| dc.description.abstract | This study evaluates whether the ‘Synthetic Biology Learning Platform' (‘SBLP’) is a suitable and usable tool to facilitate formal and informal educators to support dialogue with students and visitors about synthetic biology (SynBio). The ‘SBLP’ is a digital repository that contains materials that support such a dialogue. This study looks at three specific research questions. First, the study investigates whether the ‘SBLP’ is a suitable tool to meet its aim. This is investigated by evaluating the platform on collected criteria found in education and communication literature, followed by semi-structured interviews with four formal and four informal educators. Secondly, this study examines to what extend the platform is a usable tool. Again, criteria are formulated, now based on usability literature. The platform is checked for these usability criteria, after which a protocol analysis is performed by the same four formal and four informal educators as participants in the semi-structured interviews. Finally, by studying the ‘SBLP’ on its suitability and usability, this study tries to gain insight into important guidelines for digital learning platforms that have the same aim: to facilitate educators in supporting dialogue about an emerging field of science. Suggestions for improvement that the participants gave in the interviews and protocol analysis are inductively analysed to consider additional guidelines that are missing in the previous analysis.
This study indicates that the ‘SBLP’ is more suitable and usable for formal educators, compared to informal educators. However, for both kinds of educators there are still some aspects that can be improved. This includes aspects such as the structure and presentation of the platform. This study finally shows that the criteria used in this study to test the suitability and usability of the platform, seem good general guidelines for the facilitation of formal educators. On the other hand, they are less applicable to facilitate informal educators. In addition, this study offers some suggestions for the improvement of the facilitation of informal educators, for example with regard to the presentation of the content on the platform. | |
