Survey

On the evening of 6th Sep., we offered an explanation session about our teamwork to the new students of China Agricultural University. And in the meantime, we just make a survey about the students’ interest of biology and experiments.

Question 1. Why would you try to get the information about the research of biology?

In this survey, we found that over the half of the informants try to get the information, which is about the front edge of the research, because of their major. Form the data, we can include that the biology is taking more and more important part in all kinds of subject, and the more tight cross of different subject has become the tends of development in many areas. What’s more, only 30% of informants, 70% of them majoring in biologic area, thought that they tried to get the information for their own interest, which means that the speed and range of popularizing the biology is not satisfying exactly.

Question 2. What channel do you choose to get the information of biology？

In the survey, 80% students choose paper and the results of the study, which is connected to the discipline they major in, within which more students choose to read papers, reports and the results of the specific researches based on the background of their own studies. And 40% choose to learn something about the development of the research of biology and concentrate on the macro aspects. Only 20% choose to learn something about the conjecture and something else of biology-lover, such as blogs and so on and the result is accommodated with question 1 with respect of the interest.

Question 3. How do you usually get access to the information about biology research? Does it work well?

According to the investigation, papers and academic reports are the main access to the biology research for a freshman in college. Nevertheless, few students read the paper thoroughly. For most time, they just roughly get the message conveyed by the paper when they are finishing their class assignments. At the same time, academic reports seldom gets proper feedbacks from them. The popular science literature and the news on the websites also play an important role and reveal the degree of participation among the freshmen. Moreover, it is suitable for their knowledge deposits. It can be quite intriguing and it can in turn spread the researching message to a certain extent.

Question 4. Which of the following magazines introducing biology have you read?

Most choose Scientific American, which is famous for the introduction of the latest research, for its friendly style and fool-proof introduction.

Question 5. Which biologic area is your favorite area?

Following are the most favorite branches of biologic subject: neurobiology, systems biology, structural biology, synthetic biology. However, traditional subjects, such as phytology, zoology, biochemistry are not as popular as the above. So, we indicates that the reasons of the population of the favorite branches are the hot in medium, the big number of achievements, and the complex of cross between different subjects. At the same time, we found that the traditional branch will suffer the dilemma because of the lack of talents. Freshmen thought that it is very difficult for them to get great achievements in traditional subjects, so they would not like to do the research in this part. What’s more, the bad level of foundation course reduces the interests of freshmen.

Question 6. For the development of biology, what changes do you think that need to be made?

In the freshman students think they have more contact with the biological stay in the experimental section, the theoretical part of their research is too dependent on the test itself, not logic. People want to be able to rely more on the future of biology researcher thinking. Biological theories are freshman students turning the main view. Expansion of space, update technology research, strengthening discipline interaction is also some freshman students’ opinions.