Self-tracking Time-On-Task: Web-Based Weekly Timesheets for Higher Education Students

Abstract

Due to the transition to online education, higher education students require more support to self-regulate their learning and their time management. This paper presents a work-in-progress conducted to design and implement web-based weekly timesheets to collect students’ self-reports of time-on-task regarding different course activities. During the second semester of 2020, 5,221 students received the web-based weekly timesheets, and 3,131 voluntarily self-reported time-on-task throughout 16 weeks. At the end of the semester, a questionnaire was applied to evaluate the perceived usability and usefulness of this web-based application. This questionnaire was voluntarily answered by 1,200 students; 92% perceived that the timesheets were easy to use and 75% that it was useful for monitoring their academic workload. In their comments, students reveal that the tool allowed them to become aware of the number of hours spent outside of class time. Considering their suggestions, future work involves incorporating a student-facing dashboard in this web-based application.