2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Various non-educational factors impact the educational performance of students. While these factors span a broad spectrum, including social, cultural, economic, and other domains, sleep norms and routines account for a significant portion of the effect. Despite this, the importance of proper sleep norms is often overlooked. The physical resilience of students can also mask the issue. Thus, it is imperative to explore the impact of sleep habits and norms on engineering students’ performance and perceptions. This paper reports on the second phase of a study investigating the effects of circadian rhythm and sleep routines on students. In this phase, conducted in Fall 2023 and 2024, engineering students, primarily from construction, mechanical, and biomedical engineering programs, were recruited to participate in the study at (deidentified) University. An instrument was developed to gather quantitative data, and statistical analysis was conducted to discern similarities and differences between students. Additionally, gender and major-based subgroups were analyzed to further explore patterns and variations. While the gender and major-based groups showed different response scores for impacting factors, the overarching results highlight a misalignment between sleep routines and students’ educational activities. This paper also details similarities and differences among students from various majors. This research illuminates a relatively underexplored potential area for engineering education, emphasizing the impact of proper sleep routines on student performance. It encourages engineering education scholars and administrators to recognize the significance of healthy sleep in educational system planning and design.