To include more people in synthetic biology, we developed multiple different educational tools related to our project such as a storybook, card game, and art activity. We hosted events to pilot these tools to our community and reflected on the impact it had from showcasing the material.
Elementary
We created a children’s storybook, “Remy’s Adventures in Circulatory City” to teach children about concepts related to our project. We hosted a storytime program across three libraries in Arizona, reaching around 70 kids aged 1-10.
We wanted to create a storybook related to our project due to the benefits storytelling has on early childhood learning, such as improved vocabulary and communication skills [1]. These educational benefits made it clear to us that a storybook would be the most efficient way to connect with children and teach them about our project. Through this book, kids learn what blood does in the body, why it's important for life, as well as why and how transfusions happen when people don’t get enough blood. To supplement the book, we also included Remy themed coloring pages and word search worksheets.
A big thank you to Surprise Public Library, Tempe Public Library, and Avondale Public Library for letting us read our story to the kids!
Reflection
We believe our book helped positively enhance the children’s interest in biology concepts. After the reading, many kids asked questions about blood cells and shared their experiences learning about blood and science in general! One even shared their experience having blood drawn before, so we had the chance to further teach about what happens to blood after drawing. In the future, to better assess how much the kids are learning, we may consider hosting a multi-workshop series building upon concepts learned each week.
To expand the reach of our book, we wanted it to be more accessible to people who don’t understand English. Thanks to iGEM teams: U-Barcelona, SZU-China, and UAM , and team members: Michelle Kim, An Khanh Le, and Francesca Cristobal our book is now available online in Catalan, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog (Filipino)!
Highschool
This year, our team established high school engagement through hosting workshops revolving around our project and the overall impact it has on our community.
By collaborating with the science department chair at Tempe High School, we were able to engage around 240 high school students of grades 9-12 through a total of 5 workshops. In our initial presentation, we focused on teaching them the basics of blood types and the importance of blood compatibility. We highlighted that the global supply of compatible blood doesn’t meet the demand, which leaves millions at risk when needing transfusion.
After presenting, we held fun interactive activities that expanded on the scarcity that some individuals face when needing transfusion. One of the activities assigned them different blood types and had the students pair up when they were compatible. Although a lot of the students were able to successfully find a pair to their blood type, we purposefully included outliers with no blood compatible blood types available for them. Lastly, we had students break off into groups and fill out thoughts that they believed different professional groups may have on our project. These groups included doctors, medical lawyers, patients, and even families of patients.
Reflection
These activities enabled the students to analyze their groups' different perspectives, allowing them to have a better time grasping the ethical complexities involved with the implications that our team’s project has. The teachers also added their thoughts throughout each session in order to prepare ourselves for the audience we were about to receive. After the first period, we found that the students had some trouble completely understanding the aim of our project. This meant that after that class time we had to work out some of the gaps in our presentation to ensure that the students were able to understand the fundamentals before tackling these complex ethical dilemmas. Overall, the general conclusion that the students had arrived at was that they were in support of our project and that they would be willing to use our conversion kit even if there was a chance of something going wrong with the enzymatic conversion process. They reasoned that the risk versus reward for such a life saving technology far outweighed the drawbacks when faced with a dire and life-threatening situation. However, as mentioned before in our public survey reflection, we had concerns over their quick acceptance of our project. We want to highlight the importance of questioning scientific work before fully accepting such advancements/breakthroughs. Furthermore, as scientists we believe it is fully necessary to provide background information and fundamental concepts when introducing the public to such biotechnological advancements.
University
To reach a wider audience, specifically those with no science background, we wanted to host an art/craft related event. We collaborated with another ASU organization, Hooked Hearts, to host a crochet night event where we talked about synthetic biology, iGEM, and this year’s project, all while crocheting cute little red blood cell keychains. We were able to engage with over 20 students!
Through this event, we hoped to show people that science can be intertwined with hobbies such as art and that by making these connections, we can better supplement science education and learning.
A big thank you to our team member, Ella Hopp, for designing the red blood cell crochet pattern and teaching everyone how to make it!
Reflection
At the end of our presentation, we had the attendees fill out a feedback form to gauge how much people had learned about synthetic biology and our project.
Figure 1: Crochet Event Feedback Form Responses. Participants were asked to respond to statements on a scale of “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. Question 1: Before the event, I felt familiar with synthetic biology. Question 2: I learned a lot about synthetic biology because of this event. Question 3: I am more interested in synbio because of this event. Question 4: I would come to another iGEM outreach event in the future.
The survey responses suggested our event was an effective way to introduce people to the applications of synthetic biology. Before the meeting, half of the attendees were not familiar with synthetic biology at all but after our presentation, a majority of them reported gaining new knowledge about synthetic biology (54%) and being more interested in synthetic biology (75%).
The interest for this event was greater than we expected. In the future, another art event would be a wonderful way to reach more students; however, it may be beneficial to emphasize the synthetic biology component further by highlighting that the red blood cell they are crocheting is O-type blood, which lacks antigens. This connection can help people see how the art they are making is directly linked to the science of our project.
References
[1] Miyuki Yabe, Sachie Oshima, Satoshi Eifuku, Masato Taira, Kazuto Kobayashi, Hirooki Yabe, Sin-ichi Niwa, Effects of storytelling on the childhood brain: near-infrared spectroscopic comparison with the effects of picture-book reading, https://doi.org/10.5387/fms.2018-11