As students, we are expected to be able to balance school, studying, work, all while maintaining social expectations, but how does time management affect our academic performance?
According to a study that was conducted by Faisal Z. Miqdadi, Abdulla F. ALMomani, Mohammad T. (Shadid Masharqa), and Nabil M. Elmousel, time management does have a impact on academic performance. The experiment that was conducted was focused on 20 students, ten that were freshman and ten that were sophomores, that were divided into two groups based on their respective GPA’s. Based on their GPA, they were either classified as successful students( GOA of 3.5 or above) or unsuccessful students( GPA below 3.5). During this experiment, time spent studying on a daily basis , time spent looking for lost notes, how often the students were able to study without being interrupted, and the time period did students begin working on the given assignments. The data that was collected was based from surveys that the students were asked to complete.
For the comparison of time spent studying daily, there is noticeable difference seen between the two groups. for the unsuccessful students, it was reported that approximately 40 percent of them only studied for exams, while only about 30 percent of successful student studied for exams. When it came to studying for 1-2 hours daily, it was only seen that successful student that did this, but comparatively it was only those students that were in the unsuccessful student group that would study for more than 3 hours a day.
The next field that surveyed was how much time that students spent looking for either lost notes or papers. Given the fields never, rarely, sometimes, or always, it was seen that approximately 40 percent of the successful students never had to look for lost notes or papers, compared to the approximate 10 percent of unsuccessful students answered that they would never look for lost papers or notes. However, the unsuccessful student were the only group that answered that they were always looking for lost papers or notes, in this case about 30 percent of the unsuccessful students.
Another field that that was surveyed was how often these groups of students were able to study without being interrupted. When it came to the categories of never interrupted, rarely interrupted, and sometimes interrupted, the unsuccessful students had a constant of about 30 percent. However when it came to the successful students, they were the only group that responded that they were not always being interrupted, while 10 percent of the unsuccessful students responded that they were always being interrupted.
The final subject that the two groups were surveyed on was when the students would begin working on assignments given to them. 10 percent of the unsuccessful students answered that they would begin given assignments as soon as the class was finished, However, the majority of successful students (90 percent) reported that they would begin an assignment just before the assignment dead line. One thing that was noticed in this survey category was that 10 percent of the unsuccessful students answered that they began working on a given assignment after the deadline had passed.
Its’ from the data that we can see a pattern that can determine if a student would be either successful or unsuccessful. Unsuccessful students would spend more than three hours a day studying, be more at risk of always being interrupted while studying, spend more time looking for lost notes or papers, where as successful student spend about 30 minutes to up to 2 hours studying, and are not always being interrupted while studying.
(All pictures are found here)
References
Faisal Z. Miqdadi, Abdulla F. ALMomani, Mohammad T. (Shadid Masharqa), and Nabil M. Elmousel The Relationship between Time Management and the Academic Performance of Students from the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Relationship between Time Management and the Academic Performance of Students from the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. Retreived from http://www.asee.org/documents/zones/zone1/2014/Student/PDFs/177.pdf