Keeping in line with the principles of synthetic biology, we aimed to make our research accessible to all members of society through the development of a range of educational resources. Many of the misconceptions and skepticism of synthetic biology are the result of a lack of public understanding of the field, and the inability of researchers and industries to “initiate open discussions”. Our initial outreach activities involved the delivery of lessons and workshops for summer school students, and we drew upon the feedback from these activities to plan further outreach events and resources designed for a larger target audience. Equally, these activities enabled us to assess the level of knowledge that the public have about synthetic biology, and discover their opinions about this emerging research field and, more specifically, our project.

The design of our educational programmes were guided by the synthetic biology educational aims outlined by Kuddell et al (2007):

• Encourage students to precisely and carefully articulate their views
• Raise controversial issues and encourage debate
• Address the issues of security, safety and ownership
• Be realistic about what synthetic biology has the potential to do

  Summer Schools

  
  
  An important and accessible platform for increasing public knowledge is to educate school children, so we ran workshops at four summer schools in Oxford:
  • Northwest Science Network Summer School (16-17 year old students interested in a broad range of science subjects)
  • UNIQ (16-17 year old state school students interested in biochemistry)
  • Pembroke Science Summer School (16-17 year old students interested in different science subjects)
  • Oxford Summer Courses (13-16 year old international students)
    
    Our initial summer school classes were targeted at 16-17 year old students studying STEM subjects and with an interest in pursuing these subjects at university. Upon planning our educational resources for summer schools, we sought guidance from current teachers to ensure that the activities were tailored to the right level of understanding and delivered in an engaging format. We worked on developing activities that would appeal to the interests of a young audience, as well as making the activities as interactive as possible. We believed that it was important to ensure that the lessons involved low-resource activities that could be shared and used by teachers in schools, since this would enable the education of a wider cohort of school students. We also wanted to demonstrate that synthetic biology is an accessible field that all school students should feel able to pursue, and did not want to create artificial barriers by suggesting that synthetic biology could only be understood and accessed with specialist knowledge and equipment.
    
    The structure of our lesson plan involved a brief introduction where we explained the principles of synthetic biology, followed by a carousel of activities where small groups moved around the room to participate in different stations. Each station had a task with a specific learning objective to ensure that the teaching and discussions were structured and focused. We believed it was important to demonstrate the range of tasks involved in synthetic biology and iGEM, including workshops explaining the structure of proteins, the use of Snapgene, modelling and the assessment of ethical issues associated with synthetic biology.

    Student satisfaction is an important factor determining the engagement, student understanding and success of teaching. We spoke to students and course directors after our teaching sessions to gain feedback, and acted upon this to improve our future lessons to different summer school programmes.

    Feedback from initial lessons:

  • Some students felt that the content was difficult to understand if they didn't have an educational background in biology.
  • The first lesson overran quite significantly, and there wasn’t enough time for the students to complete the last station’s activity.
  • Some groups of students were very engaged in the Ethics station, but some groups remained reticent and difficult to engage.
  • The course director praised the carousel format of the lessons but stated that there could be “more space for informal conversations between summer school students and undergraduates."

    Modifications in light of the feedback:

  • We adapted the workshop stations to include a more simple outline and introduction and we made sure we adapted our explanations to suit the level of knowledge of each individual in the group.
  • We reduced some of the content in the initial introductory activity to allow for more time to partake in group activities.
  • We created more specific questions to prompt quieter groups to start discussing specific aspects of the ethical issues created by each scenario.
  • We adapted one of our computer-based stations to a discussion-based station (see below).

    In light of this feedback, we chose to change one of the computer-based activities (the Snapgene station) to a discussion-based activity that focused on problem solving. In line with ERASynBio’s recommendations that synthetic biology teaching should equip young people with “skills to operate effectively in multi-disciplinary teams”, we focused a station on problem solving involving a range of different STEM disciplines. Attendees of the summer schools had a range of scientific backgrounds and interests, so we encouraged conversations between individuals studying different subjects to develop young people’s ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams. This set up - where team members contribute knowledge on their own area of expertise - mimicked conversations that occur within multi-disciplinary teams, such as our own iGEM team, and provided young people to develop the “flexible thinking” required for a career in synthetic biology.

    Science outreach activities targeting younger school children are necessary to encourage young people to gain an interest in science and consider a career in synthetic biology. We delivered a lesson on synthetic biology and its applications to 13-15 year old students attending summer schools in Oxford.The presentation for the lesson can be viewed here: