Sleep is essential for learning. Our students need it, but often don’t get enough of it. Maybe that’s true of us faculty, too. Especially near the end of the semester, it’s good to remember why we should all focus on our sleep health.

Want to share some of the ideas below with your class? Here’s a slide you can borrow and adapt!

Acknowledgment: This page summarizes a chapter in The ABCs of How We Learn [1]. Its authors deserve the credit.

Why is sleep essential for learning?

• Sleep helps us stay alert during waking hours so we can learn new things.
• Sleep helps consolidate the day’s memories into long-term storage, increasing the ability to find patterns in our memories.

What are some positive effects of sleep?

• Decreased forgetting: Taking a nap immediately after learning helps people to forget less than staying awake does. [Jenkins and Dallenbach, 1924.]
• Greater athletic performance: Sleeping two more hours a night for six weeks improved basketball shooting accuracy by 10 percent. [Mah, Mah, Kezirian, and Dement, 2011.]
• Improved insight: In a video game that involved logical reasoning, players who took a 90 minute nap after encountering a problem they could not solve were more successful at solving that problem when they returned to the game. [Beijamini, Pereira, Cini, and Louzada, 2014.]

What are some negative effects from sleep deprivation?

• Cognitive impairment: Going 24 hours without sleep (pulling an all-nighter) creates a cognitive impairment equivalent to a 0.1 percent blood alcohol level (over the legal driving limit). Sleep debt accumulates and cannot be repaid with just one longer night’s sleep. [1]
• Sleepiness in morning classes: Young adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night.  We might all be familiar with “zombies” in early morning classes. [1]
• Susceptibility to memory errors: Eyewitnesses who were awake all night before a morning crime are more likely to falsely remember something they are told than the reality of what they saw. [Frenda, Patihis, Loftus, Lewis, and Fenn, 2014.]

What about naps?

• 10-15 min: Increased alertness, no grogginess, temporary memory boost.
• 30 min: More memory benefits than shorter naps, but about 30 min. grogginess upon waking.
• 60 min: Long-lasting memory improvement. Less grogginess.
• 90 min: Improved memory, increased creativity, minimal grogginess.

In summary: beware grogginess from naps. When napping, target either 15 minutes, or 60-90 minutes. Naps of 20-30 minutes result in sleep inertia, which impairs performance. [1]

[1] The ABCs of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them. Daniel L. Schwartz, Jessica M. Tsang, and Kristen P. Blair. Norton, 2016.