March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach.

Anali Perry ,Charon Henning,Lara Durgavich,Jesse N Weber ,Emma Willcocks,Stephanie Schuttler ,Alyson F Brokaw ,Kate M Lesciotto ,Brian Easterling,Anne Hilborn,William Nickley,Albert Chen,Asia Murphy,Jeffrey J Martin ,Danielle N Lee,Jason Krell,Olivia Pellicer,Jessica E Light ,Kristi Lewton ,Josh Drew,Melissa A Wilson ,Anne C Stone ,Mary C Casillas,Marc Kissel,Mauna Dasari,Patrice K Connors ,Jennifer Kobylecky,Connor Fox Ditelberg,Christopher N Anderson ,Valeria Pellicer,Carlos Eduardo G Amorim ,Brian P Tanis ,Alejandra Núñez‐De La Mora ,Nicole M Burt ,Jeanne Dietrick,Elinor K Karlsson ,Katie Hinde,Tara Chestnut

doi:10.7554/elife.65066

Abstract

March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach - gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products - to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping "play-by-play" narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

Highlights

Public education and outreach are an essential pillar of 21st century scholarship
After the evening’s battles conclude, written “sports summaries” of the battles and underlying science and full transcripts of the play-by-play are posted on multiple online platforms including Facebook, Wakelet, Blogspot, and LibGuide so the science behind the outcomes is widely available. These materials are distributed directly to educators using March Mammal Madness in their classrooms so student players can follow the tournament without being on social media or accessing the internet
Beginning in 2019, we developed additional permutations of the worksheets that emphasized anatomy and physiology, classification system, and genetics, partly in response to survey findings from 2018 that revealed the breadth of courses taught by educators using March Mammal Madness

Summary

Introduction

Public education and outreach are an essential pillar of 21st century scholarship. A substantial portion of empirical research and research infrastructure, especially in higher education, is supported through public funds. After the evening’s battles conclude, written “sports summaries” of the battles (see Supplementary file 3) and underlying science and full transcripts of the play-by-play are posted on multiple online platforms including Facebook, Wakelet, Blogspot, and LibGuide so the science behind the outcomes is widely available These materials are distributed directly to educators using March Mammal Madness in their classrooms so student players can follow the tournament without being on social media or accessing the internet. MMM contributors have been featured in media interviews, podcasts, news stories, and blogs that discuss the tournament, expanding their media experience and connections with science journalists In this way, the broader impacts of March Mammal Madness are twofold, both in communicating science to the public and preparing scientists to publicly communicate. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.” —Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1965

Conclusion

Findings

Materials and methods