Katharina Buczek
According to a new study published in Nature Human Behavior, college students might get better grades if classes began later in the day.
In recent years, growing amounts of research have found that postponing high school start times will reduce sleepiness among students during school hours by increasing the amount of sleep students get at night.
But, there was mixed evidence regarding whether later start times also had a positive effect on grades.
So, researchers from Duke-NUS’ Neuroscience & Behavioral Disorders Program set out to research this impact– specifically among college students.
They used students’ WiFi connection data, login information to university digital learning platforms, and activity data collected via special sensing watches to launch a massive study– ultimately monitoring the sleep behavior and class attendance of tens of thousands of college students in Singapore.
“We implemented new methods that allow large-scale monitoring of class attendance and sleep behavior by analyzing students’ classroom WiFi connection data and their interactions with digital learning platforms,” explained Dr. Yeo Sing Chen, the study’s first author.
Then, after analyzing that data, the team found that earlier class start times were linked with lower attendance– since many students regularly slept through them.
Plus, when students did show up for an early class, they lost approximately one hour of sleep. And having more morning classes throughout the school week was even associated with lower grade point averages.
According to Associate Professor Joshua Gooley, this reality is simply counterintuitive.
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