Time Management Skills of Pamukkale University Students and their Effects on Academic Achievement

Abstract

Problem Identification: Time is not a kind of source which people can increase by working hard. The aim of the time management is to increase the quality of the activities performed in a limited time. The university life process is the preparation stage to the period of taking responsibility and working. For this reason, acquiring the skills related to time management during this process plays an important role for students to be successful both during their university education and in real life.

Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study is to determine the time management skill levels of PAU students and the effects of these skills on their academic achievement.

Methods: In this study descriptive survey has been used. The sample of the study consists of 375 students attending five different faculties of Pamukkale University in the 2007-2008 academic year. A Time Management Scale including 25 items adopted from the Time Management Questionnaire developed by Britton and Tesser was administered to the subjects. The data has been analyzed by using such techniques as means, standard deviation, and linear regression.

Findings and Results: According to the findings, the time management skills of PAU students were found at a moderate level (f: 245, 65.33 percent). It was also found that the prediction power of the students' time planning skills for academic achievement level is 4.7 percent, time management attitudes and skills explain 3.8 percent of total variance in academic achievement, and the prediction power of the level of the students to cope with time wasters for academic achievement level is 4.3 percent. Moreover, the findings of this study prove that time management skills are not unidimensional. Finally, positive attitudes of students about time management affects their academic achievements as well as the other dimensions. Having positive attitudes about time management can help students to develop their skills in time management.

Conclusions and Recommendations: The students should start to acquire time management senses on their own in their primary school years by reading materials on the issue or via the framework of psychological counselling and guidance studies applied in schools, and adopt effective time management attitudes and techniques to determine how and where they spend their time.