Abstract
The
relationship between academic workload and academic performance for college
freshman can be important for incoming college students to understand when
making decision on class loads. To look
into this, a survey was given out to 20 University of Iowa freshman. This survey asked them to answer reveal their
workloads, stress level, and academic performance. It was found that an increase in academic
workload is correlated with an increase in the level of stress experienced by
the college student. It was also found
that increased stress can be associated with worse academic performance. This might sway students from trying to load
up on courses, and entice them to be careful with the amount of academic work
they take on at one time.
Introduction
College has always
been known to be some of the best times of someone’s life, but also some of the
most stressful. Many studies cover the
effects of partying and health on GPA, but not many studies have taken a look
at the stress of college students.
Stress can have a major role in the well being in someone’s life and
success in school. Because of this it is important to understand how class and
studying workload affects a student’s stress level. It also is important to know how this stress
can affect performance.
In
a study performed in 2008, by the University of Minnesota, it was found that
stress is the factor that has the biggest effect on the GPA’s of students in
college (Marcotty). It is known that
stress is a huge factor in academic performance; however there are many
different sources of stress for college students, especially freshman. There is a gap in this research because it is
still unknown what things people can control that will allow them to be less
stressful and more successful. A factor
that plays a large role in the stress of many college students is the workload of
class and studying. But no one has
looked into how the work that is put in and required for classes can affect the
stress, and eventually the grades, of students.
To
fill this gap in knowledge, a new study surveyed 20 college freshmen at the
University of Iowa. In this survey they
were asked about their workload in the classroom and time spent studying or
doing homework, along with how they rated their stress level and their academic
performance. This new research will give
an insight to the relationship between the workload in hours spent on school to
the academic performance.
Methods
Participants:
20
college students from the University of Iowa participated in this study. All of these students were freshmen.
Data Sources & Procedures:
The
data was collected by handing out surveys on paper. Surveys were anonymous and required students
to input their semester hours and how many hours, on average, they spent
studying in a week per semester hour.
Also, students were asked to rate their stress level and academic
performance on a scale provided in each question.
Data Analysis:
To
gain the conclusions from this, the data was analyzed for the correlation
between the work load and stress levels of the University of Iowa freshmen. The number of hours spent in class was
compared to the stress level. The number
of hours spent studying per week was compared to the stress level of the
students. Also, the total number of hours
on academics (time in class + time spent studying/on homework) was analyzed
with the stress levels of students.
Results
Graph 1 indicates
that the amount of time spent on academics each week can have an impact on the
stress levels of college freshmen. As
seen in the bar graph, the stress level reported by students increases from
little stress to moderate to very stressed. With every increase in the
workload, the stress level increases as well.
The time a college academic workload consumes every week seems to be
correlated to the amount of stress that college freshmen feel. This connects workloads to stress felt by
college freshmen.
Graph 1: The average academic workload per
week for all the students in each of the stress level choices.
Table
1 indicates the academic performance, on average, of the students in each level
of stress. The average grade performance shows that lower stress is correlated
with a higher academic performance. The
researchers did this by assigning a number to each grade level. Students ranked their academic performance as
A, B, C, D, F. The researchers assigned
4 points to A, 3 points to B, 2 points to C, etc. The freshmen who reported being very stressed
only had a 2 point average (C average). The freshmen with little stress reported
a 3.53 average, which is between an A- and a B+ average. This can explain the
relationship between the effects of stress on academic performance. Through stress, the connection between
workload and academic performance can be drawn.
Table 1: Displays the average grade
received by students that report each of the stress levels.
|
Avg.
Grade
|
little stress (n=7)
|
3.528571429
|
moderate stress (n=11)
|
3.363636364
|
very stressed (n=2)
|
2
|
Discussion
The
results of this study tend to resemble the results from the University of
Minnesota. Much like in the previous
study, it is shown one again that stress has an impact on the academic
performance of college students, and specifically freshman as this new study
shows. Also, this study shows the
connection between workload and academic performance. It is able to show this connection, by
showing how an increased workload can increase stress, and this stress in turn
can impact a person’s academic performance.
One
potential problem in this study is that this study does not record or
acknowledge any other factors that could lead t stress. Academic workload is not the only thing that
can lead to an increased stress. To try
and compensate for this, the survey is taken from a relatively large
sample. This will help because many
different people will have many things going on but the one thing known to be
the same is the stress level. And by
taking the average workload, it is hoped that any reasons other than workload
would not show through in the data.
However, the data could be affected by these outside stress factors.
The
implications of these findings are for college freshman and I believe could be
applied to all college students. By
increasing workload in academics, on can create more stress for oneself. This can impact many areas not focused on in
this study, but importantly, as pointed out by the data, it can impact academic
performance. This information will help
college freshman consider how many semester hours they wish to take, knowing
that more semester hours leads to a larger workload, which is correlated to
worse academic performance.
