BioZone Centre for Applied Bioscience and Bioengineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Can J Microbiol. 2021 Oct;67(10):749-770. doi: 10.1139/cjm-2020-0549. Epub 2021 Jul 8.
The last two decades have seen vigorous activity in synthetic biology research and the ever-increasing applications of these technologies. However, pedagogical research pertaining to teaching synthetic biology is scarce, especially when compared to other science and engineering disciplines. Within Canada, there are only three universities that offer synthetic biology programs, two of which are at the undergraduate level. Rather than taking place in formal academic settings, many Canadian undergraduate students are introduced to synthetic biology through participation in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. Although the iGEM competition has had a transformative impact on synthetic biology training in other nations, its impact in Canada has been relatively modest. Consequently, the iGEM competition remains a major setting for synthetic biology education in Canada. To promote further development of synthetic biology education, we surveyed undergraduate students from the Canadian iGEM design teams of 2019. We extracted insights from these data using qualitative analysis to provide recommendations for best teaching practices in synthetic biology undergraduate education, which we describe through our proposed Framework for Transdisciplinary Synthetic Biology Education (FTSBE).
过去二十年,合成生物学研究十分活跃,其应用也在不断增加。然而,与其他科学和工程学科相比,关于教授合成生物学的教学研究却很少。在加拿大,只有三所大学提供合成生物学课程,其中两所是本科课程。许多加拿大的本科生并非在正规学术环境中接触到合成生物学,而是通过参加一年一度的国际遗传工程机器设计竞赛(iGEM)。虽然 iGEM 竞赛对其他国家的合成生物学培训产生了变革性的影响,但在加拿大的影响相对较小。因此,iGEM 竞赛仍然是加拿大合成生物学教育的主要场所。为了促进合成生物学教育的进一步发展,我们调查了来自 2019 年加拿大 iGEM 设计团队的本科生。我们使用定性分析从这些数据中提取见解,为合成生物学本科教育中的最佳教学实践提供建议,我们通过提出的跨学科合成生物学教育框架(FTSBE)来描述这些建议。