Many PSU students are feeling the crunch of homework time in midterm season. Everyone seems to be able to sympathize with the random “I just have soooo much work to do, it’s crazy.” The question is, is it crazy? Sometimes I wonder if I could learn a concept or skill just as well with less homework. At the heart of this are the questions, does homework improve academic success and how much is enough? It turns out there’s a lot of research on this.
In Harris Cooper’s meta-analysis “Does Homework…,” research demonstrated that “for students in elementary school, the average correlation between amount of homework and achievement was nearly r=0.” Even though homework doesn’t seem to improve elementary school achievement, it can have benefits such as reinforcing study skills. For students in middle school the correlation was r=0.07, and for high school students it was r=0.25. The study does caution readers about assuming absolute causation, but says it is safe to say that as students grow older, homework can play a positive role in education. That said, says Cooper, homework does seemed to be linked with academic achievement only to a point. Researcher J.W. Lam interviewed high school students about how many hours a week they spent on homework, sorting the students into four categories (1-6 hours, 7-12, 13-20, over 20). He found that the highest achievement scores were found in the 7-12 hour category, students doing about 1 to nearly 2 hours of homework a day. In fact, the kids doing more than 20 hours of homework a week had achievement scores almost equal to the kids doing 1-6 hours a week. Again, there could be a lot of factors, but it does seem that when students have too much homework, they suffer from satiation (loss of interest because of excess), stress, and even lack of learning. Too much homework leads to increased stress, poorer health, and less time for friends, family, and extracurricular activities, according to Stanford University studies. A good rule of thumb, says Cooper in his own research, is the 10-minute rule: “all daily homework assignments combined should take about as long to complete as 10 minutes multiplied by the student’s grade level.” So by senior year of high school, students should be spending about two hours a night on homework. Take away message is this: homework is good…to a point.
But what about college students? That might be your question; it was mine. None of these studies dealt with college-aged students. It would make sense to say that the principle “all in moderation” would apply to college students too. I couldn’t find any research on the benefits (or repercussions) of the workload that college students have. But here’s something for thought: the University of Michigan-Flint’s “Surviving College” page says that for every three-credit class (meaning it meets for a total of three hours a week), students should spend 6-9 hours studying a week. Michigan and other universities, including Utah State University recommend the same.
Accordingly, 15 credits (5 classes) means 30 and 45 additional hours of studying a week. 18 credits (6 classes) means 36-54 hours a week. Transitioning from high school into a schedule like these, at best that’s a 18 hour mark up in study time, at worst, 47 hours. Here’s a breakdown of how that looks in a typical student schedule that I calculated based on my experiences and those of my friends. [To learn about why I chose 6-7 hours of sleep and why getting 5 hours or less is harmful, read here. To learn why extracurricular obligations are essentially requirements, consider the Top Ten Things Employers Look For In New College Graduates, why the Wall Street Journal ranked Penn State students as the Number 1 graduates to hire according to recruiters, and what our Career Services says.]
Here’s my disclaimer: these are averages and calculations are anecdotal observations. Due to my limitations as a student with a busy schedule, I could not conduct the proper observational study with randomized student schedules. Unfortunately after extensive searching, I could not find any studies about collegiate level homework’s effectiveness and quantity like the studies for primary and secondary school. I compare the current inquiry about the costs and benefits of homework and its affect on achievement in college to the investigation into whether or not smoking is bad for you. Right now, just as in the pre-1950 smoking investigation, there are no properly designed, good experiments and observations that can lead to strong inferences–we only have anecdotal observations and parallel studies (like on primary/secondary school years). Though I have a strong suspicion that in many classes professors can assign less work while still imparting the same quality of education on their students, the evidence on a macro-level is not strong enough to compel that costly reform across the country.
If researchers were to pursue this, I think they should measure the quantity of homework and the subsequent academic achievement in multiple fields and types of classes. For instance, researchers should conduct observational studies in classes such as math, physics, or chemistry where homework and assessment are predominantly based on problem sets. They should then look into classes such as English, communications, or international relations, where homework and assessment are based more on readings and papers. By researching in this intra-discipline way, we can learn more about what’s an acceptable and helpful amount of computational homework versus critical thinking and analysis homework.
On a micro-level, it would not be as taxing for an individual professor to experiment with homework levels to find out if students could succeed with less work, and then adjust a syllabus accordingly. Who knows, maybe even Andrew could experiment with SC 200 class to see if students grasp the scientific concepts of critical thinking, analysis, and high-level discussion with fewer blog and comment quantity requirements.
At the end of the day take away: the effectiveness of homework and the merit of different quantities in college settings are still up in the air, but in lower grades the conclusion is that homework is helpful in mediated quantities. Happy Midterms!
Mary and Chloe, thank you! I’m glad you found the blog interesting. Chloe, good question. Here’s what I did: I interviewed fifteen of my friends about their schedules, eight girls and seven guys. All of them are sophomores, and all are taking a minimum of fifteen credits, but no more than twenty. Each person is involved in two-three activities not directly related to their classes. Here are the different groups they are in: Daily Collegian, Fencing Club, Phi Sigma Pi (an honors co-ed fraternity), Springfield THON, Model UN, IM Soccer, IM Football, Thespians, a biology lab, Lion Scouts Tour Guides, the CODA Conduct, AXO, SHC Student Council, Mock Trial, Ohana THON, and a chemistry lab. Like I mentioned in the blog, I recognize that this was not a proper randomized observational study/survey.
Here are some links about a related issue: South Korea’s Education System Hurts Students, Goodbye Charles Dickens: Education Equality vs. Excellence, Should the US Follow South Korea’s Education System?. All of these deal with a trend in South Korea called “hagwons,” private after school education centers. South Korea is one of the highest ranked countries in all of subjects, but they receive a fair amount of criticism for the stress put on students, who essentially attend two shifts of school. Something to look into if you’re interested in the field of education! If you do happen to read them, what do you think? I did some light research into them, but couldn’t find any academic studies on them. South Korea has an abnormally high suicide rate, with nearly 40 people killing themselves a day. Many including the NYTimes have linked this trend to the high pressure education system. Look into it! Tell me what you think!
This blog post absolutely blew me away. The amount of detail you had as well as facts and different elements made it a very well rounded piece. One part that particularly grabbed my attention was when you said that people who were studying more than 20 hours a week ended up having close if not identical achievement scores as those who studied for about 1-6 times a week. I think that shows a great comparison between not studying enough and studying too much. In my personal experience it seems that there is at times a way to over think things to the point that you cram so much into your brain that it’s no longer useful. In my personal opinion I think that homework is useful when it is absolutely something that you do not understand and have to review. On the other side, if you’re just constantly going over material that you already know there’s no point and it’s more or less busy work. One question that popped up in my mind was whether or not it’s possible to study too much and so I found an article that discussed this specific possibility. http://www.academia21.com/blog/2012/03/30/studying/
I’m blown away by the amount of research you put into your blog. I felt it was very well researched including the research you did yourself. I would like to see the data as far as who you surveyed when it came to determined how the schedules came down, especially seeing the different extracurriculars (Greek life, jobs, Thon committees, Thon organizations, etc.). This fairly recent study from Stanford comes to the same conclusion as you did: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/too-much-homework-031014.html. However, the group of students surveyed came from a small, wealthy percentage and it only relates to high school students. So while one of the arguments I related to (for my own high school experience) was lack of time for friends, family, and extracurriculars, that argument is a little bit different in college. Thank you for such an informative article!
Lauren,
I’m glad you found this article interesting! Just to clarify, you consider your workload in high school equivalent to your workload here at Penn State? I ask really just out of curiosity. Like I said in the blog, there’s really not much research about the effectiveness of homework and how much is too much in college, so I appreciate hearing your perspective. I know all of our experiences are only anecdotal, but considering the lack of empirical research, collecting experiences is one of the few things we can do short of starting a whole study (which ironically we wouldn’t have time to do considering our workloads). I think you hit a point that I only briefly talked about: the health consequences of too much homework. Again, it’s a little discouraging that the article you shared only focuses on primary and secondary school students (a reflection on the lack of research, not on you!). I’d love to see some sort of study on the health impacts of homework in college on students, both physiological and psychological. Thanks for your input!
I found this blog extremely intriguing. Students always freak out about studying in college because they don’t know how much to study for each class and how much time to spend on homework daily when time management is much different than primary and secondary school. Fortunately for me, my high school gave about the same amount as homework as I get in Penn State right now, meaning I spent over 3 hours of homework daily in high school. I think an excessive amount of homework will only damper one’s grades. It happened to me because I was constantly getting so much homework that I was always overwhelmed. My stress and anxiety reached an all-time high, and sometimes my grades suffered because of this. I was a straight A student throughout high school and I learned how to adjust to the workload. I think that is the same with college, we all need to learn how to adjust to the different workload and studying for each of our classes, and things will get easier from there. I think homework is good up to a certain extent (if too much is given, I don’t consider it good anymore). The link below talks about too much homework having unhealthy impacts on our health.
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-more-homework-means-more-stress-031114