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Short Vs. Long: Cognitive Load, Retention And Changing Class Structures, Brandon Sheridan, Ben O. Smith, Erin G. Pleggenkuhle-Miles

Economics Faculty Publications

University class structure is changing. To accommodate working students, programmes are increasing their offerings of long night classes – some lasting as long as six hours. While these long classes may be more convenient for students, they have unintended consequences as a result of cognitive load. Using a panel of 124 students (372 observations) and a differencing approach that controls for student characteristics, we show that student exam performance decreases by approximately one-half letter grade on content taught in the second half of a long class (significant at the 5% level).