Meet the Metaorganism: A web-based learning app for undergraduate and graduate biology students.

Meet the Metaorganism is a web-based learning app that combines three fundamental biological concepts (coevolution, community dynamics, and immune system) with latest scientific findings using the metaorganism as a central case study. In a transdisciplinary team of scientists, information designers, programmers, science communicators, and educators, we conceptualized and developed the app according to the latest didactic and scientific findings and aimed at setting new standards in visual design, digital knowledge transfer, and online education. A content management system allows continuous integration of new findings, which enables us to expand the app with the dynamics of the research field. Students can thus gain a close insight and connection to current research, and at the same time learn that knowledge is not static but grows dynamically. Especially in the realm of the easily accessible metaorganism research, visualization plays an essential role to keep complex processes understandable and memorable. Meet the Metaorganism is freely available online and can be accessed here: www.metaorganism.app.

Teaching Magnetoelectric Sensing to Secondary School Students-Considerations for Educational STEM Outreach.

A major challenge in modern society is the need to increase awareness and excitement with regard to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and related careers directly or among peers and parents in order to attract future generations of scientists and engineers. The numbers of students aiming for an engineering degree are low compared to the options available and the workforce needed. This may, in part, be due to a traditional lack of instruction in this area in secondary school curricula. In this regard, STEM outreach programs can complement formal learning settings and help to promote engineering as well as science to school students. In a long-term outreach collaboration with scientists and engineers, we developed an outreach program in the field of magnetoelectric sensing that includes an out-of-school project day and various accompanying teaching materials. In this article, we motivate the relevance of the topic for educational outreach, share the rationales, objectives and aims, models and implementation strategies of our program and provide practical advice for those interested in outreach in the field of magnetoelectric sensing.