In this project MiSoC researchers Delavande, Del Bono and Holford and co-author Williams study the effect of several aspects of university students’ timetable of lectures and classes on their degree performance.
It is well-established that time of day of classes affects students’ ability to learn. Young adults’ circadian rhythms mean they are less alert in the early mornings for example, (Crowley et al., 2007; Cardinali, 2008). Early starts are also more likely to eat into young adults’ total hours of sleep, reducing their alertness in class (Curcio et al., 2006; Trocket et al., 2000). There is already much evidence that delaying school start times would benefit performance both in Higher (e.g. Carrell et al., 2011) and secondary education (e.g. Heissel and Norris, 2017).
Cumulative and consecutive classes within a day also introduce differences in cognitive fatigue, boredom and mental tiredness. The time this takes to kick in and reduce a students’ performance in classroom settings varies widely depending on the task (Jackson et al., 2014; Ackerman and Kanfer, 2009).
What this project will add is understanding of the mechanisms through which the effects of these class scheduling characteristics on performance happen, in the context (like most universities in the UK) where attendance is not compulsory. The schedule potentially affects both likelihood of attending, then how fatigued or attentive the student can be if she does attend, and her activities the rest of the time. As a practical example for timetabling officers, we might expect classes scheduled immediately after another one to be more convenient and so attract a higher attendance rate, but these students to be more tired and less able to learn. This project will establish which of these effects dominates. We will also study other scheduling characteristics associated with the convenience of classes, such as single event days that have not previously been studied.
We will use individual hourly timetable and attendance data on first year students from one UK university. We will link this to their coursework and exam scores; to time diaries completed by students to assess the impact of their schedule on things like their sleep patterns; and to survey data for the students’ study habits, including how much they make up for non-attendance with private reading.