You may be able to teach early classes, but students may not be awake yet!

Abstract

Academic success of first-year students is one of the primary concerns of higher education institutes. A factor that may influence students' success in a course and has been ignored is the effect of time of class on students' performance. The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between class time and students' performance in a course to verify whether or not students enrolled in early morning sections have lower performance compared to those who enrolled in sections that meet at other times of the day. The research team analyzed students' attendance and performance in a course with an enrollment of 1651 students spread across 15 different sections. Early morning sections and one late Friday section performed significantly lower than the other sections. However, one of the early morning sections showed similar behavior to the non-early morning sections, which is likely due to this section instructor's teaching style. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.