University students tend to get lower grades if their classes and lectures begin early in the morning.
Attending classes and sleeping well are both associated with increased engagement and performance at university 鈥� but a course with lectures scheduled early in the morning might compromise students鈥� ability to do both.
To investigate, at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and his colleagues analysed the grades of 27,281 undergraduates enrolled at the National University of Singapore. The students were attending classes between 2018 and 2020, but before the covid-19 pandemic.
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On average, those with more days of morning classes had a lower overall grade than those with more afternoon classes.
鈥淲e made sure that the students we selected had the same course workload, in terms of course credits,鈥� says Gooley. The students with no morning classes at all had a higher overall grade, on average, than all other groups.
The researchers also found that attendance was much lower at early morning classes 鈥� for students with lectures starting at 8 am it was 15 per cent lower than at classes at 10 am or later.
They investigated attendance using Wi-Fi connection data associated with 24,678 students 鈥� which included some of the initial 27,281 students. If a student was connected to a Wi-Fi router near to their lecture hall, the team assumed that person was in attendance. Students knew this information was being collected, and it was anonymised before inclusion in the study. 鈥淏ased on each student鈥檚 course timetable, we already knew the location of their classes,鈥� says Gooley. 鈥淲e just determined which Wi-Fi routers correspond to which lecture halls.鈥�
To understand why students weren鈥檛 attending morning classes, the researchers gave 181 of them a sensor to wear for six weeks that can measure sleep cycles and activity. 鈥淚n nearly a third of instances for 8 o鈥檆lock classes, students didn鈥檛 wake up in time to reach their class,鈥� says Gooley. Conversely, they rarely slept past the start of classes that began at noon or later.
The researchers suggest their findings could help inform changes in class schedules. A more flexible schedule for students to choose their classes dependent on whether they are more morning-orientated or evening-orientated could improve their academic performance, says at Loyola University Maryland, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the study.
Reference: bioRxiv,
