Katharina Buczek
“If the goal of formal education is to position our students to succeed in the classroom and workforce, why are we forcing many university students into the bad decision of either skipping morning class to sleep more or attending class while sleep-deprived?” Gooley asked.
“The take-home message from our study is that universities should reconsider mandatory early morning classes.”
The study included 23,391 students, in which the researchers used WiFi connection insights to determine whether or not early classes were linked with lower attendance rates.
Afterward, the researchers compared this data against six weeks of activity data collected via special sensing watches from a subset group of 181 students. This helped them determine whether the students were continuing to sleep rather than attending early classes.
The team also analyzed the activity data against the day and night digital learning platform login patterns of 39,458 students to figure out if early classes were linked to waking up earlier and receiving less sleep.
Finally, the researchers analyzed 33,818 students’ grades– as well as the number of morning classes they were enrolled in– to determine whether class start time impacted the grade point average.
Equipped with the results of this study, the researchers are now working on comparing the differences between early birds and night owls in terms of sleep, class attendance, academic performance, and overall well-being.
“We expect to find that evening-type students will be at a learning disadvantage in early morning classes and have lower class attendance, shorter sleep, poorer mental health, and lower grades compared with their peers,” Gooley hypothesized.
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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