Posted By: Evelyn Mantegani, BA, ASHG Education Coordinator
For teachers and students participating in the DNA Day Essay Contest, each year’s question seems to appear on the website out of thin air. While that would be simpler for us on the Question Committee, it wouldn’t be any fun.
Our goal every year is to craft a challenging, thought-provoking, and current question. We often have a hard time narrowing down our choices because of our excitement for the potential answers from students, and turn to a variety of resources to help.
Soon after celebrating DNA Day on April 25, we launch into discussions for the next year’s question. This year’s Question Committee included myself, the rest of the Education Department, our former Genetics & Education Fellow Teresa Ramirez, and our former Executive Vice President Joe McInerney. First, we look over questions from previous years to determine what worked and what didn’t. We consider a question to be less successful if there are fewer submissions or it has a concept too difficult for students to grasp. We then look through a list of potential questions that has been built up in recent years. We pick our favorites, alter some, add on to others, and brainstorm new questions based on what is new in genetics. What follows is weeks of discussion about how to shape our top choices to be both challenging and accessible to high school-aged students around the globe.
This part of the process is often the most difficult, as we try to figure out how to get the wording perfect. When satisfied, we send three pilot questions to a group of teachers to vote and critique via survey. We ask questions like whether students would understand the question prompt and whether they would be interested in the question topic. Our pilot group of teachers are longtime contest participants who have submitted more than four essays each year over the past five years and are from public and private schools, as well as from various states and countries. Based on their vote, our 2018 question, which asks students to argue if consumers should or should not have direct access to predictive genetic testing, was chosen as the winner.
Now that we have finalized the question, we are excited to see the responses. I think this year’s question will be especially thought-provoking because direct-to-consumer genetic testing is becoming increasingly popular and accessible. And now, it’s on to the contest.
ASHG Members: If you would like to participate as a judge in this year’s essay contest, look out for a recruitment email in February. Please keep in mind that you must be a current ASHG member to judge DNA Day essays. If you have any questions, please email dnaday@ashg.org.
Students and Teachers: We are now accepting essay submissions via the DNA Day website. The deadline is March 9.
Evelyn Mantegani, BA, is Education Coordinator at ASHG. For more information on ASHG’s programs for K-12 students and teachers, visit the education website.