THE CHRONOS ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE ON GEOLOGIC TIME AND EARTH HISTORY FOR 6-12 GRADE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS: A FIRST STEP TOWARDS A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY-BASED E&O PROGRAM

Many students struggle with the concept of deep time. The difference between millions and billions of years is only one letter and a factor of 1000 but to conceptually grasp such large numbers is very challenging for most non-geoscientists. Yet, understanding of this central geoscientific concept is crucial to learning in Earth sciences, and the National Science Education Standards recommend instruction on geologic time as early as 5th grade. The difficulties experienced by many undergraduate students may stem from the way these concepts are taught in grade school, as shown by a recent extensive study of students' ideas about geologic time and Earth history that has identified a number of significant misconceptions (Libarkin et al., 2005).

As part of its E&O initiatives, the CHRONOS System partnered with a number of teacher groups to identify which specific ideas or misconceptions should be addressed in both formal and informal education. Using a modified subset of the Geoscience Concept Inventory used by Libarkin et al. (2005), adapted for use with two groups (6th-8th graders and 9th –12th -grade students and teachers), CHRONOS created an online anonymous questionnaire available at www.chronos.org. The questionnaire consists of demographic questions and 17 (11 for 6th -8th graders) science questions. Since it was deployed in April 2005, more than 150 teachers and some 50 students have responded to the questionnaire. Teachers from 35 states with degrees varying from Earth science to Theatre submitted their responses. While 94% of them correctly identified the Earth as more than 4 billion years old, nearly 70% believe carbon dating is used to determine this figure. More than 50% believe that the Earth has shrunk or expanded through time and 8% believe that scientists cannot tell the size of the Earth.

The CHRONOS System is an NSF-funded geoinformatics project dedicated to the development of a network of data and tools for sedimentary geology and paleobiology. The continually growing body of temporally and spatially defined research-level scientific data and of top-notch scientists involved in the project represents a great opportunity to explore ways to communicate the concept of deep time to the general public, an important component of CHRONOS's education and outreach efforts.