Month: February 2025

This is about as insightful as the Ig Nobel winning papers “Boredom begets boredom” and “Whatever will bore, will bore” that methodically documented that bored teachers lead to bored students. But in the spirit of publishing all research without bias for success or novelty, let me share this obvious result.

The Y-axis represents the total score of ~2,000 students on 4 graded assignments, each of ~10 marks. The X-axis represents the percent rank of engagement. The most engaged students are at 100%. The least are at 0%.

How do I measure engagement? By the number of times they visit the page and how early they visit the page (both computed as percent ranks). So, the student who visits the assignment page the most often, and the student who visits the assignment page first, score highest.

For every 10% increase in the engagement, the score increases by about 3 marks. What that means is, if a student leapfrogs ahead of 10% of their batchmates, that effort typically leads to scoring about 3 / 40 = 7.5% more overall.

Does it make a difference if you submit early vs submit late? Here’s some empirical data.

About ~1,000 students at IIT Madras took 3 online quizzes (GA1, GA2, GA3) in the last few weeks. The deadlines were all at midnight (India) on different days. Here’s when they submitted their final answers:

• There was a spurt of submissions at the last minute.
  ~1 out of 8 students submit with < 10 minutes remaining.
• Most students submitted ~4 hours before the deadline.
  In fact, 3 out of 4 students submit on the same day as the deadline.
• A fair number of students submitted the previous day/night.
  1 out of 6 are diligent and submit a day early.

But does submitting late help, since you get more time? Apparently not.

On average, every time the deadline is halved, the score drops by 1.4%.

For example, on average:

• Submitting 1 minute before scores 1.4% less than submitting 2 minutes before
• Submitting 2 minutes before scores 1.4% less than submitting 4 minutes before
• Submitting 4 minutes before scores 1.4% less than submitting 8 minutes before
• … etc.

This means that submitting early morning instead of midnight could give you a 15% advantage.

Of course, this might be confusing cause and effect. Maybe students who do well submit early, and those who struggle submit late.

But is there a merit in faking it till you make it? Perhaps by pretending your deadline is a day early, to get the best of both worlds? Something to think about…