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Team:Carnegie Mellon/BeyondtheBenchmark
From 2014.igem.org
“There is an inherent need for scientific experiments, labs, or models that go beyond curriculum goals and open up the eyes of a student to the highly engaging, educational, and exciting world that exists out there. It’s the wonder and awe that is missing. It is our duty to bring that back to society."-Nicole, CMU iGEM 2014
Liner's analysis of "Promoting Scientific Literacy," claims that “scientific literacy is primarily a concept about curriculum goals.” All of us in iGEM know better. While scientific literacy is currently based on achieving curriculum goals, CMU iGEM is working on changing that. This summer, we created the Beyond the Bench[mark]initiative as answer to surpassing the current standards we have for the science education in our society. Just getting off the ground, we plan to expand this initiative over the upcoming months, years as a way to encourage current and future iGEM teams to answer this societal problem.
"Beyond the Bench[mark]" is an initiative to create learning tools, such as models, labs, classroom kits, etc. that fully meet the related state standards or "benchmarks" set forth by the board of education. However, the goal of each tool is to supersede these benchmarks by introducing or including another element dedicated to a subject that is not necessarily found in the standards, but can allow for higher learning engagement since it is built on a solid foundation. In this way, new materials that students may not have heard of or know very little accuracy about may be brought to the table without causing a disruption in the classroom curriculum. As of right now, the Carnegie Mellon iGEM Team was determined to go beyond the bench[mark] for students and teachers around the greater Pittsburgh area with one classroom kit and one stochastic model related to synthetic biology and endocrine disruptors. In the autumn season, our initiative focus extended to different cities across the United States and to an orphanage in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
DNAZone, the outreach center of CNAST at Carnegie Mellon, has a running platform in which labs are created and posted online for viewing. A classroom kit lending library is available to Pittsburgh educators to borrow from and work the experiments into their classrooms easier. The CMU iGEM team wants to follow this working model by encouraging other iGEM teams to participate on an international forum. The website for the Beyond the Bench[mark]is currently being worked on, but look out for it in January 2015. The launch of our candidacy form will be on November 16, 2014 on this wiki, so if you want to participate in this initiative, get ready! We encourage all teams to submit a brief gamified version of their projects in order to raise awareness (physical or virtual). From past teams, The ToxiMop Game from iGEM Dundee 2013 and the Registry Simulation from iGEM Grenoble 2013 are prime examples of gamified projects that we were impressed with and would like to see apply for candidacy!
The ideal candidate (tool) for the Beyond the Bench[mark] Initiative would cover at least one core science curriculum topic and then spin-off cleanly into an extra element that engages, educates, and/or excites the student about something they have never heard of or only know a little bit about. Any iGEM project with the proper foundational core curriculum would be an excellent candidate since we are all working on new technological advances! The tool would also have specific age level, though variations for different age groups are encouraged, and pass evaluation on two of the following three characteristics: engagement (interactions physical or virtual), education (core and new element), and excitement (creative challenges, user-friendly optional experimental changes). Teams who want to translate are also welcome to do so! Let's make this initiative international!
For its first year, two tools are up for candidacy from the Carnegie Mellon iGEM team for starting up this initiative.
Creature Feature was an “iGEM original” classroom kit that combined concepts of genetics and evolution to meet the curriculum standards, but with an additional synthetic biology twist so as to go beyond the benchmark. A synthetic biology modeling lab, it engages students into the hands-on construction of “creatures” according to a genomic sequence, educates on the principles of synthetic biology, evolution, and genetics, and excites them with candy “features” and an engineering challenge.
Engage. Educate. Excite!
Details
Target Age Range: Middle School Science Courses
Core Curriculum Components: Genetics, Evolution
New Elemental Component: Synthetic Biology
Engage: Hands-on work with Creature Construction and Engineering for Survival
Educate: Construction based on genetic principles such as alleles, sequencing; Great Flood based on a bottlenecking external event; Engineering for Survival based on synthetic biological principles of gene interaction, variance, DNA repeats, synthetic biology
Excite: Engineering for Survival Challenge under Part 4; students must ensure that the creature can survive a 3-second water dunking after their engineering work
The NetLogo Environmental Simulation helped the iGEM team visually represent the effects of minute concentrations of estrogen in a body of water when there is a food chain of algae, fish, and eagles involved. The employment of this model in a classroom setting engages students into the visualization of a population crash dependent on the variables, educates them about ecological systems, food chains, and endocrine disruptors, and excites them with the user’s choice around the parameters, offering a different outcome every time. A guide to setting up and using Netlogo can be found at NetLogo Tutorial
A sample video of the NetLogo model can be seen at https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2014/d/d7/ScreenCapture_9-6-2014_10.28.23_AM.oggeen above. The amount of estrogen that can be added is controlled by the user and the program reports the state of the populations of the organisms at discrete time units.
Details
Target Age Range: Upper-Level Biological or Environmental Courses
Core Curriculum Component: Ecology
New Elemental Component: Endocrine Disruptors
Engage: Visual representation of three part food chain with or without estrogen introduced into the system
Educate: Ecological visual on food chain analysis, carrying capacities, population crashes, revivals dependent on level on intensity of crashes
Excite: Optional parameter settings can control initial levels of species, concentration amounts of estrogen added
Using a Beyond the Bench[mark] approach to beginning to solve the scientific literacy issues we have in our society worked wonders in classroom settings. Throughout our summer and fall season, we were able to have 8 Beyond the Bench[mark] Events, which are described in the Project Presentations and Educational Events section of Policies & Practices. Over 200 people have participated in Beyond the Bench[mark] thus far, and another 625 are scheduled for the upcoming months. Creature Feature helped us with public outreach in the middle school sector and the NetLogo Environmental Simulation helped us best explain our endocrine disruptor project to a more advanced crowd. At the beginning of the summer, we had no clue how we were going to approach such controversial topics such as synthetic biology or endocrine disruptors, but an engaging, educational, and exciting environment fostered by Beyond the Bench[mark] made us feel like it should be an international initiative that iGEM teams, the scientific community, and society can benefit from.
Feedback/Expectations from teachers for Beyond the Bench[mark] in their classrooms:“I'm excited about the new kits! The kids had a really good time with those activities and I thought the lessons were highly engaging. I'll pass on the information about the new kits to the rest of my science team.” – Hilary Buttenfield, Teacher at ECS
"It gives me great pleasure to hear from a Lamar Louise Curry Alumnus and see that you are committed to furthering the education of our students. I thank you for this wonderful opportunity that you are offering our school. We cannot wait to see you in December for Creature Feature!" -Jannet Marrero, LLCM Science Department Chair
"We spoke at the YCC Chemistry Fair on Saturday about classes at Bishop Guilfoyle being involved in the testing of outreach kits that you are developing. My principal enthusiastically approved this! Please let us know what our next step is. I had particular interest in the Environmental Science computer simulation being developed. We would like to hear about everything!" -Gina Baker, AP Environmental Teacher
