Some students roll out of bed for early morning classes, bleary-eyed, hair a mess, thankful for coffee, and still wondering if their socks match as they stroll into their 7am lecture. Other students impatiently sigh through stomach rumblings as learning stretches into the evening hours. Does research literature suggest a perfect class time where professors can avoid all the trappings of boredom, hunger, and sleep for maximum learning? What can it tell us about adaptive teaching styles?
Other nights, I go to bed late. My only class the next day is at 6pm. I wake up at 11am, procrastinate on the homework, and rush to the library printer before heading across campus. I’m engaged for the first half-hour but start to wonder who’s texting me and what’s for dinner. By the end of class, I’m counting down the minutes with the attention span of a sleepy goldfish.
If both scenarios are terrible, is there a way to optimize teaching styles for different times of day to keep brains and students engaged?
I found surprisingly little. Popular press abounded with op-eds and blogs titled “Morning classes prove to be better for college students” and “Should I take night classes?????”. But there was a striking absence of peer-reviewed literature on the subject, even in educational databases like ERIC.
What did I find in the peer-reviewed literature? Lectures are better in the morning, and interactive activities are better at night. There are several reasons for this. Declarative memory (recall) is likely better in the morning, while semantic memory (integration) improves in the afternoon [6,10]. Additionally, benefits of day learning include a non-disrupted bedtime, higher interaction with classmates, refreshed focus after sleep, and even the health benefits of natural light including melatonin and cortisol secretion [2]. Conversely, benefits of night learning include having fewer distractions, increased attention [8,9], increased creativity, and consolidation during sleep [1, 4, 12]. Another reason for evening creativity is as our energy winds down and we become groggy, our left and right hemispheres communicate more [11]. A 2007 study [3] found increased right hemisphere activity during a finger-tapping task at the onset of sleep, while left hemisphere dominance was more prevalent during wake onset.
This effect is STEM-specific, with more lecture and in-class exams, while Non-STEM classes typically have the luxury of take-home projects and discussion-based classes [5,7]. To make STEM accessible throughout the day, we should include interactive activities for STEM classes too.
In summary, these findings suggested more interactive and integrative activities would be better at night, compared to more problem solving and memorization-heavy styles in the morning. I hypothesized that the use of more creative and integrative exercises, like games, during my evening class routine, would lead to an overall increase in participation, quiz scores, and positive feedback. I decided to conduct my own education experiment to see how it impacted my own teaching experience.
Each lecture was only 10-15 minutes and was meant to refresh and introduce some main themes. At the end of each class, I gave students a “ticket out”-– a short questionnaire on what they liked and didn’t like about the lab that day.
It is important to note that before I instituted this change, I was still using an “active teaching” style. I would have students answer questions throughout, use call-and-response style teaching, and even some class activities where they moved around. The biggest difference now is that I barely lectured at all, as opposed to lecturing for most of the class, albeit with frequent interaction with students.
The most striking difference was in students’ test scores. The discrepancy before the change was over eight points; the following test it was at 5, and the final exam there was virtually no difference between the classes’ scores. Black dashed lines indicate the time at which I instituted the change.
The competitive spirit of the games helped students feel excited and engaged, while also allowing students who tended to be quieter a means to participate. I surveyed students for feedback on different experiences. The feedback I received from the questionnaires was almost entirely positive, regardless of the time of day, with night students saying their attention and engagement improved. Interestingly, several of the morning students had no problem with this new format but said they would prefer longer lectures, similar to my initial format.
There are a few factors that impact my data beyond my design:
Post Author:
Zoe Swann is a second-year Neuroscience PhD Student at ASU working in Dr. Claire Honeycutt’s lab. She studies a new intervention which uses startle as a form of endogenous intervention for people with severe post-stroke aphasia (language deficits). She taught Anatomy and Physiology Lab in the Fall of 2019. Zoe is originally from Phoenix and went to College in Oberlin, Ohio. There she was a Teaching Assistant for Fundamentals of Linguistics, Intro to Calculus, General Chemistry, and Intro to Neuroscience. Aside from her research and graduate studies Zoe enjoys learning languages, looking at spreadsheets, learning about NASA, ballroom dancing, singing jazz and opera, playing upright bass and lute, and playing badminton with her overweight border collie named Taffy.
A Tale as Old as Time….of day.
Picture me, the typical college sophomore: I am flip-flopping between these two student roles. I want to be as successful as I can be, but my schedule seems to work against me. I’m often late despite my best efforts as I stumble into my 7am biochemistry class. I force my brain to care about hydrophobicity but wonder why I didn’t sign up for an evening section. Oddly by the end of class, my brain is awake, peppy, excited to learn.Other nights, I go to bed late. My only class the next day is at 6pm. I wake up at 11am, procrastinate on the homework, and rush to the library printer before heading across campus. I’m engaged for the first half-hour but start to wonder who’s texting me and what’s for dinner. By the end of class, I’m counting down the minutes with the attention span of a sleepy goldfish.
If both scenarios are terrible, is there a way to optimize teaching styles for different times of day to keep brains and students engaged?
Learning by Doing
I started to ponder the answer to the question of teaching and time of day as I moved into the role of a teacher myself. I recently had the opportunity to teach two three-hour sections of BIO 201 Lab – Anatomy and Physiology. One at 10:30am, and the other at 7:30pm. After their first practical exam, my evening class’s overall grades were nearly nine points lower on average than my morning classes. In fact, every assignment had a higher average in my morning class. Did the current research literature have anything to say about what I was seeing in my student scores?I found surprisingly little. Popular press abounded with op-eds and blogs titled “Morning classes prove to be better for college students” and “Should I take night classes?????”. But there was a striking absence of peer-reviewed literature on the subject, even in educational databases like ERIC.
What did I find in the peer-reviewed literature? Lectures are better in the morning, and interactive activities are better at night. There are several reasons for this. Declarative memory (recall) is likely better in the morning, while semantic memory (integration) improves in the afternoon [6,10]. Additionally, benefits of day learning include a non-disrupted bedtime, higher interaction with classmates, refreshed focus after sleep, and even the health benefits of natural light including melatonin and cortisol secretion [2]. Conversely, benefits of night learning include having fewer distractions, increased attention [8,9], increased creativity, and consolidation during sleep [1, 4, 12]. Another reason for evening creativity is as our energy winds down and we become groggy, our left and right hemispheres communicate more [11]. A 2007 study [3] found increased right hemisphere activity during a finger-tapping task at the onset of sleep, while left hemisphere dominance was more prevalent during wake onset.
This effect is STEM-specific, with more lecture and in-class exams, while Non-STEM classes typically have the luxury of take-home projects and discussion-based classes [5,7]. To make STEM accessible throughout the day, we should include interactive activities for STEM classes too.
In summary, these findings suggested more interactive and integrative activities would be better at night, compared to more problem solving and memorization-heavy styles in the morning. I hypothesized that the use of more creative and integrative exercises, like games, during my evening class routine, would lead to an overall increase in participation, quiz scores, and positive feedback. I decided to conduct my own education experiment to see how it impacted my own teaching experience.
Designing a Learning Experiment
I decided to do “lecture-light” versions of each class, lecturing for 7-10 minutes to give an overview of the structures and functions, and then leaving the students to their own devices in the form of an interactive and creative activity. Below is a table outlining the activities I tried each week for both morning and night labs.Each lecture was only 10-15 minutes and was meant to refresh and introduce some main themes. At the end of each class, I gave students a “ticket out”-– a short questionnaire on what they liked and didn’t like about the lab that day.
It is important to note that before I instituted this change, I was still using an “active teaching” style. I would have students answer questions throughout, use call-and-response style teaching, and even some class activities where they moved around. The biggest difference now is that I barely lectured at all, as opposed to lecturing for most of the class, albeit with frequent interaction with students.
Results - the differences were Night and Day
The competitive spirit of the games helped students feel excited and engaged, while also allowing students who tended to be quieter a means to participate. I surveyed students for feedback on different experiences. The feedback I received from the questionnaires was almost entirely positive, regardless of the time of day, with night students saying their attention and engagement improved. Interestingly, several of the morning students had no problem with this new format but said they would prefer longer lectures, similar to my initial format.
There are a few factors that impact my data beyond my design:
- Although test scores improved dramatically, I did not see much improvement in quizzes which are given at the beginning of each class. The gap between night and day students stayed the same. This may have something to do with nighttime study habits of morning students, versus potential last-minute studying of evening students. Further research would clarify that.
- My lowest scoring students dropped the course, but that was before the first exam, so their scores would not impact the effect we see here.
- The final exam material was arguably easier for the last exam on the brain, eyes, and ears; the exam was also shorter, and students had an extra week to prepare.
What does this mean for your teaching?
Based on the data I gathered in my own experience it might be worth testing some of the following ideas in your morning and evening classes to see how they impact student learning:- Literature supports the idea that attention and creativity increase at night, with declarative memory more active in the morning. Use that to your advantage!
- Both morning and night students would benefit from more interactive activities, especially when classes are highly memorization-based like this lab was.
- Do longer lectures in the morning, shorter lectures at night.
- Break up classes into multiple segments, with several types of teaching (games, team-based problem solving, visual/creative thinking, videos).
- Also, don’t be afraid to ask students for anonymous feedback often and incorporate it into your teaching styles. Different classes will want different things, especially at certain times of the day.
Even with adjustments, it seems, it’s not when you teach, but how. Active learning is effective anytime and levels the playing field-- especially in STEM.
Sources
Andreoli, C. P. P., & Martino, M. M. F. D. (2012). Academic performance of night-shift students and its relationship with the sleep-wake cycle. Sleep Science, 5(2), 45–48
Carissimi, A., Martins, A. C., Dresch, F., da Silva, L. C., Zeni, C. P., & Hidalgo, M. P. (2016). School start time influences melatonin and cortisol levels in children and adolescents—A community-based study. Chronobiology International, 33(10), 1400–1409. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2016.1222537
Casagrande, M., Bertini, M., Night-time right hemisphere superiority and daytime left hemisphere superiority: A repatterning of laterality across wake–sleep–wake states, Biol. Psychol. (2007), https://doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2007.11.007
Davis, Z. T. (1987). Effects of Time-of-Day of Instruction on Beginning Reading Achievement. The Journal of Educational Research, 80(3), 138–140. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Lufi, D., Tzischinsky, O., & Hadar, S. (2011). Delaying School Starting Time by One Hour: Some Effects on Attention Levels in Adolescents. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine : JCSM : Official Publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 7(2), 137–143.
May, C. P., Hasher, L., & Foong, N. (2005). Implicit Memory, Age, and Time of Day: Paradoxical Priming Effects. Psychological Science, 16(2), 96–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00788.x
Shapiro, T. M., & Williams, K. M. (2015). The Causal Effect of the School Day Schedule on Adolescents’ Academic Achievement. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=best+time+of+day+&id=ED562479
Valdez, P. (2019). Circadian Rhythms in Attention. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 92(1), 81–92.
Valdez, P., Ramírez, & García, A. (2012). Circadian rhythms in cognitive performance: Implications for neuropsychological assessment. ChronoPhysiology and Therapy, 81. https://doi.org/10.2147/CPT.S32586
https://www.inc.com/melody-wilding/the-best-times-to-learn-and-create-according-to-science.html
Zoe Swann is a second-year Neuroscience PhD Student at ASU working in Dr. Claire Honeycutt’s lab. She studies a new intervention which uses startle as a form of endogenous intervention for people with severe post-stroke aphasia (language deficits). She taught Anatomy and Physiology Lab in the Fall of 2019. Zoe is originally from Phoenix and went to College in Oberlin, Ohio. There she was a Teaching Assistant for Fundamentals of Linguistics, Intro to Calculus, General Chemistry, and Intro to Neuroscience. Aside from her research and graduate studies Zoe enjoys learning languages, looking at spreadsheets, learning about NASA, ballroom dancing, singing jazz and opera, playing upright bass and lute, and playing badminton with her overweight border collie named Taffy.
Comments
Post a Comment