This exploratory study surveyed 280 students across two universities to better understand student attitudes, experiences, and challenges engaging in rest in a post-COVID onset landscape. Our findings indicate that students report valuing rest as a part of their productivity, but struggle with feeling guilty during rest periods and managing negative emotions. Students often report not having structured periods of rest, but most often take breaks when they experience physiological changes, difficulty focusing, reduced productivity, and experience worsening mood and emotions. 

Read Preprint Here.

Supported by a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Grant from WPI, this study surveyed first-generation, community college transfer students, and international students about their experiences balancing work and rest at WPI. As a part of this research project, students additionally created an image or took a picture that captured their experiences balancing work and rest at WPI.

Click here for the online photo gallery

In this ongoing study, we are interested in replicating previous research which has found that engaging in social media compared to a wakeful rest student harms retention (see original study here). In collaboration with Dr. Adrienne Hall Phillips, we will extend this work in several important ways -- through a large sample size and power analysis, with an additional third control condition to compare potential deleterious effects of social media and beneficial effects of wakeful rest, and extend delayed retention to a week later which is more aligned with educational practice. 

In this ongoing study, we are examining the effects of wakeful rest manipulations (arms folded on desk, head down) after physics lecture in terms of how much information students retain from lectures as well as how this may impact their conceptual understanding of physics.  Data collection is currently happening for this study, please check back for updates!