About This Project

The traditional model for life sciences education fails to offer hands-on opportunities for diverse audiences. At SoundBio Lab, we believe that getting hands on with science in the lab builds sustained motivation and changes lives. We will develop and test a set of hands-on molecular biology courses offered in our community lab space. These courses require minimal specialized equipment and the curricula will be shared freely online so other community labs can benefit from the work.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Science changes lives. A wealth of online materials have been created in the last two decades that broaden access to scientific knowledge (e.g. YouTube videos, and MOOCS). However, when life sciences are taught only conceptually, far removed from the practical hands-on workflows that build scientific intuition and foster passion, students are not well prepared for a future in STEM.

Community biolabs open up access to hands on laboratory work to people of all ages and educational backgrounds. However, to our knowledge, there are no publicly available curricula for structured lab skills learning that have been designed and tested for use in these novel open science spaces. We aim to address this deficit by developing, testing and disseminating curriculum.

What is the significance of this project?

This project will empower more people from diverse backgrounds to pursue life science work. In 2023 alone, Soundbio has offered over 20 public & private workshops in our labspace, providing educational opportunities to over 100 people in the greater Seattle area. With support, Soundbio will develop structured, multi-week educational curricula that will provide measurable skills and knowledge to a larger audience. Beyond inspiring people to pursue life science careers, we aim to actually empower students to build up the necessary expertise. As the bioeconomy matures, there will be a need to lower the barrier to entry for life sciences to increase the qualified workforce. These courses, which will be made publicly available, will help prepare students both in the Seattle area and beyond.

What are the goals of the project?

Through this project, we will develop and prototype a suite of four new courses focused on life sciences education, including Biotechnology Essentials, Microbiology Essentials, Microbial Community Fingerprinting, and CRISPR Crash Course. These courses will be offered with weekly sessions over the span of 4-6 weeks, taught by subject area experts. In 2024, we plan to run each course with two cohorts of eight students each. After each cohort, we will assess participant outcomes through quantitative survey data and conduct follow up interviews with at least 20 total participants to extract key themes. We will then publish our curricula on our website and on QUBES. Finally, we will connect with educators at other community biolabs to share the curriculum and help them run their own sessions.