What Is The Ideal Start Time To Start College Classes?

Group 2: Darian Boggs, Sarah Howard, and Carena Pacheco

Arizona State University: EDT 180C: T/Th 3:00pm-4:15pm

Professor Gary Lewallen

18 April 2017
Introduction:

With the infinite topics to choose, my partners and I decided to research the ideal start

time for college students. My partners and I conducted a short six question survey that 126

students decided to take.

The questions were conducted using Google Form. Three of the six questions that we

asked the students who took the survey were basic questions. One of the basic questions was

what is your gender? We gave three multiple choice options, to the students, which were male,

female, or prefer not to say. Another basic question that we put in the survey was in which

college are you enrolled? Which was listed all seventeen of the colleges- using the drop down

option- that ASU has to offer, so that the students would be able to choose their specific college -

not their major. The final basic question that we gave students to answer was what year of study

are you currently? Students only had four possible multiple choice answers that were freshmen,

sophomore, junior, and senior. The other three questions were specific to our topic. One of the

questions was what is the start time of your earliest class? The students were asked to type in a

short answer of their earliest in military time. Another question was what time do you prefer to

start class? Again, the students were asked to enter their short answer of their suggested start

time using military time. The final multiple choice question was do you prefer online classes or

face-to-face classes? Students were given three options which were online, face-to-face, or no

preference.

To collect the information, we used Google Docs. We typed in each question along with

the possible answers, and determined what type of question that it was to be: multiple choice, or

short answered questions. My partners and I made sure that each of the questions were to be

required of each of the students.

 After we finished using Google Docs, we used Google Sheets to create a more organized

list of answers. In Google Sheets, a time stamp was given to us along with an organized list of

our questions, and under were the answered survey questions that the 126 students answered. We

used the name ranges that was easier for us to use when we analyzed the data. In our analysis we

used functions such as the =COUNTIF(x) Function, the =SUM(x:x) Function, =AVERAGE

Function, =MODE Function, =MEDIAN Function, =MAX Function, and =MIN Function. In our

Google Sheets, we also used the add sheet button to add our charts to different sheets so that our

analysis was better organized.

Discussion:

The charts that we created regarding the different responses made analyzing our data

much easier to see, read and understand.

The chart that we began with was the year in which our participants are currently enrolled

in their college. It is called class chart and easily shows how many of each class participated in

our survey. The chart actually goes in order from having the most amount of freshman

participants, then sophomores, followed by juniors and then the least amount being seniors. This

could be due to the classes being offered the survey being a basic class that freshmen usually

start off taking.

 Our next graph was regarding the gender that participated in our survey. Since there are

only two recorded answers we decided to create a pie chart to show if there were more male or

female participants. As seen in our graph, males were only just about of the participants

leaving females being of the participation! This could be due to more females being enrolled

in the course. If the survey was to be required, I think males would be more represented.
 Our third chart was showing which particular college participants are currently enrolled

in. There was a wide variety of responses, but the highest number of responses were from the

Mary Lou Fulton Teacher's College followed by Liberal Arts and Sciences college. This is

probably because our surveys were given to students who are taking similar courses having the
same professor giving the surveys to their students.
 The next chart was named earliest time chart. This chart showed the real and actual start

times of our participants for this semester, spring 2017. The chart showed that the most students

have a start time of 9:00am being a total of 37 students. The next highest number of students start

time was at 12:00pm having 23 students. This is then followed by 10:30am having 18 students.

This could be because a class that a student is required to take is only offered at a certain time,

not allowing them to choose their prefered start time.

The fifth chart named preferred times, shows the respondents most and least prefered

college class start time. The most prefered time easily seen was 12:00 pm which spiked up to 27

college students preferring that time. There were times that were not preferred by anyone. It is

important to note that these times were also not the earliest times available, but rather were

scattered throughout the day. The most common start time being 12pm could be due to students
having increased academic performance when starting at a later time such as early afternoon.

The sixth chart talks about class type preferences. This was an important question

to us because students who enjoy online classes usually get to choose the time that they want to

start working on the class. Most students preferred to have face-to-face classrooms. It is

reasonable to understand that if a student is in class with an instructor is much more easier to ask

questions during that class session.

Analysis:

When looking at our data and charts, the conclusions we can see that answered our initial

question of what is the ideal start time to start college classes? is that 9:00am is when most

students have their earliest class. When asked what their preferred start time for class would be,

27 out of 127 people preferred to start their first class of the day at 12:00pm and 25 out of 127

people preferred to start class at 10:00am. After 3:00pm is when students didnt want their

classes to start. Other questions that come to mind when we analyze our data is, do students

require more time to sleep in before they start their day? Or would they rather have their

mornings to get other things done, like homework, housework or just work in general? If we did

this survey again, we would change the amount of questions. We could possibly add a section to

our what time do you prefer to start class?question. We could ask With the extra time in the

morning, what are you most likely doing? The answer choices could be as follows: Sleeping,

Homework, Housework or Work. If we added this question into our survey we can convey why

students prefer starting their classes at 12:00pm.