Semester-level Spacing but Not Procrastination Affected Student Exam Performance

Abstract

Spacing and procrastination are often thought of as opposites. It is possible, however, for a student to space their studying by doing something every day throughout the semester and still procrastinate by waiting until late in the semester to increase their amount of studying. To analyze the relationship between spacing and procrastination, we examined 674 students’ interactions with a course eBook over four semesters of an introductory programming course. We measured each student’s semester-level spacing as the number of days they interacted with the eBook, and each student’s semester-level procrastination as the average delay from the start of the semester for all their eBook interactions. Surprisingly, there was a small, yet positive, correlation between the two measures. Which, then, matters for course performance: studying over more days or studying earlier in the semester? When controlling for total amount of studying, as well as a number of academic and demographic characteristics in an SEM analysis, we find a strong positive effect of spacing but no significant effect of procrastination on final exam scores.