The teachers must then formulate appropriate questions and hypotheses, design the experiments, develop and validate the methodologies, and collect and analyze the data. By the end of each exercise, they have tested their original hypotheses and drawn conclusions which may differ from their initial hypotheses or preconceived biases. While the EBI program cannot directly alter the funds and time available to teachers from their home districts, it gives them the opportunity to use their resources in the most efficient way possible. Maryland has a substantial fauna and flora that can be easily utilized in environmental biology courses. There are numerous advantages to using local organisms.
Expenses tend to be minimal and the equipment readily available.
Students can also observe organisms in their natural environment and gain a fuller understanding of the complexity and fragility of habitats they see every day. Finally, the use of local organisms in lectures and laboratories also minimizes travel time and disruptions to the school day. EBI also integrates computers into the laboratory. Employing simple, commercially available software, the teachers use the computers to record and organize data, perform simple statistical analyses, construct and plot graphical representations of the data, and conduct simulated experiments. Although this aspect of the EBI program is incidental to achieving our main objectives, we find that the computers have increased student interest and productivity.