Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/HP SURVEY SCHOLARS

From 2012.igem.org

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SURVEYS - University Scholars and High School Students

In our university, we also conducted surveys to evaluate a different demographic group as a comparative component with high school outreach. The point of analysis is the difference and similarity in opinion between high school students, aged 15-17, and university students, aged 18 -20 before joining our educational program. Moreover, the high school students are under the stream of Biology in their school whereas the university students major in different fields. Through such analysis, we would like to know whether similar talk and workshop can be given to university students as a suitable human practice of Synthetic Biology.

Comparative to the results of our high school outreach (Figure 1), when also asked whether they have heard of iGEM or Synthetic Biology, university students had the following responses:

Figure 7 – Responses of university students regarding iGEM and Synthetic Biology.

We observed that comparing to the 43% of high school students, a larger percentage of undergraduate respondents, 59%, have heard of either iGEM or Synthetic Biology, and with only 41% hearing of it for the first time.

To compare opinions of high school and university students about bacteria and genetic engineering, we compared the responses of high school students before the presentation and university students’ impression on these two aspects and the results are as follows:

Figure 8 - Comparison of opinion on bacteria between High School and University students.

As shown in the graph, 13% of high school students thought bacteria are dangerous, and this is notably higher than the 5.9% of the undergraduates who held the same opinion. Another remarkable difference is between the 13% of high school students think bacteria could be good or bad and the 46.1% among the undergraduates have a similar point-of-view.

Figure 9 - Comparison of opinion on genetic engineering between High School and University students.

Genetic engineering is essential and interesting for both types of students, and only a small group of respondents in both types think it is immoral. 41.1% of the undergraduates think genetic engineering is confusing and complicated yet this is true for only 10.9% of the high school students.

Despite our previous iGEM team won several awards in the competition and went on the news, iGEM and Synthetic Biology are not familiar topics in CUHK as well as in the high schools. A small percentage of both respondents display that bacteria is beneficial or useful; however, nearly 50% of both undergraduates and high school students hold on a neutral point-of-view on bacteria. So we should introduce basic knowledge about microorganisms and point out their pros and cons clearly while illustrating the application of Synthetic Biology through similar examples we gave to the high school students. Another highlighted part is the great difference in between the two bars; genetic engineering is complicated and confusing for most of undergraduates, supposedly for non-science majors, but not for high school students who take Biology stream. Hence, we would need to investigate different majors’ ideas over genetic engineering, if we organize a Synthetic Biology program in the university.

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