Effect of the Time of Day of Instruction on Student Learning

In this work, we analy s e the effect of the time of the day  of instruction  on student learning  o n a programming course taught to first-year undergraduate  engineering  students. A total of 174 students were split into three different  groups , each    with  a different class time. All were taught the same material and by the same instructor. It was found that students in the morning and early afternoon  groups  performed better than  those  in the late afternoon  group . In all three  groups , there  was  evidence of long-term retention of concepts, which is attributed to the intervention - based active learning environment  using  the principles of constructivism. Specifically, the techniques of reinforcement and feedback help with long term retention and  avoidance of  learning wrong concepts , aided by  immediate corrective feedback.