As someone with a natural science background, I have been paying great attention to STEM education and popular science. I observed that the uneven distribution of high-quality educational resources, and the lack of qualified teachers lead to a large number of students’ insufficient science-related ability.
Thus, I started my company after college, initially focused on popular science content creation for elementary students. I used my strength in drawing, and collaborated with people from different subject domains to make science comics, which have been published both online and in paper-based formats. In addition, I designed offline activities and exhibits based on the contents. The combination of comics and hands-on experience has largely enlighten students’ interest in science.
My business gradually expanded to other relevant areas. Starting from 2019, we work closely with researchers mainly form Nankai University to illustrate academic papers and make animations for undergraduate course materials. All the work highlights the importance of visualizing scientific concepts to effectively communicate the knowledge and enhance engagement.
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We created 10+ series covering different subject domains, including chemistry, food science, genetics, medical science, physics in aerobats, mathematics, computer science, economics and finance, and so on. Seven series have been published as paper-based books reaching sales of 25000+ copies, and two series have been published in famous children's magazines in China. All the illustrations are done by myself.
We designed many interactive experiments for elementary students, and first started with small size off-line classes to gather feedback and and iterate the instructions.
With more and more experience, we became capable of holding large-scale lab open-day events and public exhibits in different types of space.
The activities have covered 1500+ children and their parents. We hope these experiences can guide children towards the beauty of science.
The visualization of abstract scientific concepts is crucial for learning, especially for subject domains like chemistry where the molecular structures can be complicated, and changes are usually invisible to naked eyes. Our work related to this area is mainly the video making for the Physical Chemistry Case Library at the School of Chemistry, Nankai University. The videos are used in textbooks and classes. We also worked with some professors to illustrate their academic papers, making it more effective to convey the key ideas of their research.
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It is now an unfortunate yet well-known fact that approximately 1 in 5 women (~18%) report lifetime exposure to sexual assault. Research has shown that adolescents who receive sex education on consent and refusal before college are at a decreased risk for sexual assault during college. However, most adolescents in the U.S do not receive comprehensive nor effective sex education prior to entering college.
In addition, didactic approaches to relationships and sex education have been shown to yield limited outcomes when compared to approaches that stimulate peer discussion and feedback. In response to these issues, our team of four graduate students in the Master of Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science program decided to make a scenario-based digital game to teach incoming college freshmen about relationships and sexual consent.
In the game, the player plays as a ghost floating around a college party and listening in on peoples’ conversations, including both direct communication between the NPCs and their internal thoughts in bubbles. At certain points in each scenario, the player will be prompted to choose from one of the 5 actions to intervene, then the rest of the scenario will play out and players will be informed about whether they made the right choices.
Each play-through of the game involves 5 scenarios, with a total of 100 points (if the players trigger the extra scenario the total points will be 120). This encourages the player to retry and find the optimal solution to each scenario.
According to learning science research, self-reflection is beneficial for meaningful learning, especially for complex procedural skills. Thus, we designed a self-reflection activity, and encourage players to reflect on how they would have handled the situation if they were one of the NPCs by providing an additional 5 points. We also envision future improvement in the format of this activity, such as having the player compare their own reflection to others' responses learner-sourced from past playes, or embedding an online forum for players to share their thoughts.
Our team took on the task of creating an exhibit experience that will enhance one of the stories already being told through the existing We Are Nature meta-label initiative in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
We were drawn the “Cell Phones Affect Gorilla Survival” label affixed to the western lowland gorilla diorama in the Hall of African Wildlife. The idea that cell phone manufacture and use affect gorrilas' survival in Congo is not only tightly related to everyone's daily life, but is also centered around one of the museum’s several Anthropocene values: Systems Thinking, namely the understanding that one's actions are not limited to oneself.
In the learning processes happening in museums, the visitors' attention is very limited, and the curators can hardly control the order that the visitors follow. Thus, we believe that the most successful exhibits should be able to generate a substantial impact on visitors in a very short amount of time. We aimed to create a highly engaging and impressive interaction that guides visitors to think about the far-reaching connections present in the small cell phone in their pocket. And, hopefully, they’ll be motivated to take small actions to make the world a better place for all creatures.
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