AN ANALYSIS OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK AND TIMES OF THE DAY WHEN COURSEWORK IS COMPLETED FOR ON-LINE GEOLOGY COURSES

In surveys of students taking on-line courses, the reason most commonly given for preferring the on-line mode of instruction to the traditional classroom lecture mode is the ability to complete the coursework at times and locations of choice. An analysis of student work submitted by more than one thousand on-line students in two geology courses (one lower-division general education Earth Science course and one upper-division Geology of the Planets course) over a period of several years indicates that students mostly complete the coursework during the afternoon and evening on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

There is no significant data variation between the two courses. For both courses, the amount of student work shows little variation by day of the week (other than a slow and small decrease in the amount of work completed as the week progresses) except for substantial drops in activity on Friday (approximately 75% decreased activity) and Sunday (approximately 50% decreased activity). Two daily peaks in student activity were found, one in the afternoon at around 3-4 PM (approximately 60% increased activity) and a much larger one in the evening around 8-9 PM (approximately 140% increased activity).

Two additional studies - the first analyzing work submitted in the first two weeks of the semester and the second analyzing work submitted in the last two weeks of the semester - produced similar overall patterns with one significant variation in the time of day the work was completed. For both the first two weeks period and the last two weeks period, the afternoon peaks were substantially higher (approximately 120% and 180% increased activity, respectively) and arrived two hours earlier.

The on-line courses utilized in this study may be found at http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/slaymaker.