The Malaysian Bat Education Adventure

The Malaysian Bat Education Adventure (MBEA) is an idea that originated with Tigga Kingston and Ken Schmidt (two colleagues from the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech), Danny Squire (a graduate student in the College of Education at Tech), and me. Our idea was that because of the new communication technology, it should be possible to have elementary and middle-school students in Texas participating in research on bats in Malaysia as a way of improving science education. In 2008, the Office for the Vice President of Research at Texas Tech had a competition for a grant to fund pilot projects designed to improve education. Because we had been thinking about some of these ideas for some time we decided to submit a proposal. We were fortunate to be chosen as the recipient of the grant to allow us to try out some of our ideas.

Tigga has been studying bats at Krau Wildlife Reserve in the state of Pahang in Malaysia for many years. Because "bats are cool" we thought that students in Texas might like to learn more about them. As part of our pilot project we developed curriculum on bats for use in 4th grade classrooms including some pretty cool videos. We were able to find teachers at North Ridge Elementary School in Lubbock that were willing to work with us. Each night, Tigga and her graduate students go out into the field to capture bats in the rainforest. Each day, Tigga would send the data back to the students who then used the data to answer questions about bat biology, ecology, and biodiversity. The highlight of the MBEA for the students was that they were able to interact with Tigga "live from the field" by a video conference. Tigga was able to show the students bats and answer their questions about bats and her research while she was in Malaysia and they were in Lubbock. I think that we, the teachers, and the students all thought that our pilot study was a great success so we hoped to be able to scale the program up to cover more grade levels.

My Visit To Krau

I was able to spend two weeks during March, 2009 visiting Tigga and her students at Krau so that I could learn more about the work that they were doing. Each night and then again early each morning we would head to the field to check the bat traps (to learn how the scientists study bats check out http://www.ttu-mbea.org/studying-bats/). The bats were really cool (you can see all of the bats at http://www.ttu-mbea.org/meet-the-bats/). It was my first time to be in a rainforest at night, which wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be and I did manage to avoid getting eaten by a tiger!

Life in the Field

You can imagine the glamorous life style of scientists studying bats in the rainforest. Actually the living situation at Krau is not so bad. During my visit Tigga and Ain, a Malaysian graduate student studying for her Ph.D. at Texas Tech, were joined by Goddo and Cathy, two reserchers from the Philipines who were there to learn about bat research were living at Krau. A Malay women from the nearby town brought us food for lunch and dinner- my first exposure to Malaysian food.

The house


The front porch. Because the house had no AC we spent a lot of time on the front porch. It was fun to watch the birds and monkeys pass by.


Inside the house. This room served as living room, dining room, and research office.


The Bats

The bats were cool. It is much easier to show you some photos than to try to explain about them.

Ain with bat










The MBEA Today

We added two new collaborators, Steve Crooks, from the Collge of Education at TTU, and Rob Peaslee, from the College of Mass Communications at TTU. We submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to fund the full development of the project, but unfortunately that proposal was rejected. However, I think that many of the materials will allow us to use math to learn more about ecology... just like the scientists do it.

To learn lots more about MBEA check out the website at http://www.ttu-mbea.org/