The Biodesign Studio: Constructions And Reflections Of High School Youth On Making With Living Media

Most constructionist efforts have focused on supporting learners with tools for designing with digital and/or physical media. Recent developments in life sciences now allow K-12 learners to design with living materials, or to biodesign. In this paper, we report on the development of a biodesign studio activity called biocakes wherein teams of high school youth genetically modified a yeast strain to bake a nutrient fortified food product. Using a qualitative deductive analysis of classroom observations, interviews and projects, we examined high school youth experiences and reflections of these activities to answer three research questions: (1) What kind of artefacts did youth make with living media? (2) How did youth engage in biodesign? and (3) What did youth have to say about their biodesign experiences? We discuss how our analyses of biodesign applications highlight the importance of assembly practices, social engagement and imaginative design for constructionist learning. These insights provide compelling examples for designing with living media in K-12 education.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic?Constructionist perspectives shape important ideas about what we know about science learning, and notably in computer science fields.One widely taken up example includes making, where learners use crafts to make interactive computational objects.In life science, constructionism also provides insights about learning using digital media to model biological systems or interact with living materials.What this paper adds?This paper extends these perspectives by examining production and engagement when learners construct with living materials-an approach that has only recently been possible with the development of accessible wet lab tools.We frame learning activities as a studio model-that emphasised application design, iteration and critique-to better assess the roles assembly, construction and speculative design play in production that uses living materials.Our findings suggest that assembly is important for creating accessible points of entry to complex biological fabrication processes.We also find that speculative design provides an opportunity for learners to extend their existing abilities beyond what is otherwise available given their expertise or access to resources, and thus expansively explore related ideas.Implications for practice and/or policyAssembly and speculative design have important places in constructionist-driven production with living materials and could, therefore, be leveraged in practice.