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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!
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
To evaluate our approaches to synthetic biology modeling labs and environmental simulations, we would ask a series of questions at the end of each session to reflect what worked best, what didn’t, and what needs to be available or changed for next time. The evolution of Creature Feature itself was extensive and involved input from over 30 science teachers and beta-testing with over 60 students, but resulted in a ready-made classroom kit that will be officially available for lending in January 2015 and available online in December 2014.
[MORE ON EVALUATION PIECE]
