Early morning classes correlate with poor sleep, academic performance
SLEEP scientists’ analyses has found that associations between early classes, less sleep, poor attendance and reduced grade point average. Studies in secondary and junior college students have shown that later start times can have positive impacts on grades.
Digital data from university students in Singapore suggested that they could be getting better grades if their classes started later.
Research in recent years has shown that postponing the start time of high schools improves the amount of sleep that students get and reduces their sleepiness during school hours. But findings are mixed about whether this has a positive impact on grades.
To determine the impact specifically on university students, Associate Professor Joshua Gooley, from Duke-NUS’ Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders Programme and colleagues used student Wi-Fi connection data, log-ins to university digital learning platforms, and activity data from special sensing watches to conduct large-scale monitoring of class attendance and sleep behavior of tens of thousands of university students.
“We implemented new methods that allow large-scale monitoring of class attendance and sleep behavior by analysing students’ classroom Wi-Fi connection data and their interactions with digital learning platforms,” said Dr. Yeo Sing Chen, first author of the study and a Duke-NUS PhD graduate.
From the data, the researchers found that early class start times were associated with lower attendance, with many students regularly sleeping past the start of such classes. When students did attend an early class, they lost about an hour of sleep. Morning classes on more days of the week were also associated with a lower grade point average.
They also analyzed activity data with the day and night patterns of digital learning platform logins of 39,458 students to determine if early morning classes were associated with waking up earlier and getting less sleep. Finally, they studied the grades of 33,818 students and the number of morning classes these students were taking to determine if it impacted their grade point average.
The team is now investigating differences between class attendance, sleep, wellbeing and academic performance between early birds and night owls. (Duke-NUS Medical School)
