Poor Grades Tied To Class Times That Don't Match Our Biological Clocks (berkeley.edu)

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be time to tailor students' class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, according to a new study from UC Berkeley and Northeastern Illinois University. Researchers tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers. After sorting the students into "night owls," "daytime finches" and "morning larks" -- based on their activities on days they were not in class -- researchers compared their class times to their academic outcomes. Their findings, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, show that students whose circadian rhythms were out of sync with their class schedules -- say, night owls taking early morning courses -- received lower grades due to "social jet lag," a condition in which peak alertness times are at odds with work, school or other demands. "We found that the majority of students were being jet-lagged by their class times, which correlated very strongly with decreased academic performance," said study co-lead author Benjamin Smarr, a postdoctoral fellow who studies circadian rhythm disruptions in the lab of UC Berkeley psychology professor Lance Kriegsfeld.

Comments

Re:Coddling.

[lucm]

People today would not be able to cope with what they had to.

So what? I don't think my grandfather, who had the same job his entire adult life, expected dinner to be on the table when he got home, and frequently relied on violence as an educational tool would thrive in today's world either. The only thing that doesn't seem to change is people who repeat ad nauseam that things were better in the past.

Society is evolving. For the most part, men no longer drag women by their hair to fuck them next to piles of animal bones in cold, humid caves, and I don't think we lost of lot as a species as we moved past that. Today, with some exceptions, every person has a chance to make a meaningful contribution to society, and this is a good thing if we're at a point where people think about biological clocks to optimize productivity and happiness, instead of "toughing it out" and sticking with rigid systems.

Yes, there are idiotic aspects in today's life that may be mistakenly perceived as "evolution" (such as sexist and racist hiring policies at Google under the guise of "diversity"), but challenging the practice of having rigid schedules is not one of them. It's about time that we start considering better options than 9 to 5 for everyone, and next time you're stuck in traffic at rush hour you'll probably agree.

Re:Coddling.

[iamhassi]

The main difference is that we today have a LOT more to spend our time and money on so we have to work more to get that shit paid.

False. While most things have rose at the rate of inflation, prices for entertainment have dropped substantially in the past 20 years. While a 55" tv would have cost $3,000+ just twenty years ago, they can now be bought for $300. Camcorders, cameras, tape/cd players have all been replaced by relatively inexpensive smartphones. Film and tapes for cameras and camcorders have been replaced by cheap memory cards and free unlimited online storage you can access anywhere from your phone. DVD and vcrs have been replaced by smart tvs with Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. 20 years ago you might spend thousands on a reasonable music and movie collection, that has been replaced by spending a few dollars a month on Netflix and Amazon streaming, Apple Music and Spotify.

Thanks to advances in vehicle reliability people are even keeping cars longer, an average of 11.5 years https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/2...

So really this is the richest the average American has ever been.

Re: Grow up

[gnick]

At my last job, we had "core hours" from 9-3 that everyone was supposed to be in, but outside those hours was up to us. I got used to a 6:30-3:00 schedule that I still maintain even though I no longer have formal schedule requirements. As long as you're in for enough of the day to overlap sufficiently with the people you need to interact with, I see no reason to dictate mornings or afternoons.