A study of online exams procrastination using data analytics techniques

Procrastination appears to be an inevitable part of daily life, especially for activities that are bounded by deadlines. It has implications for performance and is known to be linked to poor personal time management. Although research related to procrastination as a general behavior has been well established, studies assessing procrastination in the context of online learning activities are scarce. In the exploratory investigative phase of this study, advanced data analytic techniques were used to gather information about online exams. The dataset included 1,629 online exam records over a period of five terms in an academic institution in the southeastern United States. The online exams were provided during a weeklong timeframe where students were asked to take them based on material they studied the previous week. Task performance time and task performance window were fixed for all records extracted. Results of this study indicate that when it comes to online exams, over half (58%) of the students tend to procrastinate, while the rest (42%) stage their work to avoid procrastination. However, those who procrastinated appeared to perform significantly lower than those who staged their work. Clear trends were also observed based on whether the students attempted exams in the morning or the evening, their academic level, and gender.