International Biology Olympiad 2017
Royal Society of Biology
The Royal Society of Biology is a single unified voice for biology: advising Government and influencing policy; advancing education and professional development; supporting our members, and engaging and encouraging public interest in the life sciences. The Society represents a diverse membership of individuals, learned societies and other organisations. Individual members include practising scientists, students at all levels, professionals in academia, industry and education, and non-professionals with an interest in biology.
International
London,
GB
www.rsb.org.uk
Success achieved
The IBO engaged 250 students from 64 countries in a week-long event designed to test their biological knowledge and skills whilst developing relationships and friendships across the global bioscience community.- Website
- http://www.ibo2017.org/
- Project dates
- September 2017 – August 2017
Project team
- Rachel Lambert-Forsyth, Project Manager
- Isabel Brinsden, Events Officer
Tools & Systems
The event’s Joomla-based microsite held key information for participants, sponsors and interested parties. The CMS was managed by staff in house.
Facebook served as a “one stop shop” for information on the competition and for posting updates during the week. Private Facebook groups were also used to communicate with volunteers during the week, passing on information and schedules in a quick and easy way. We also used Facebook Live on the cultural nights, allowing parents and friends from across the world to ‘check in’ with the students and see that they were safe and well.
Facebook post generating lots of engagement
The main account capturing the event was the dedicated @IBO2017_UK Twitter account, run by RSB staff and then volunteers during the week of the event itself.
We updated a bespoke registration system used by a previous IBO host. Tech-savvy volunteers updated it for our complex data requirements.
Bespoke examinations and translation system – the competition requires host countries to prepare an English and Russian version of both the theory and practical examinations. These are then translated into multiple languages. We used a system developed specifically for the IBO by a previous host and updated the code as required for our purposes.
Introduction
The International Biology Olympiad (IBO) has been running for 27 years and the UK, through the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) has entered a team of students for 20 years. 2017 saw the IBO enter its 28th year and the UK’s first opportunity to host this prestigious event.
As the professional body for biology in the UK, we are the natural organisers for this event. More than that, we wanted to be involved with an event that brings together teams of the most talented pre-university biologists from around the world to compete in a competition that establishes friendships and networks across borders. We wanted to bring together like-minded young people from very different backgrounds and enthuse them to continue their studies of biology either in their native countries or abroad.
We set the following targets:
- Attracting the largest delegation to the IBO with a minimum of 60 countries participating in the competition
- Developing a ‘gold standard’ examination to test the students across a range of bioscience subject areas in an imaginative and engaging way
- Deliver a programme of activities that showcased the very best of British bioscience
- Organise the event to time and budget
Discovery
The RSB has been supporting the UK attendance at previous IBOs since the early 1990s and during this period of time volunteers of the RSB have attended numerous IBO events and taken the time and opportunity to gather intelligence on how it is run. The UK proposed hosting the 2017 IBO in 2007, and following its acceptance by the IBO global steering committee, started to consider the operational needs of running such a high profile event. Over the last four years, staff from the RSB, volunteers from our organising committee and staff from Warwick University (both conferences and life science department) who were approached to co-host the event attended IBOs in Switzerland, Indonesia, Denmark and Vietnam. During these visits the organizing committee members discussed logistics, requirements, and other pertinent issues with the current hosts, gathering information on how to run (and how not to run) an IBO.
In addition, we began approaching potential sponsors three years in advance of the event, as a strong underpinning budget would be a key measure of success. Most IBOs are underwritten by the host countries Ministry of Education. As the UK National Biology Olympiad does not operate in this way, corporate sponsorship and fundraising through the national competitions already run by the RSB needed to be in place by July 2015 in order for Trustee sign off on project budget and plans.
Staff and volunteer involvement remained stable through the planning process. This ensured that planning timetables remained on track and research was fed into the planning process over a number of years. The stability of core organisers, along with the proactive approach of attending IBOs hosted by other countries, combined with a clear project time line, budget and staged deliverables all contributed to the success of the event.
Objectives
We aimed to:
- Welcome over 60 countries to the UK and ensure all delegates were supported by a team guide who could converse in their home language
- Recruit 50 volunteers to support the week-long event and a further 25 volunteers to support key events during the week, such as the opening ceremony, practical examination and closing awards dinner
- Develop a theory test that was rigorous, engaging and which tested the very best biology students from across the world. The test should also tell a coherent story of British Biology advancement and the role of key research breakthroughs and British scientists.
- Run three practical examinations covering the topics of developmental physiology, biochemistry and plant biology that could be delivered on one day for 270 students in examinations conditions
- Introduce the delegates to the very best of British science communicators through a series of events
- Partner with a broad spectrum of sponsors that covered the breadth of biological disciplines and work with them to showcase their work and activities to delegates.
Activities
Download the full tasklist in the Related Files section.
Innovation
Live streaming the opening ceremony and using Facebook live during the social events and daily blogs and video clips was a new innovation for the IBO. By doing so we engaged with a much larger audience than just the participants on site and allowed parents, teachers and friends and family back in the student’s home countries to stay in touch with the students during the event. Devices are removed from students on day one of the event and returned on day four to ensure cheating is not possible during the examination days. The stats show that this innovation had a big impact with thousands connecting with the event across the week.
Each IBO has its own theme and flavor. Here in the UK we have a rich tradition of science communication and mixing science with art and we wanted to showcase this as well as the broader history and culture of the UK. By entertaining the students with a number of different science acts, we managed to showcase a really rich variety of biology communicators and open up students to the possibility of other avenues for their scientific endeavors than a pure research and academic route.
We also moved from four to three practicals in order to test increasingly challenging techniques and curate a story for the students for each practical. It added a layer of complexity for SLS as they were dealing with the largest volume of students per practical in IBO history and had to ensure equipment and lab space was available appropriate for the volume whilst maintaining examination conditions. They did so with huge success.
Marketing
Formal promotion of the event was a three year process. Although we had stated our intention to host ten years in advance of the 2017 event, informal promotion occurred with participant countries in the preceding years. This promotion started at the IBO in Bali, Indonesia (July 2014) when flyers were distributed to the countries attending this event and a short presentation was given by the Chair of the Organising committee during the event’s general meeting. A longer presentation was made to delegates at IBO 2015 in Denmark and IBO 2016 in Vietnam. These set out the plans for our event, potential excursions planned for delegates, accommodation and venue information and importantly registration fees. Feedback received from potential delegates at these stages was given to the organizing committee and, where possible, built into the plans for IBO 2017. In the preceding 18 months a dedicated microsite was set up and associated social media channels created using Facebook and Twitter. All these channels were used to promote the event, thank sponsors and raise their profile, recruit volunteers to support the event and host the registration process for delegates.
During the week itself we were keen to reach those not attending the event and involve friends, parents, teachers and colleagues from around the world. A dedicated volunteer worked on social media throughout the week, blogging daily and creating curated content to share across multiple platforms. In addition we worked with Cerebrus Digital (a consultancy firm) to create daily videos and live stream key events such as the Opening Ceremony.
Challenges
One of the major challenges faced by this event was fitting it into workloads that were already high. The event was brought to the UK by one of our volunteer led special interest groups, however much of the operational delivery was undertaken by staff. The long lead time and unusual nature of the event meant that fieldwork had to be undertaken by senior staff, and this event was then retained in one of the senior leaders of the RSB workloads. In order to ensure the daily governance of theorganization could be a focus for that member of staff, it was critical that an events officer was recruited to specifically cover this event. By recruiting an experienced events professional, much of the day to day operational management of the event could be delegated in the final year preparation while the overall strategy and vision for the event remained with the senior leader.
The second challenge was budget related. The IBO has had Ministry of Education backing which included an underpinning budget normally running into the millions. The RSB is a small charity with an annual turnover of approx. £2.5M and no Ministry of Education backing was forthcoming for our event. We therefore needed to run a very prudent and well managed budget and Trustee sign- off on the project was only agreed once a fully costed budget was prepared and underpinned by registration fees and external sponsorship. We put a lot of time and effort into fundraising in advance of the event, ultimately securing just under £100,000 2 years in advance of the event in external sponsorship and this combined with the predicted registration fees, a thoroughly costed budget and accrued income from our national competitions meant that we could proceed with the event.
Achievements
We welcomed sixty-four participant countries and a further four countries observing the event. All student teams were supported by a guide and the majority were able to converse in their home language.
We had over one hundred applicants for the fifty residential roles, a further twenty-eight volunteers to support the practical examination invigilation, plus thirty volunteers across the week to support key events. All volunteers received training and those supporting the students in a pastoral environment completed an enhanced DBS check.
The theory paper was the best in recent history of the IBO (as per feedback from the IBO steering committee and delegation members) and told a rigorous story of UK bioscience, linking scientific endeavors back to the researchers and pioneers giving context to the questions for the students.
Three practical examinations were successfully run, in partnership with SLS. Technical staff from across all science departments at Warwick were involved and equipment was borrowed from other HEI’s to ensure the number of students could be catered for.
British Science was showcase through a Science Ceilidh, Simon Watts Ugly Animal Roadshow, a Charles Darwin MC and a public engagement exhibition. We had a diverse sponsor list.
Targets & Statistics
The key stats for IBO are:
- Welcomed 68 competitor countries - a record high (previous highest number of participant countries was 64)
- Welcomed 4 observer countries
- Accommodated 250 students – again exceeding all previous events
- Accommodated 300+ accompanying adults – exceeding all previous events
- Listened to 5 musical acts
- Welcomed 2 Mayors and 1 Town Crier
- Showcased 3 science communication performances
- Showcased 2 Science Buskers
- Supported 12 Public Engagement exhibitors
- Dined with 15 Ambassadorial guests
- 1 Nobel Laureate inspired the delegates
- 100 volunteers worked tirelessly across the week
- 9 blog articles were written
- Thousands of photos were taken
- A total of 2,143 people followed the IBO 2017 Facebook page and over the past month
- The Facebook page saw a total of 239,645 post engagements, reaching 49,355 people
- The IBO 2017 twitter account content accumulated 292,528 impressions since the beginning of the year
- 3 National Press teams ran coverage during the week: Iran, Thai BBC and ITV and in total 29 different outlets covered the event, from 15 different countries
- 750 practical examinations were taken and marked
- 100,000 theory questions were sat and marked
- 26 Gold medals, 47 silver medals and 72 bronze medals were handed out
- 1 Opening ceremony was held and live streamed with 3,605 live views
- Videos saw a total of 13,758 views on our YouTube channel, daily videos were uploaded to YouTube and the week is summarised in the one below.
- 4 excursions took place to local historical and cultural venues (Warwick Castle, Coventry Cathedral and Coventry Transport Museum and Stratford-upon-Avon boat and city tour.
- 1 school sports day for 250 students
Financials
The IBO was by far the largest ever event the RSB has organized and its budget reflected that. Sponsorship was sought prior to confirmation that the event was run – this was challenging as we were selling an idea rather than a concrete project to potential partners and sponsors. Despite this challenge, we secured £50,000 from one single sponsor three years in advance of the event, a further £25,000 from three sponsors and predicted income generation of £200,000 over the planning period from our national competitions. All this persuaded our Trustees that the event was viable and approval was unanimous when sought with our Trustees.
Over the period of three years, the event secured £611,538 in income (exceeding our budgeted figure of £536,500) and in total the IBO cost the RSB £478,630 (against a budgeted figure of £405,300) over the same period, resulting in a surplus of £132,908 over the planning period (against a budgeted figure of £131,200).
Over a period of five years the RSB, through its national competitions run by a volunteer group (UK Biology Competitions) raised £224,000 (exceeding the £200,000 predicted income generation) which went towards the running of the IBO, in addition we secured £93,000 in external sponsorship and the additional income came from registration fees.
What would we do differently?
One major issue was running an event with so many different countries attending, each with their own unique way of communicating with us. A lot of time was taken up responding to emails from participating countries. We could have set up FAQs earlier in the process to point to rather than responding individually each time.
We were also too lenient on some late payers (mainly because there was an expectation from the community that we managed diplomatic issues as sensitively as possible). We are still waiting some payments from countries who registered but did not attend due to matters outside of our control and this has had an impact on the budget. In hindsight we should have been more forceful about payment prior to attending upon completion of registration.
Feedback & Testimonials
“It’s hard to believe that my IBO journey stared over two years ago. Now the IBO 2017 UK has come and gone which leaves me feeling sad but so incredibly proud that I was part of helping to make it happen. The entire week was amazing, I remember feeling extremely nervous on Monday morning standing in the Jury Room keeping my fingers crossed that the IT was going to work! It did, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief... The atmosphere in the Jury Room was great, and there were quite a few familiar faces from Denmark in 2015. The highlight of the week for me has to be the closing ceremony, how proud the students were to receive their medals was an absolute delight to watch. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone in the IBO Organising Committee for welcoming me into the IBO family with open arms. I have loved working with you all, this will be an experience I treasure forever.”
Mita Nathwani, Warwick Conferences
“Many congratulations on such a spectacular success!! It looks like a wonderful triumph - very well done!!”
Professor Stuart Croft, VC University of Warwick
“On behalf of the German team - students and jury - I would like to send you my sincerest thanks for hosting us so perfectly! The IBO 2017 was a great success thanks to you and your teams preparation, care and devotion. We felt very welcome and I looking forward to meet you and some of your team at Prague in October.”
Dr. Burkhard Schroeter, German delegation
“The UK has managed to organise one of the most elegant and well run IBO’s in recent history. The theory papers told a coherent story which the students enjoyed and the practicals were perfect – testing the core skills and competencies in imaginative ways.”
Dr Poon Kasemsap, IBO Steering Committee Chair
“It was awesome, you guys smashed it, my team are still messaging me saying how much they are missing it.”
Sophie Murphy, team guide
“Thank you very much I thoroughly enjoyed my time volunteering for the IBO.”
Waheda Choudhury, day volunteer
“I wanted to thank you and the organising committee for giving us team guides such a wonderful experience during the IBO event.”
Keith Chester Dacanay, team guide
“For my part, thank you for giving me the opportunity to MC the culmination of the IBO 2017. Despite the fact I had nothing to do with any of the previous weeks' events, I found the evening to be quite moving at times.”
William Ewart, Darwin impersonator and closing ceremony MC
Wider impact
The students that took part in the event created friendships and collaborations that will last a life time. Many of the volunteers were previous IBO participants and the strength of community felt at the event was astounding. For students who won medals, particularly those from developing countries or areas where civil unrest or war may be ravaging their country, achievement at the event can be life changing. For instance, medal winners from Turkey will now gain free entry into their university of choice.
For accompanying adults, the event provides an opportunity to share best practice and learn from education practices across sixty-eight countries. Adults are supported by an education session, facilitated by the hosts and involving any delegate who wishes to present on their area of expertise. From this session, partnerships and collaborations emerge – building capacity and leadership both within and between countries.
As an association, the impact has been huge. The links with the University of Warwick School of Life Sciences have been cemented – Prof. Kevin Moffat was recently shortlisted as one of our Higher Education Teacher of the Years (2017), Dr Leanne Williams is working with our curriculum committee and spoke at a recent workshop on practical work and curriculum design that has fed into our work designing and developing an ideal biology curriculum from 5-19.
We have grown our membership by inviting all volunteers to take up free membership with the RSB in thanks to their hard work over the event week and we have grown our pool of volunteers wishing to engage with public engagement work of the Society.
Finally, we have created a sense of purpose and impact that that RSB is a force to be reckoned with. We are only eight years old but have the capacity to run and host such an important event for the bioscience community of the future.
