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Effects of Chronotypes on Students’ Choice, Participation, and Performance in Online Learning

Introducing a new theoretical framework of chronotypes (inner biological clock), this article presents a study examining students’ choices, participation, and performance in two discussion-heavy online history courses. The study comprised two major parts: a repetition study and an exploratory study. The survey adopted in the repetition study mainly contained questions asking about participants’ preferred time of conducting online learning (a multiple-choice question), why participants choose online learning (7-point Likert scale questions), and questions to identify their chronotypes from the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire. The repetition study confirms the statistically significant relationship among the three factors for choosing online learning: students’ perceived level of control, independence, and satisfaction. A significant correlation is also identified between students’ chronotypes and their preferred online learning time. The second part of the research explored the level of participation and performance of students having different chronotypes. The students’ participation data collected were the timestamps recording each participant’s hits on the Blackboard Learn courses. The performance data were students’ final course grades, discussion board grades, and group wiki grades. The results indicate there is a statistically significant relationship between students’ chronotypes and the time of their activity in online courses. The overall level of participation affects students’ performance in online learning—students who are more active in the learning management system are likely to have higher final course grades. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.