Survey of Students’ Technology Use for Time Management

Till Rebenich, Andrew M. Gravell, Thanassis Tiropanis

School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
United Kingdom
{tr08r, amg, tt2}@[Link]

Abstract: We present the results of a survey conducted at the University of Southampton in

September 2009. All students in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) were
asked to fill in an on-line questionnaire comprising 11 items about (mobile) devices, technologies,
calendaring applications and their features, and strategies they use for managing their study time.
The questionnaire was answered by 137 students. The results show that all participants own at
least one mobile device and that about 76% carry a web-enabled device on campus. The most
used calendaring applications for study planning are mobile phone calendaring software, Google
Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook. Feature-wise, appointments and reminders are preferred over
tasks. Students’ time management practices are very diverse, and a wide range of different
technologies is used. Those who reported poor time management use more calendaring software
features with a higher frequency. They also think that existing calendaring software lacks features
for study planning. Furthermore, students using software for time management make less use of
guessing for time-on-task estimation. It is hoped that the survey results can be used as the basis
for a system addressing the special requirements of time management for learning.

1 Introduction
Tertiary education environments require students to learn independently, so that every learner is responsible for their
own learning. Apart from timetabled activities such as lectures, this also includes the organisation and planning of
learning activities outside the formal teaching timetable (Payne & Whittaker 2000). Contemporary study advice
literature emphasises the importance of good time management skills for successful learning. It is claimed that the
development of such “soft skills” leads to increased employability (Cottrell & Nash 2003, Payne & Whittaker 2000),
less stress and less feelings of guilt, more self-confidence (Payne & Whittaker 2000) and more control over both
study and leisure time (Cottrell & Nash 2003, Payne & Whittaker 2000, Saunders 1994). Good time management is
also supposed to yield more and higher-quality output, resulting in increased productivity and higher performance
(Drew & Bingham 2001). This claim is supported by Britton and Tesser (1991) who tested the time management
skills of 90 psychology students by using a questionnaire and compared the results with their college grades. It was
found that the time management components “time attitude” and “short-range planning” correlated positively and
significantly (p < 0.001 and p < 0.02, respectively) with academic performance, while long-range study time
planning did not make a significant difference (p > 0.05). Similar results were reported by Macan (1990) who tested
the relationship between time management behaviour and stress as well as academic performance. Her findings
suggest that those who apply time management practices also report better performance and higher perceived control
over time, resulting in less stress. There seems to be consensus that good time management is proactive and
characterised by the following practices: categorisation, prioritisation, and division of tasks into smaller chunks,
planning time for unforeseen events, defining a time to target, start time, and deadline, and taking into account all
resources needed to finish a task. Furthermore, students are expected to reflect on their use of time and revise their
study plan regularly. Ideally, this should enable them to build up an individual time management strategy (Price &
Maier 2007).
Having painted this picture of an ideal student, there is evidence that many students struggle to implement
these guidelines. Main (1980) found that the most common “complaint of students of all ages, levels of study and
disciplines, is difficulty in organising and timetabling their work”.
Our study is aimed at evaluating students' current use of time management practices, devices, technologies,
applications, and their features. We are also interested in time management for collaborative learning. Many
applications address this problem by providing groupware features. However, most of them are designed for
workplace use, which is a much more structured environment compared to tertiary education. Furthermore, time
management for learning is mostly individual, so that it typically involves less collaboration than professional work,
needs to consider social aspects of learning, and is highly diverse. Therefore, the second purpose of our study was to
gather requirements for a time management system prototype we are currently developing at the University of
Southampton, and which builds on our previous work in this area (Rebenich & Gravell 2008). Our aim is to improve
the existing application and address its shortcomings. Unlike traditional calendaring and groupware applications, our
system also incorporates technologies we believe will complement time management for learning and make it more
effective, such as enhanced presence (Eisenstadt & Dzbor 2002), project-based learning and task collaboration
(Mochizuki et al. 2008), location awareness, and social networking features. The results of the survey also helped us
design the integration of our system into existing applications.

2 Methodology
Our study involved 137 out of approximately 1200 students studying on a degree in the School of Electronics and
Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton in September 2009. ECS offers a wide range of
undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Electronics and Computer Science. Students were asked to fill in a 11-
item on-line questionnaire which was divided into three sections (see Appendix for details). In the first third of the
questionnaire, we asked for devices and frequency of use, while the second part was about students' current use of
time management practices. In the third part, students were presented with a list of time management system
features and asked to rate their usefulness for managing their study time. Eight questions required participants to
choose one answer from an ordinal scale comprising between 4 and 5 different items, and three questions required
them to provide a textual answer. However, we did not enforce that students answer all questions, resulting in from
1 up to 13 missing values dependent on the question. Similarly, only 87 participants (63.5%) provided a textual
response to the question about time management practices.
In part one of the questionnaire, we provided a list of specific devices (PC/Mac, laptop/notebook, netbook,
Windows smartphone or PDA, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone, other touch-phone, other PDA, other mobile
phone) and asked students to indicate whether they own the device and if so how frequently (never, rarely,
sometimes, or often) they use it. For each mobile device in the above list, we also wanted to know how frequently
they carry it on campus.
Then, in part two of the questionnaire, we were interested in students' use of specific calendaring software (MS
Outlook, MS Outlook Web Access, MS Calendar, Sunbird, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, mobile phone calendar)
and features (appointments, tasks, collaborative event planning, reminders, contacts, and email) provided by these
applications. There were 5 possible answers ranging from “never” to “daily”. We also asked students to indicate
which one of the applications they used most for study planning. Finally, participants rated the helpfulness of the
above calendaring software features for the same purpose on a scale from 1 (not at all helpful) to 5 (extremely
helpful).
The third part of the questionnaire dealt with personal time management strategies for study planning. Students
were asked to provide a textual summary of their current way of planning their studies. Answers to this question
were analysed in the following way: First, we created three categories, namely time management technologies,
features, and strategies, based on students' responses. Each category consists of several items as shown in Table 1.

Category Items
Technologies (1) Pen and paper, (2) software, (3) without any tools
j  [1,3]
Features (4) Diary, (5) calendar, (6) log book, (7) Gantt charts, (8) spread sheets, (9) to-do lists, (10) timetable
j  [4,10]
Strategies (11) Considering deadlines, (12) course credit (number of achievable marks), (13) task size, (14) subject;
j  [11,24] (15) time guessing/estimation, (16) FIFO (performing tasks in the order they were created), (17)
prioritisation, (18) work plan, (19) plan review and re-adjustment, (20) sub-tasking;
(21) leaving everything till the end, (22) applying a strategy found in literature, (23) constant work, (24)
fixed working times and quotas (per day/week)

Table 1: Time management response categories

We then created a binary matrix A with each aij  [0,1] where i denotes the case number (1 to 87) and j the category
item (1 to 24); aij = 1 indicates that the ith participant mentioned the corresponding item j in their answer, and aij = 0
the absence of that item.
In addition, students could rate their agreement with 5 statements: whether they considered themselves good
time managers (1), whether they struggled to meet deadlines (2) or had missed them in the past (3), if they were
good in estimating a time to task (4), and if they thought that contemporary software does not provide enough
features supporting their time management (5). In the next question, they were provided with 13 software features
we are planning to implement in our on-line time management platform prototype, and they could rate how helpful
they expected them to be on a scale from 1 (not at all helpful) to 5 (extremely helpful). Besides these pre-defined
features, some participants also provided textual feedback on other features they would like to see in such a system.
Furthermore, we defined three separate scores on category matrix A, referring to the categories extracted from
students' textual responses (see Table 1). The technology score is defined as ST  3j 1 aij , the feature score as
S F  10j 4 aij , and the strategy score as S S  24j 11 aij . Similarly, we can create a calendaring software feature use
score S C  6j 1 cij with each j referring to one of the software features shown in Figure 1b and cij  [0,4] being the
frequency of use. We then analysed the data using appropriate inferential techniques and correlation tests such as the
Chi-Square, Mann-Whitney U, and Spearman Correlation test.

(a) Use of calendaring software (at least every couple of weeks) (b) Use of calendaring software features

Figure 1: Use of calendaring software and their features

3 Results
The analysis of part one of the questionnaire showed that all participants (100%) own at least one mobile device.
More specifically, 93.9% own a smartphone and/or ordinary mobile phone, 92.4% a laptop and/or netbook, 50% a
smartphone, and 37.1% an iPod Touch and/or any other PDA (see Figure 2a). Of all participants, 98.5% carry a
mobile phone, 75.9% a web-enabled mobile device (laptop, netbook, or web-enabled smartphone), and 60.9% a
laptop and/or netbook on campus at least sometimes, which is the third of a 4-item scale ranging from “never” to
“often” (see Figure 2b).
With regard to calendaring applications, the majority of students (55.7%) use calendaring software on their
mobile phone, followed by Google Calendar (40.5%), MS Outlook (30.5%), and MS Outlook Web Access (26.7%).
The latter is provided by default to every student of the University of Southampton. Less popular are Apple iCal
(12.2%), Mozilla Sunbird (9.9%), and Microsoft Calendar on Windows Vista (6.9%). Amongst all calendaring
features, students prefer appointments (77.1%) over reminders (71%), followed by tasks (64.1%), contacts (64.1%),
email for meeting organisation (59.5%), and group meeting features (35.9%). The latter feature is not provided by
all of the above calendaring applications. Furthermore, 71% use reminders attached to tasks or appointments.
Percentages quoted here refer to software or features used with any frequency other than “never” (see Figure 2).
When it comes to study planning, 35.5% of all participants indicated that they did not use any software, while
the majority (64.7% in total) use Google Calendar (15.4%), MS Outlook (14.7%), their mobile phone calendaring
application (11.8%), Apple iCal (7.4%), Mozilla Sunbird (3.7%), or another application not provided in the list
(8.1%). Only 1.5% chose MS Outlook Web Access provided by the university. Of all software features,
appointments (70.7%) and reminders (64.7%) are perceived most helpful for study planning, that is, they were rated
helpful or extremely helpful.
 (a) Devices owned by students (b) Devices used on campus (at least sometimes)

Figure 2: Mobile devices owned by students and their use on campus

Regarding students' agreement with time management statements, 61.5% of all participants consider themselves
good time managers, 25.2% are not sure, and only 13.3% admit that they are poor in managing their time.
The analysis of the time management strategy part of the questionnaire is based on 87 textual responses. As
described in section 2, we had to categorise these responses. This means that only time management practices
explicitly mentioned were considered. However, the absence of an item in a participant's response does not
necessarily imply that they do not apply it in practice. All results obtained from this question should therefore be
treated with caution. Most mentioned technologies were software (43.7%) as well as pen and paper (35.6%), while
29.9% indicated they do all time management without the help of any tools. Some people also use a combination of
technologies, such as “software” and “pen & paper” (11.5%), “pen & paper” and “no tools” as well as “software”
and “no tools” (6.9% each). Most used features are diaries and calendars (49.4%), to-do lists (32.2%), and timetables
(23%). When it comes to actual time management strategies, considering deadlines (64.4%), guessing task duration
(24.1%), considering task size (12.6%), and prioritisation (11.5%) are most prevalent.
Technology score ST, feature score SF, and strategy score SS are all negatively skewed with median 1 and
interquartile range (IQR) 0, 2, and 2, respectively. In contrast, the calendaring software feature score SC is normally
distributed (p = 0.634, Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z = 0.746) with mean 16.22 and  = 6.566.

4 Correlations
The helpfulness rating of software features for study planning correlates strongly and positively
(0.511  rs0.712, p < 0.01) with their frequency of use (see Figure 1b).
Regarding students' agreement with time management statements, we found the following correlations:
agreement with being a good time manager correlates (p < 0.01) negatively with struggling to meet deadlines
(rs = 0.528) and missed deadlines (rs = 0.407), while a positive correlation (rs = 0.388) was found with being a
good time estimator.

(a) Relationship between software and feature score with 3 (b) Relationship between “no tools” and feature score
outliers scoring 3.0

Figure 3: Time management practice relationships

Those who admitted to struggle with deadlines also found that they were poor time managers (rs = 0.528, p < 0.01),
poor time estimators (rs = 0.309, p < 0.01), and that there was not enough software support for study time
management (rs = 0.184, p < 0.05). Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between SC and the agreement
with time management statements “struggle with deadlines” (rs = 0.185, p < 0.05) and “missed deadlines in the past”
(rs = 0.345, p < 0.01).
As for textual responses to time management practices, use of software for time management correlates
positively with the two features “calendar” (rs = 0.443, p = 0.000, 2 = 17.08, df = 1) and “timetable” (rs = 0.345,
p = 0.001, 2 = 10.357, df = 1), and also with the overall feature score SF (rs = 0.427, p = 0.000, Mann-Whitney
U = 478.0, Z = 4.042, r = 0.433), while it is negatively correlated with guessing as a method of time-on-task
estimation (rs = 0.280, p = 0.009, 2 = 6.827, df = 1). It was also found that those who indicated that they did time
management without any tools use fewer features, resulting in a lower feature score SF (rs = 0.506, p = 0.000,
Mann-Whitney U = 296.0, Z = 4.805, r = 0.515). The relationships between feature score and the technologies
“software” and “no tools” are shown in Figure 3.

Feature Very Helpful Helpful Not So Helpful

Task/event synchronisation 74.3% 12.5% 13.3%
Schedule meetings with supervisor 74.8% 18.9% 6.3%
Schedule group meetings 76.3% 14.2% 9.4%
Division of work in group assignments 58.3% 26.8% 15.0%
Observing group progress 58.7% 24.6% 16.7%
Time-on-task estimation 57.5% 18.9% 23.6%
Critical task warnings 77.0% 15.1% 8.0%
Locating friends on a campus map 36.2% 18.9% 44.8%
Finding experts 41.3% 27.0% 31.8%
Location-based reminders 45.6% 23.2% 31.2%
Finding learning resources 48.4% 31.0% 20.6%
Geo-location and sharing of resources 38.7% 29.8% 31.5%
Resource rating and annotation 48.0% 30.4% 19.7%

Table 2: Feature ratings

5 Discussion
The results of the survey presented here show that all participants (100%) own a mobile device, and around 96% of
them own and nearly 76% of them carry at least one web-enabled mobile device on campus. These numbers are
fairly high and could be explained by such devices becoming more affordable and powerful, smaller, and more and
more features being combined in one device. It is also likely that Computer Science and Electronics students are
slightly ahead of students in other disciplines. An extended, cross-disciplinary survey could shed more light on this
issue. However, we believe that this development will enable more connected and complex mobile learning
applications and facilitate their adoption in the future. In particular, these results suggest that future mobile learning
environments or applications should be web-based rather than tailored to a particular platform or device type.
We also found a fairly diverse use of calendaring software and their features, often in combination with more
traditional approaches to time management, for example, paper diaries and others. This reflects the fact that study
time management is an individual activity. The increased prevalence of mobile devices, however, requires
appointment and task data to be synchronised, accommodating a wide range of different platforms. Google Calendar
provides a central store for such data as well as suitable synchronisation tools, which might explain why so many
participants (40.5%) make frequent use of it and why it leads the list of applications used for personal study
planning. Whether collaboration and sharing features of Google Calender also contribute to its popularity is subject
to future research. A very low percentage of participants use MS Outlook Web Access for study planning despite
this being university standard software. This might be due to the fact that students can only use it through a web
interface, have no direct access to their Exchange account via MS Outlook, and hence cannot make use of
synchronisation.
We were also surprised that the majority of participants (61.5%) claim to be good time managers.
Unfortunately, we did not ask students to provide their year of study in the questionnaire, hence we cannot tell if
there is a difference between freshmen and more experienced students. However, the findings of Trueman and
Hartley (1996) suggest that reported student time management scores increase with student age, in other words,
more experienced students are more likely to report good time management practices than freshmen. Also, in order
to evaluate whether there is a difference between reported time management proficiency and missed hand-in
deadlines, we are planning to analyse statistics of our electronic coursework hand-in system and compare the
outcome to our results.
Furthermore, we could not find a relationship between time management proficiency and increased use of
calendaring software or their features, meaning that time management is a personal skill supported by a range of
different mediums or technologies, including software and traditional approaches. Our findings also confirm that
short-range study planning is more prevalent because the majority of respondents indicated that they were primarily
deadline-driven. We follow the interpretation of Britton and Tesser (1991) that this is due to the nature of the
university learning environment.
Conversely, those participants who admitted they struggle with deadlines or missed them in the past made
more frequent use of a higher number of calendaring software features. One possible explanation is that they attempt
to compensate deficiencies in their personal time management by using software. Those students also found that
software features did not sufficiently support them in planning their studies, implying that they would prefer time
management software to be more tailored to students. Besides, those who use software for time management make
less use of guessing as a way of estimating time on task. This might be due to the fact that the use of software makes
it easier for them to keep track of the time they have spent on similar tasks in the past, or that they rely on automatic
time estimation features provided by such software.
Our next step is the development of a time management system prototype accommodating the special needs of
university students. The design of this system is driven by the outcomes of our survey. First, the high proportion of
students carrying web-enabled devices on campus suggests that a web-based system is the best solution since it can
be delivered using central facilities in a platform-independent manner. Second, due to the diversity of individual
time management strategies, the system should not impose a specific strategy on its users. Instead, it could either
adapt to learner personality aspects and suggest the most suitable strategy, or merely provide a set of tools along
with some guidance as for how these tools could be used for individual study planning. Third, the system should be
integrative, that is, provide course timetabling information, coursework deadlines and exam dates, collaborative
features for group assignments and study groups, and integration with existing calendaring software. Some of that
data might originate from third-party systems, for example, learning management systems. Furthermore, the
prevalent use of mobile devices requires all system data to be available for synchronisation. Fourth and finally, the
deficiencies of mainstream calendaring and time management software with regard to study planning should be
addressed. In our survey, we asked participants to rate the helpfulness of certain features (see Table 2) we deemed
beneficial to time management for learning. Based on these ratings, we are planning to enhance collaboration by
using enhanced presence (Eisenstadt & Dzbor 2002) and awareness (Gutwin et al. 1995), and to provide features
supporting student motivation adapted from project-based learning applications (Mochizuki et al. 2008).
The results of an experiment conducted using the prototype software will show whether these features provide
any additional benefit compared to traditional calendaring software and in view of student performance, stress, and
motivation.

References
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Appendix
Time Management and Technology Survey Questionnaire

(1) Please indicate which of the following devices you own or have unrestricted access to, and how often you use them.
Choose “N/A” for every device you do not own or have only limited access to. Options per item: N/A, never, rarely,
sometimes, often.
(a) Internet/network-enabled PC/Mac
(b) Laptop/Netbook
(c) Netbook
(d) Windows-powered smartphone or PDA
(e) Apple iPhone
(f) Apple iPod Touch
(g) Android-powered phone
(h) Other internet/WiFi-enabled touch phone
(i) Other internet/WiFi-enabled PDA
(j) Other mobile phone

(2) How often do you carry the following devices with you when you are on the university campus? Options per item: N/A,
never, rarely, sometimes, often.
(a) Laptop/Notebook
(b) Netbook
(c) Smartphone, PDA, or touch phone
(d) Mobile phone

(3) Which of the following calendaring software do you use and how frequently? Options per item: never, once every couple of
weeks, once a week, 2-4 times a week, daily.
(a) Microsoft Outlook
(b) Microsoft Calendar (on Windows Vista)
(c) Microsoft Outlook Web Access (as provided by the university)
(d) Mozilla Sunbird
(e) Google Calendar
(f) Apple iCal (on Mac)
(g) Calendaring software on mobile phone, smartphone, or PDA

(4) Which of the following calendaring software features do you use and how frequently? Options per item: never, once every
couple of weeks, once a week, 2-4 times a week, daily.
(a) Appointments/events
(b) Tasks
 (c) Collaborative scheduling of group meetings
(d) Reminders
(e) Contacts
(f) Email for organising meetings

(5) When planning and organising your studies, which one of the above applications do you use the most?
(a) I do not use any calendaring applications for planning my studies
(b) Microsoft Outlook
(c) Microsoft Calendar (on Windows Vista)
(d) Microsoft Outlook Web Access (as provided by the university)
(e) Mozilla Sunbird
(f) Google Calendar
(g) Apple iCal (on Mac)
(h) Calendaring software on mobile phone, smartphone, or PDA
(i) Other

(6) Please rate how helpful you find the following software features with regard to planning and organising your studies,
keeping track of deadlines, personal time management, and so on. (1 = not at all helpful, ..., 5 = extremely helpful)
(a) Appointments/events
(b) Tasks
(c) Collaborative scheduling of group meetings
(d) Reminders
(e) Contacts
(f) Email for organising meetings

(7) Please rate your agreement with the following statements. (1 = strongly disagree, ..., 5 = strongly agree)
(a) I consider myself a good time manager.
(b) I often struggle to meet deadlines.
(c) I have missed deadlines in the past.
(d) I can estimate the time I need for studying a subject or performing a task fairly accurately.
(e) Contemporary calendaring software lacks features supporting learning and studying.

(8) Please explain briefly how you currently plan your studies or manage your time. (Textual response)
(9) On a scale from 1 to 5, how would you rate the helpfulness of the following features in student organiser software? (1 = not
at all helpful, ..., 5 = extremely helpful)
(a) Importing and exporting tasks and appointments to your personal calendaring software (such as Outlook, Sunbird,
and so on)
(b) Scheduling meetings with your tutor/supervisor
(c) Scheduling group meetings and organising study groups
(d) Organising who does what in group assignments
(e) Observing the progress of other group members when working on group assignments
(f) Automatically estimating the time to commit to a task based on your personal preferences and learning style
(g) Keeping track of your own progress and receiving warnings when tasks become critical
(h) Knowing where your friends and colleagues are on the campus (for instance, on a virtual map)
(i) Finding people who can help you based on their interests and experience and locating them on a virtual map
(j) Attaching geographical locations to tasks and meetings and being reminded when you are in the area
(k) Finding learning resources nearby which you can use for achieving a task
(l) Pinning resources you have discovered on a virtual map and sharing them with your group or everybody
(m) Rating and annotating such resources, for example, as for their usefulness
(10) Are there any other features you would like such as student organiser system to provide? If yes, please make suggestions.
(Textual response)

(11) If the university/school provided coursework hand-in dates, deadlines, and timetabling information in a format which can
easily be imported into your calendaring software, would you make use of them? Options per item: yes, no, don’t know.