Academic procrastination, incentivized and self-selected spaced practice, and quiz performance in an online programming problem system: An intensive longitudinal investigation

Time management is crucial for college students' academic success and learning of computer programming. Yet the changes of time management behaviors and their associations with learning outcomes are underexplored in online learning of programming. To address the gap, this study employed an intensive longitudinal approach to examine undergraduates’ time management behaviors in an online programming problem system. Specifically, we analyzed weekly indicators of academic procrastination and spaced practice derived from programming traces. We applied dynamic structural equation modeling to examine the changes in these behaviors over time and their correlations with weekly quiz performance. Academic procrastination and self-selected spaced practice showed a significant upward trend over time, while incentivized spaced practice exhibited a significant downward trend. Moreover, students with prior programming experience showed a greater growth rate in spacing behaviors. At both within- and between-person levels, procrastination predicted quiz performance significantly and negatively, while self-selected spaced practice predicted quiz performance significantly and positively. In contrast, incentivized spaced practice predicted quiz performance positively at the within-person level but negatively at the between-person level. Additionally, quiz performance in the current week predicted subsequent time management behaviors significantly. These findings contribute to the understanding of procrastination and spaced practice in online programming learning and have implications for the design of scaffolding on time management. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the significance of combining intensive longitudinal approaches and action logs in examining the temporality of learning in online environments.