Early exams lead to lower grades for students, study by FEB researchers shows

Students under the age of 21 perform worse when they have to to take their exams early in the day, FEB Researchers Lammertjan Dam, Daniël Vullings, Lindy van der Hulst and Mohammad Reza Amiri discovered. Dam and Vullings explain how their research came about and what conclusions could be drawn from their results. “It may be worthwhile to consider the various age groups more carefully when scheduling the exams.”

It all started with a book about sleep. Lammertjan Dam got personally interested in sleep a couple of years ago and read the book Why we sleep by Matthew Walken. “It is very interesting. Among other things, it describes how lack of sleep impacts cognitive performance, as well as how sleep rhythms change temporarily in adolescents. I immediately thought of my poor students that had to be present for exams at 8.30 in the morning.” After reading the book, Dam talked about it with his colleague Daniël Vullings, mentioning that he believed that perhaps early time slots for exams might have an impact on students' performance. Vullings, who focuses on educational quality and innovation, immediately got interested. “We agreed that it should be doable to look into this, since obviously the data to research this was available within our own faculty.’’

Vullings pitched the idea to a student of the Master Econometrics, Operations Research and Actuarial Studies, Lindy van der Hulst. She had an interest in educational topics and was deciding on a topic for her Master’s thesis. Dam became Van der Hulst’s thesis supervisor, and together they contacted several people within FEB to see if they could get the exam data to do the research. After a careful privacy clearance, the researchers were granted access to the data, which were first compiled, cleaned and converted in panel data format by learning analytics specialist Mohammad Reza Amiri. 

Results

Dam, Vullings, Van der Hulst and Reza Amiri analyzed 400,000 exam grades from more than 24,000 FEB students. They discovered that passing rates and grades are lower for morning exams and that this effect is much stronger for younger students. In particular, a morning exam leads to a 0.9 to 1.3 percentage point decrease in passing rate for students aged 22 and over. For adolescents (students aged 21 and younger) the effect is even larger, and an early start of an exam results in a 1.6 to 2.9 percentage point decrease in passing rates.

Dam elaborates: “We really tried to identify this as an independent effect, meaning that only the (somewhat random) starting time of the exam drives the decrease in performance. This is in line with the temporary shift in sleep rhythm that Walken describes in his book: asking a 19-year-old to get up at 7am is like asking the average adult to get up at 5am.”

Dam and Vullings tried to make their estimates as econometrically sound as possible and also wanted to strengthen the link between their results and (their interpretation of) sleep deprivation. “We therefore also looked at the passing rates and grades during the week after daylight-savings time (DST; switch to "summer time"). Indeed, the passing rates turned out to be lower in this week as well. The effect of an exam being scheduled in the week after the start of DST is statistically significant for students aged 21 and younger: a morning exam in this week leads to a 1.1 to 1.3 percentage point decrease in passing rate.”

Recommendations

According to Dam and Vullings, their results imply that it may be worthwhile to consider the various age groups more carefully when scheduling exams. “As we find evidence that all students suffer from early morning start exams, it would be best not to conduct exams early in the morning at all.” Yet, the researchers acknowledge that for logistical reasons it may be impossible to abandon the early exam block of 8.30-10.30 a.m. altogether. However, the issue can be partially addressed by taking into account the differences between various groups.

“Ideally, we recommend the university to redesign the exam schedule from scratch, starting by allocating the first exams between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Next, fill the remaining slots with exams scheduled between 1 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. If there are still exams left to schedule, prioritize those for older students - such as master's courses or third-year bachelor's courses - by scheduling them before 9:30 a.m., preferably at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. For younger students, such as first- or second-year bachelor's students, schedule their exams to begin after 6:15 p.m.”

If this all is too severe a change, the minimal first step the researchers suggest is to examine the current schedule to check whether first-year students more often have exams in the morning, and if so, reverse the order of the schedules. “This preserves exam hall availability; the order of the exams is simply reversed, so that morning exams become evening exams. We are already in contact with the schedulers to discuss feasible options. Apart from that, there are already boundary conditions in place such as that an evening exam should not be followed by a morning exam from the same program.”

A potential low-cost solution to reduce workload

Why should schedulers and educators go through the hassle of changing exam schedules for such seemingly small effects? First, there are indirect costs associated with the effects. Dam explains: “A simple calculation shows the following: a morning exam leads to a 0.9 to 1.3 percentage point decrease in passing rate. This decrease translates into 205 to 296 extra exams to grade per year, equating to 34 to 50 additional grading hours. For adolescents (under 21) there is an additional 0.7 to 1.6 percentage point decrease leading to an additional 106 to 244 failed exams and 17 to 41 additional grading hours. Having exams in the week after the start of Daylight Savings Time translates into an additional 24 to 77 failed exams, equating to 4 to 13 additional grading hours. All in all, aiming for more appropriate scheduling seems a low-cost solution to avoid both the cost and the work pressure associated with additional work-load for staff.’’

The researchers note that the impact on individual students of merely having "bad luck" because their exam was early in the morning can be severe. “At the margin, it might mean the difference between continuing at university or dropping out. So, although we focus more explicitly on the effect of exam timing on grading costs, the highest social costs of reduced passing rates are likely borne by individual students who are discouraged by marginally failing an exam. In line with our intuition, previous research has also shown that reduced motivation can lead to health problems and higher drop-out rates.”

Questions? Please contact Lammertjan Dam or Daniël Vullings.