The American College Test (ACT) is a standardized college-entrance test, similar to the SAT, used to measure students’ academic performance (Kreuger & Whitmore, 2002). Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner (2005, p. 58) found that an increase in one hour of study effort per day resulted in a grade effect equivalent to 5.74 point increase in ACT scores, while in comparison the group with reduced studying efforts (due to a room mate that plays distracting video games) resulted in only a 3.10 point ACT score increase; it therefore concluded that increased effort in studying increases academic success. Another study found that the academic performance of students was more successful in those who studied compared to those who did not (Thompson, n.d.).
Commuting to school consumes time and energy, both of which could be redirected towards studying and succeeding academically. Most of our group members commute to school and find that commuting to school does affect studying habits. The differences between students taking either online or on-campus courses were observed, and it was reported that online students with decreased commute time had significantly higher exam scores, with a slight tendency to score greater overall course grades, than students attending courses on-campus (Dutton, Dutton & Perry, 2002). It was also found that students who live on campus have significantly higher GPAs than comparable students at the same institution who live off campus (Turly & Wodtke, 2010). Another study conducted by Marklund (1969) found that students living near school tended to have better results in total academic performance in comparison to students living further from school; however, there was not a significant difference in this case. It was also found that variations in academic performance tended to occur between on and off campus students, but evidence of a consistent pattern in these differences was inconclusive (Long et al., 1994).
More research is still needed though because while there is research available, there is not a substantial amount and the majority of research does not provide conclusive results. Commuting and academic success should be applicable to other classes or future issues because time spent studying theoretically affects all faculties outside of Land and Food Systems; enhancing the academic performance of post secondary students is a relevant issue to all students and post secondary institutions. Therefore, we would like to further explore this topic; through this study we hope to encourage the transit system to create better transit options and routes for commuting students. Other suggestions would be to create a sky train commute to UBC, or create more residences so less time is spent commuting.
We will conduct a survey that will attempt to measure the correlation between distance from school and studying time. We will be using commuting time as an indicator for distance, because students likely do not know exact distance measurements. It will be sufficient to use time to represent distance. As well, we will be asking how many days of the week they attend class on campus to gauge whether the time needed to commute to school affects their time spent studying.