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Survey of Student Study Hours or Studying is Optional

By Robin Geery, Schenectady County Community College

Recently I polled students in my developmental Writing 2 class (I work at a mid size urban community college in upstate NY) to find out how much time they spend studying during an average week. I was led to make this inquiry out of a sincere desire to find out why, after students had been drilled in class and assigned numerous exercises to work on outside of class, they seemed unable to remember grammar rules from one class to the next. “You are studying this stuff, right? I mean, there are lots of grammar points that aren’t exactly intuitive. You have to know the rules to write the sentences correctly. You are studying the rules after class, yes?” Of course they were studying; they all were nodding their heads in a positive up and down direction. Ok, maybe I asked the wrong question. The next class I passed out a Study Survey with just three questions: how many hours a week do you study? Are you full time or part time, and are you female or male? The results were collected and this is what I discovered.

All of the students, every single one, whether full time or part time, female or male, studied just 1 to 6 hours a week. 72% of the students were full time, so they were registered for at least 12 credit hours. Based on the well accepted study formula, study two hours outside of class for every one hour spent in class, these students were, at best, 18 hours light of their prescribed study load.

Discouraging as the results were, I decided to do a follow-up survey with a slightly different population, random students who visit the College Learning Center. About half of these students are pursuing vocational programs and half are pursuing nonvocational, or transferable programs. Admittedly, these students are self-selecting because they are voluntarily seeking academic assistance to strengthen their grades or improve their written assignments. The students were asked the same three questions, how many hours a week do you study? Are you full time or part time? Are you male or female? The students were given six choices when asked how many hours they studied: none, 1-6, 7-12, 13-19, 20-25, and more than 25 hours per week.

The results were not very different from the first, smaller survey of my Writing 2 class. 60% of the students reported they only studied 1-6 hours a week. Of these students, 85% were full time. 26% studied 7-12 hours a week; 6% studied 13-19 hours a week; 2% studied 20-25 hours a week, and a staggering 3% studied more than 25 hours a week. As far as gender goes, it does seem to greatly determine the number of hours a week one studies. Of the 26% of students who studied 7-12 hours a week, twice as many were female. The number who checked the 7-12 hours of study time, however, was so small that it really would be hard to draw any positive correlations about male and female study behaviors from this survey.

So what does the survey really reveal about community college students? First, it appears that most students are still operating in high school mode when it comes to preparing and studying for classes. If the majority of students are, at best, studying six hours a week, that is only one hour and fifteen minutes a week for each class, if the student is taking four classes. This would break down to about 15 minutes of studying per class per night, five nights a week. I can clearly see now there would be little time for practice or reinforcement of class lecture material with just fifteen minutes per day. The extent of skill practice for these students is almost exclusively confined to the class time.

Another thought I had when considering the results, was that students are enormously unrealistic. They believe that Erickson’s eight stages of man can be learned in fifteen minutes, or less. A literary analysis might take up to 30 minutes. Learning anything such as a new concept, a new skill, a new initiative is an undertaking that requires time. Most don’t know this yet.

What else? Probably most students don’t know what they are supposed to do when they are studying because studying is mostly an independent activity. An instructor does not usually assign a student to make flashcards and recite them every night until he knows them. An instructor will not check a student’s textbook to see that she has underlined the main ideas and written margin notes, nor will the teacher ask a student if her class lecture notes are in good order.

Given the results of the study survey, I think it can be predicted that many of the students who are studying well below the minimum, will experience a wake-up call shortly in the form of a failing or lower than expected grade. Other students will realize they have buried themselves, and no longer having the time available to cover the material for upcoming exams or projects because they’ve neglected to keep up with their studying. Hopefully, they will realize they need to change their study habits, but some may not have the luxury of dedicating extra hours to study and review. They simply have too many responsibilities such as child care and work. They will need to seriously consider their priorities. For me, the survey really brings up perhaps the most important question: How can teachers address the problem of students’ less than satisfactory behavior regarding their study habits? It seems like this might be a good focus for my follow-up survey next semester.

Questions or comments? Contact the author at geeryr@gw.sunysccc.edu.

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