Personalised study time plans, and study time management: a joint responsibility of staff, students, and university administrators

Personalised study time plans, and study time management: a joint responsibility of staff, students, and university administrators

There is widespread concern that students at transition (from school to university) face many challenges with time management being one. Accordingly, the authors developed a framework labelled as REST to assist students to achieve study success through study time management; the notion that a course of study was similar to a construction project (as in project management) underpinned its development. Having measured students’ abilities using the REST concepts (Success, Scope, Strategy, Sequence, Schedule, Synthesis, Review, and Reflect), Strategy was found to be the weakest: A personalised study time management plan is fundamental to be strategic which is also useful for demystifying Scope. Such plans including the REST framework may assist all students to achieve academic success particularly for less conscientious and self-regulated students. Embedding the REST framework in discipline-specific courses and incentivising the process is advocated. Rationalising lecture-timetables by clustering lecture times (as against scattering across a study-week), optimising exam timetables, time audits of study workload, deconcentration of high-intensity assignment submission periods (particularly for first year students) and inducting students on time management may facilitate study time management and study success. Accordingly, the responsibility for assisting students with study time management including the development of personalised study time management plans rest not only with students but also with academics and university administrators.

Copyright © 2017 by CITC-9, Greenville, North Carolina, USA. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the editors.