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Education Science

New Research Says Starting University Classes at 11am or Later Would Improve Learning (qz.com) 178

Posted by msmash from the science-of-learning dept.
Using a sample of first- and second-year college students at the University of Nevada-Reno in the US and Britain's Open University, a group of researchers analyzed students' cognitive performance throughout the day and found that the best learning happened in classes that began later in the morning. From a report: Since every person's chronotype, or sleep pattern, is slightly different, there isn't one universal start time to benefit everyone -- but according to students' survey responses as well as theoretical data on circadian rhythms parsed by the researchers, starting classes at 11am or later benefits the greatest number of students. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience this week, bolsters prior research indicating that teenagers learn better with late starts; it also extends the studied age group from high school students to college sophomores and freshmen.
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New Research Says Starting University Classes at 11am or Later Would Improve Learning More

New Research Says Starting University Classes at 11am or Later Would Improve Learning

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  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by TFlan91 ( 2615727 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:45PM (#54229905)

    New research says if you let kids sleep through their hangover, it will improve their learning. News at 11.

    • "Morning sex improves University Class learning."
    • Did they study the improvement on early classes if kids went to sleep and woke earlier? Did they study the benefits when kids stay up even later and wake even later?

      • Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tharkkun ( 2605613 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:15PM (#54230111)

        Did they study the improvement on early classes if kids went to sleep and woke earlier? Did they study the benefits when kids stay up even later and wake even later?

        I doubt it. Because I would bet if they changed classes to 11AM then students would just stay up for 3 hours later knowing they could sleep in. Once their bodies adjusted it would business as usual. Waking up groggy for 11AM classes instead.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

          I doubt it. Because I would bet if they changed classes to 11AM then students would just stay up for 3 hours later.

          Wrong. RTFA. It is not just conjecture, but is based on actual data of students that were scheduled for later classes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Altus ( 1034 )

            pshh... next you will be telling us that this "research" is more valuable or scientifically valid than the opinions of random slashdoters.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              The research will always be based upon the initial hypothesis. It will tend to hone in on the desired results and ignore alternatives. Measuring students with some latter classes is not the same as measuring students will all later classes, living in a latter starting society. Make the shift in class start across the board and the students sleep patterns will adjust and you will be back to square 1. The real valid hypothesis is the one everyone knows, starting the day with the sun shining is better physiolo

              • The research will always be based upon the initial hypothesis. It will tend to hone in on the desired results and ignore alternatives.
                This is not how research works.
                A guy aiming for his PhD might make this mistake. But the Professors examining him and granting him his PhD will ask the relevant questions.

                The real valid hypothesis is the one everyone knows, starting the day with the sun shining is better physiologically than starting the day in the dark.
                That is your hypothesis.
                I'm a living counter example ..

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Exactly. There are two reasons why it is a bad idea:

          1) Then they'll complain that classes start before 12pm. When I've taken polls about what students do and don't like about a class, I get a full 10-15% of students complaining that "10am is too early". I can sort of understand that even if I think it is silly, but when I've also taught the class at 1pm and asked the same question, 5% of the students *still* complain it is "too early". They need to get their acts together and decide to dedicate the whol

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I doubt it. Because I would bet if they changed classes to 11AM then students would just stay up for 3 hours later knowing they could sleep in. Once their bodies adjusted it would business as usual. Waking up groggy for 11AM classes instead.

          You'd think that, but no. For teenagers, their circadian rhythm is offset a few hours so a later start time improves matters, even when you realize they sleep later. There is a lot of truth to the teenager sleeping in beyond noon on a weekend.

          The big reason we don't star

          • The big reason we don't start high school around 10AM or so is because it would end late for teens who might have a job, sports, etc.
            No the big reason is that teachers are idiots (on many levels which I wont scratch here)
            Teachers are the "in general" only part of the population that want to have a 7:00 - 15:00 work day. Stay up at 5:30 or 6:00, be at work (in school) at 7:00 or 7:30 and go home "early".
            They have such a big lobby that they sabotage any attempt (in Germany) to get more sane school times for k

        • That is not insightful but idiotic.

          Yes, if you stay up late and "sleep in" your body adjusts.

          However, just because your "work" starts at 11:00 there is no reason to stay up late and sleep in.

          I'm used to tell my customers: if you demand me being here before 10:00, no problem. If you want me here before 9:00 it gets actually difficult for me.

          And anyway: if you want me to be here before 11:00 then you pay 1 or 2 hours for doing me nothing.

          Because before 11:00 or 12:00 I'm not really able to do anything signifi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altus ( 1034 )

        Circadian rhythm is a harsh mistress

    • "News at 11." - Not sure if that was intentional or not lol! :p

      Also learning occurs much better if you show up I've found (and or can stay awake if you do).

      My first year of university I had a Math Stats 150 course that started at 8am. The material is pretty dry to begin with, and to top it off the professor would give Farris Bueller a run for his money (Bueller... Bueller....). At any rate my dorm neighbor and I had an agreement if I woke up I would get him up, and vice versa. The end result was that neithe

      • When I first wrote it I didn't realize it, then during the preview I laughed a little

      • On top of that, one thing I found irritating was that at least at my University the general trend seemed to be that the more sciency the course the earlier the class was, and they more artsy the later it was, which seemed profoundly unfair to me (I don't think I had a single math class that wasn't early)
        Same at my university.
        Basically all math classes where pre-req to get from the "bachelor stage" (Vordiplom) to the "master stage" (diploma/Diplom). All those classes started at 8:00. It was all math, algebra

        • I got all the math I needed for my degree, although just barely. They were with the exception of one other course (which I attended exactly one class, which was a movie, and wrote the final exam at the end of the year. I passed, but it wasn't very pretty). all my lowest scores. Indeed I ended up taking a lot of them that I could in my final year and being the oldest guy in the classroom other than any mature students...

          The question of math and computer science is a long debate on Slashdot. Generally speakin

    • Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)

      by bigdavex ( 155746 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @03:25PM (#54230615)

      New research says if you let kids sleep through their hangover, it will improve their learning. News at 11.

      I can't watch that; I'll be in class.

  • In true /. style I have not read TFA, but isn't there at least a bit of temporal relativity here? Sleep at midnight and class at 8:00 is very similar to sleep at 3:00 and class at 11:00.

  • Since every person's chronotype, or sleep pattern, is slightly different

    From what I recall of college, no one went to sleep before 2am anyway. (that was when the bars closed) If you went to bed before that you were just going to be woken up by drunks.

    • From what I recall of college, no one went to sleep before 2am anyway. (that was when the bars closed)

      We weren't all liberal arts majors.

  • One time I took the 7AM class for Harvard Calculus [harvard.edu] in 1994. If you're not familiar with Harvard Calculus, the textbook was all word problems and no mathematical symbols. I bailed out after the first week.Harvard Calculus never caught on. Thank God.

  • Unfortunately Will Never Happen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:59PM (#54230013)
    When I was in university they ran classes from 8:30 am to 10pm, this is partly due to making scheduling easier but also reduces the number of rooms they need.

    • One of the nice things I noticed, was the scheduling would be a lot different for summer school (probably due to less scheduling, and more rooms available).

      As mentioned in an earlier post, at least at the university I attended, there seemed to be a trend that all science courses were in the morning, while the arts would be later in the day... :(

      However not so in the summer (probably because the profs didn't even want to), which was a nice change to have an afternoon computer science class. etc...

      I passed on

    • And that spread is only because they're able to abuse adjuncts, TA's, and untenured professors into staying late and compromising their personal lives.

      College students pay through the nose, so it wouldn't be totally unfair to force professors to push their schedules back and neglect their kids... but it's definitely not going to happen with tenured professors.

      There's probably some hybrid of online learning and traditional learning that could be made that would suit everyone's needs better and be chea

  • This is dumb and yet another obvious caving to the snowflake generation. The real world doesn't work this way.
    "You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect results." - Dr. Peter Venkman

    • I'm with you! God made us to be corporate slaves! Start in grade school to work toward your corporate servitude! Oscar Muñoz and the CEO league salute you!

    • The real world doesn't work this way.
      The real world works the way you make it work.

      Cows need to be milked every 12h.

      It does not matter to them if you milk them
      either: 6:00 and 18:00
      or: 9:00 and 21:00

      The problem are not people sleeping long but a world that is going wrong.

  • I want to post a triple palmface like I can on Disqus.

  • When my earliest class was 9am I'd struggle to wake up at 7:30 and make it there on time.

    And when my earliest class was 11am I'd struggle to wake up at 9:30 and make it there on time.

    Certainly there's other factors that go into my bedtimes, the levels of outdoor light and various outings, but fundamentally I go to bed based on when I have to wake up.

    I don't understand how pushing back start-times causes anything more than a temporary fix until people adapt to the new start-times.

  • You'd have better luck with mandatory exercises (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:16PM (#54230119)
    It's not the time, it's the time awake. In college-aged people especially (late nights, partying, etc) this is a factor. The military has PT every morning to make sure people are awake before work, 30-60 minutes (depending on the exercises done) each morning is enough to wake people up, another 30-60 minutes to shower and eat and you're at 1-2 hours prep time to be fully alert. The issue isn't the time (if you started at 11AM each morning you'd just have 1PM be the new "best time to start" within a month or two.)

    • Re:You'd have better luck with mandatory exercises (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:36PM (#54230239)

      This would seem to be the best solution. Play reveille on the dorm's PA system every morning at 6:00AM. Breakfast will be served promptly at 6:30 AM at the mess hall a two mile jog from the dorms. A jog back to the dorm and hot water will be available for showers from 7:30 to 8:00 AM. Then its off to class.

      We'll just call this an intro course: Life Responsibility 101.

      • From a fitness standpoint it's best to alternate jogging and muscle training each day so your respective muscles can recover properly. Also, you don't typically want to eat before working out - some people might, but if you have everyone eat then jog for an hour chances are someone will actually shit themselves, and most people will cramp up. The best process is immediately after waking everyone goes out to stretch and do whatever the workout for the day is, then stretch again, then shit/shower/shave and

      • That would be a pretty useless course in responsibility because IRL you can wake up at 8:30, brush teeth, skip breakfast, and make it to work for 9. Then slowly continue waking up until 10 over a cup of tea/coffee

        Or even better, if working from home, set alarm at 8:59, log on, and go back to sleep.

      • That is how most schools used to be a hundred years ago. Of course, it's easy to clamor for that kind of treatment now that you've graduated, you're only inflicting it on others after all.

    • And I thought the article was being unrealistic...

  • Some of us are morning people (Score:3)

    by sensei moreh ( 868829 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:18PM (#54230127)
    My first quarter in college:
    8 AM E&M
    9 AM Linear Algebra
    10 AM Russian
    11 AM English
    Except for the physics lab one afternoon a week, I was done by noon, and could get my homework completed before the noisy masses returned to the dorm mid-afternoon

  • It won't change anything (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    For me the main reason why I can't keep a routine going in university (besides my own lack of self-control) is that classes are not offered on a regular schedule to begin with. When I'm stuck with lectures that are only given in the evening and I get home near 10PM, or have to deal with classmates working on a project at the very last minute (i.e. at night) I always end up not getting enough sleep and this obviously affects my concentration in the morning. When I have an internship it takes some adjustment

  • I went to 8th grade in the Philippines. There were so many of us they had to stagger the classes, half went to school in the early morning and the other half after lunch.

    Going to the afternoon sessions, I felt I was more alert and able to learn more.

  • In my experience, the best learning (at least for science and engineering) is at night 8pm - 2am. Perhaps the 11am classes are better because it gives the productive night owls a chance to work late into the night without having to show up to an early class half asleep.

  • I'm sure this varies person to person- I always was able to learn better early in the morning.

    Now I'm an adult- I work best in the afternoon/evening (probably because my brain is less active then).

  • Is greatest number really a good metric of success though?
    These are first and second-year students, 90% of them will drop out by the end of the year. What is the point of increasing a dropouts grade a few points? Perhaps the ones who do better on different schedules are the ones who will actually benefit from doing better in the class.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altus ( 1034 )

      are you saying that the rate of attrition among first and second year students is 90%? That probably deserves a citation. Also improving learning could easily result in a decrease in dropout rate which would be valuable to society as a whole (people wasting time and money and not getting an education is a drain on our resources as a society).

  • My research suggests that starting *anything* after 11:00 AM greatly improves... whatever it is you're starting.

    Except coffee. Coffee should be started earlier.

  • ...starting a class after 11am increases attendance in the class as well.

  • I took all the early classes I could get. First, I'm an early riser. I hated afternoon classes. But above and beyond this, starting classes in the afternoon almost ensure that no student can hold down a real job while going to school. That would have been a non-starter for me.

  • They found that colleges and universities prioritize student learning close to the bottom of the list of things they care about.

  • Lots of reasons it won't work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timholman ( 71886 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @03:46PM (#54230741)

    A few comments from my perspective as a faculty member:

    (1) Faculty and staff want to arrive and go home at a reasonable hour. Setting class start times to 11 a.m. will effectively push back the entire academic day by two hours. People don't want to be leaving their offices at 7 p.m. every day.

    (2) You can't "compress" the academic day. In other words, you cannot just say "We'll only hold classes from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., instead of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m." You'd need more classrooms (since more classes would be held during the same time slots) and there will be more class conflicts between required courses during the same time slots. Scheduling would be a nightmare.

    (3) 9 a.m. really isn't that early. Most students have the luxury of rolling out of bed after 8:30 a.m. and heading to class without a shower, a meal, dealing with family members, or tackling a 30-minute commute. Your average faculty member is probably waking up at 6:30 a.m. to get started on the day. A two hour "sleep-in" period is already built in for college students.

    (4) 9 a.m. is actually late by post-graduation standards. Most jobs in the real world start at least an hour earlier. Students might as well get used to it now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1. In universities, faculty typically use off hours to work on research, so having time in the morning to do so is hardly going to be a problem for them. Staff wouldn't really need to change their hours since they don't manage classes.

      2. You could, but you'd have to compromise on course load, course planning, whatever.

      3. 9 a.m. is pretty damned early in my opinion. I know other people think 9 a.m. is ridiculously late. But, frankly, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks. The question is how being up and doin

    • Re:Lots of reasons it won't work (Score:5, Insightful)

      by laddiebuck ( 868690 ) on Thursday April 13, 2017 @10:12PM (#54232503)

      Fiirst of all, it's not true for everywhere in the real world. Most businesses that care about their workers' productivity - arts, engineering, sciences - you already go in late or pretty much at whatever schedule suits you, the same is true of most professions. It's mostly customer-facing (everything from retail to stockbroking) low-level (i.e. not management) jobs that operate on early schedules.

      But that misses the broader point. If we decided as a society to change working hours to reduce accidents or improve public health, academia could be trend-setters. When those grads eventually become CEOs and businesses starts clamoring for regulatory change, regulation could change the picture for everybody just like past labor reforms (like maximum hour, night shift, or overtime laws) or regulations on commercial time (like Daylight Savings Time).

      "This is how things are done" is not a good reason not to explore this.

  • LEARN TO BE AN ADULT! Accept the responsibilities that come with being an adult. People go to work from 8-5, 9-5 in most of the industrialized world (save for the few 2nd-3rd shift). These snowflakes need to GROW UP!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EzInKy ( 115248 )

      That's right. Get robbed at night? Too bad! Police only work 9-5. Get sick at night? Too bad! Doctors and Nurses only work 9-5. Only special "snowflakes" are awake and alert after the sun goes down.

  • Let the students schedule their class time, just like they do now. Let early morning risers take their morning classes. Let the bums schedule their afternoon and evening classes.

    Why even contemplate changing the start time to a later time?

  • I once had a grad level quantum mechanics class taught by a prof who I found to be a nice guy, but was quite poor at teaching. The class was at 8 am.

    2 semesters later, I had him again for a more advanced QM class. This was at 5 pm. I could hardly believe he was the same teacher. He was good. The problem had been that he was an extreme night owl (as I was) and he just couldn't get woke up enough that early to be coherent.

    I later mentioned it to the department chair and he said, "Oh yeah. When we want to puni

  • I want to embark on an epic rant about how in the real world we get up at 6am and we LIKE IT, but ... eh, as a software engineer, I get up and roll into work when I roll into work, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Sometimes I'm hacking something out at 1am, etc. My schedule is about as reliable as it was in college, I'd say. So I guess someone else will have to welcome you to the real world.

  • I knew that 35 years ago.
    They simply should have asked me ...

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