Dawkins emphasised the importance of research in behavioural ecology as it is the explanation for why we are all here
and described how he felt about the University of Exeter:
I am very impressed with the University of Exeter, I haven’t been here before, it’s a lovely campus and it does need to be the most thriving university
Prof. Dawkins went on to talk about his role as the first Charles Simonyi Professor for Public Understanding of Science and how we can best engage with the public on science. He emphasised how we have to be careful about the language we use as talking down to the public and not being clear may hinder their understanding of the topic.
I tend to perhaps err on the side of just putting it out there
An important factor that he highlighted that we, and other iGEM teams may not have considered is that encouraging the public to engage with the field might not be such an active process and may be more passive. We need to rely on the fact that the science itself is utterly fascinating
and the public will seek it out if they have any kind of interest in it.
This interview informed us greatly as to how to better engage with the public. The video itself (at the time of writing) has 338 views, which is the highest viewed video on our channel. We therefore believe that a good way of engaging more people with our work and with synthetic biology, is by engaging more public figures with the field. This is what we ended up doing with our Desert Island Science podcast series (shown above), by interviewing celebrity scientists like Professor Chris Lintott and Professor Jim Al-Khalili.
Furthermore, Prof. Dawkins also gave us some really brilliant advice on how best to approach the public with such a complex and diverse field like synthetic biology. Whilst encouraging us to be clear and concise with our wording was just reassuring for us in what we have already done, the fact that he highlighted that we can be more passive in engaging the public with our field was more of a revelation because it meant that we could spend less time trying to find new, unique ways of publicising our work and more time making good quality content.
