Optional Sleep Log Assignment

Description:

Anne McCants helps students see how sleep impacts their learning by offering them credit for logging their sleep.

Steps:

• Include this optional assignment on the syllabus and when you introduce the course.
• Provide students with access to a sleep log.
• Ask students to reflect on how their sleep habits impact their learning. Anne McCants did this with a one-page reflection paper.
• Provide students with a small amount of extra credit for this assignment.

Rationale:

• In this MIT study, it was shown that healthy sleeping habits (amount of sleep and timing of sleep) can improve student learning and performance.
• Incorporating an exercise into the course shows that instructors value student wellbeing.
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker