The Backyard Mammal Project (BMP) is a community outreach program designed to engage local citizens with the diversity surrounding them every day with the hopes of increasing their level of science literacy and sense of place, two aspects of ecological literacy shown to have a positive effect on scientific reasoning. Community-based environmental education programs have been shown to raise awareness of local environmental issues and foster participant knowledge about conservation issues at hand; however, exact methods for designing effective programs to reach goals beyond simple learning gains about the topic are currently lacking in the conservation literature. The goals of the BMP are to increase ecological literacy by offering participants opportunities to: (1) reflect on the scientific process and data collection, and (2) employ a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of complex biological systems using a local ecosystem model. Exploring mammalian diversity is an ideal setting to test these goals given the highly local and manageable nature of the mammals within the study and the potential for mammals to be a motivating organism for family involvement. With this research, we present a conceptual change model structured to increase awareness and valuation of diversity and improve understanding of the scientific process.

Results/Conclusions

For a pilot study, we recruited 10 individuals and their family members to collect species information from five mammals. During an initial training session, groups were given background information and the task of collecting diversity information. In groups, individuals generated and presented project plans for measures to collect data. After suggestions from the lead authors, participants voted on the best measures which included PVC tracking plates and feeders. In addition, individuals were asked to reflect on the process by which a project plan had been generated. After two weeks, participants met to share preliminary data and make modifications to the plan which was followed by another week of data collection. During the third meeting, individuals analyzed their data. As a final task they shared their data with others and given time for reflection. They also made recommendations for future iterations of the program.  Through pre-post participation questionnaires, we found individuals experienced learning gains with special attention to organismal diversity. The questions focusing on scientific process skills yielded more complex findings.