1. Introduction

Eq substances can be metabolized and synthesized in the body by probiotics. Probiotics are important intestinal flora that play an important role in our digestive function and physical health. Learning about them at an earlier age can help everyone treat their bodies more scientifically. Therefore, in order for preschoolers to learn about probiotics and prebiotics. We posted invitations at community events. This attracted a lot of elementary school children aged 7-12 years old, who were very interested in iGEM and the purpose and meaning of our program, as well as the knowledge about probiotics and prebiotics, and we finally designed a scientific community event for elementary school children. We hope that the community education activities will promote their health concerns and increase their interest in synthetic biology.

In addition, offline educational activities are only on a small scale. The audience is also limited, although we have designed community education activities for children to explain gut probiotics and other knowledge related to our products, as well as roadshows for their parents about menopause, menopausal symptoms and symptom relief. But this is clearly not enough. So we also designed a series of online campaigns. On the one hand, we wanted to spread the word about our products and promote public awareness of menopause. On the other hand, it is also to better convey the concept of synthetic biology and let more people get in touch with this field. We also hope that through these activities, the public can learn more about the real synthetic biology technology from our daily work and embrace the new life brought by the new technology.

2. Offline education activities

Our team had established contact with Beijing Community Service Station - Fahuananli and gained an rare opportunity to hold an offline education event there. Since our products are geared towards menopause and its symptom relief, this makes it difficult for us to target outreach to the underage population. Also, because we are a group of high school students, it would be inappropriate to conduct an educational campaign aimed at the menopausal population. We, therefore, took into account that Eq itself is metabolically produced in the body by gut microbes and that the demand for our product is driven by the inter-individual variability of gut microbes. Therefore, we have made gut probiotics and prebiotics the subject of our offline educational activities.

Specifically, our community education campaign is centered around three main areas. The first area is "What are Probiotics and Prebiotics?”, which introduces the basics of probiotics and prebiotics. The second area is "How do they work?”, which introduces the principles of probiotics and prebiotics that affect our health and the mechanisms by which they interact. We want our sharing to be practical and helpful, so we've designed interactive trivia games and quizzes to get feedback from participants.

(1) Sticker game

After explaining the scientific knowledge of probiotics and prebiotics, we prepared small probiotic stickers (designed by one of our talented team member) for the participants to put the corresponding intestinal probiotics on the pictures of different intestinal problems by themselves, so as to open up their interest in and deepen their memory of the related biological knowledge.

(2) Drawing & Sharing session

White paper and watercolor pencils were prepared for the participants in order for them to have a deeper understanding of different probiotic shape characteristics and their functions and so on. The students and their parents were invited to draw different intestinal flora together and the children shared on stage. The students and their parents expressed a deeper understanding after playing the game.

(3) Q&A

Before the end of the event, we had a quiz with prizes. To our surprise, the vast majority of the younger participants had a better understanding of probiotics and prebiotics and were inspired to take an interest in synthetic biology.

(4) Reflections

The current improvements in schooling have resulted in the vast majority of children having some depth of knowledge about science. However, in the course of publicity and education activities, we still find that people's understanding of biological sciences is still limited to the traditional view of biology. Whether it is the children in the lower grades or the parents who come with them, they are kind of afraid of synthetic biology technology. They generally believe that gene editing and protein synthesis technologies are, to a certain extent, against the laws of nature. In addition, before our activities, many students and parents had a simplistic view of biology, thinking that microorganisms must cure diseases and avoiding them. However, it is well known that there are many microorganisms that live with us in our bodies, including probiotics, which are organisms that have a positive impact on our health. Thankfully, the children's perceptions of these organisms changed dramatically after we completed our activities, especially a few of the mini games. Their perceptions of health were also transformed. Of course, with only about 40 participants in our event, such a small-scale educational campaign is definitely not enough, so we need to conduct a wider awareness campaign on the correctness of health in order to promote the public's correct understanding of the relevant aspects.

3. Online education activities

While preparing to set up an official account, we realized that there are many extreme and even erroneous pseudo-scientific views on the Internet. However, many older people are convinced by these claims, and young people are also confused by them. And people's knowledge about Eq and SI is also insufficient, and even many people will be afraid of synthetic biology technology and genetic engineering technology, and avoid products related to them, which makes us feel sorry. Therefore, we not only use this official account as a platform for knowledge sharing but also hope to practice the social responsibility emphasized by iGEM by publishing correct scientific information.

We constructed our public number on WeChat, the most common platform in China, and launched a special science popularization of "synthetic biology and women's health" on the account. In addition, our online postings also include lab routines, Eq product introductions, offline event previews, and synthetic biology techniques. We have also gained more than a hundred followers and about a thousand views and interactions. These platforms reach an audience ranging from 15 to 70 years old, with a predominance of middle-aged and older people between 40 and 65 years old.

4. Education materials

In order to make online and offline events more attractive and at the same time deliver more effective messages in time, for the online and offline educational activities, we have prepared variety education materials such as education PPT, posters, brochures, etc. We produced separate posters and brochures that included probiotics, prebiotics, Eq and menopause-related content. The posters and brochures were distributed and explained to different groups of people, thus conveying more knowledge about synthetic biology. Most of our education materials will be shown below.

Education Posters

Education PPT

(Please click here to get the attachment)

Brochures

5. Conclusion

According to a series of educational activities, we found that both adults and minors are more receptive to new knowledge, but due to the current Internet is full of all kinds of negative news and news, and they have some negative attitudes towards synthetic biology and related technology applications. After the completion of our educational campaign, the offline response was the most obvious. Participants and their parents' attitudes towards probiotics and related synthetic biology products changed significantly. The participants were very satisfied with the educational activities and hoped that we would be able to provide them with more learning and participation opportunities in the future. In the case of the online event, there was no way for us to get a direct sense of the level of understanding. But we can see from the feedback from everyone and our comments. The audience of the online activity is still very interested in our experiments and the concept of synthetic biology that we spread out. Some parents even left comments that they wanted to know more about the background knowledge and hoped that we could provide learning opportunities for their children.

Of course, our activities have their shortcomings. Both our online and offline activities are more targeted to the Beijing area. Due to the economic and educational development of the Beijing region, which is the leading region in China, the participants have a strong knowledge, cultural background and understanding. We wondered if we could have achieved the same level of success if our activities had been carried out in a more remote, or less economically and educationally developed area. This may be a group of people that we need to focus on for future events or activities, but either way, I believe that our event was a success and that we have managed to reach more people who are unfamiliar with synthetic biology.