Some teens power through their homework at school, while others tackle it after they get home.
Now, you’d think it doesn’t really matter—homework is homework. As long as it gets done, who cares where?
Well, a group of researchers decided to put that assumption to the test. They wanted to see if the location of homework completion impacted students’ grades.
The results?
Surprisingly revealing.
Let’s dive into what they found.
Table of Contents
Does Homework Actually Help Students Learn?
For decades, students around the world have been assigned homework — and for just as long, researchers have debated its impact. Does it truly enhance learning, or does it simply take away from valuable free time and social interaction?
When it comes to homework, we need answers to two fundamental questions:
- To what extent, if at all, does homework influence learning?
- And if it does, which aspects of homework matter most?
1. Does Homework Improve Learning?
Yes! Multiple studies have shown that homework positively impacts student learning. Whether measured by improved test scores or overall grades, the benefits remain consistent.
2. What Aspects of Homework Impact Learning?
Research on this topic has been a bit inconsistent, but one factor stands out across the board: time. Nearly every study agrees that the amount of time spent on homework plays a crucial role in learning.
Building on this, researchers in this study took it a step further—does where students complete their homework make a difference? Let’s find out.
Does It Matter Where Students Do Their Homework? Research Says Yes!
For years, students have done homework wherever it’s most convenient—at school, at home, or even on the bus ride home. But does the location actually impact grades?
This study found a clear answer: homework done at home has a significant impact on GPA, while homework completed at school has almost none.
- The direct link between in-school homework and 12th-grade GPA was nearly zero (.01) and statistically insignificant.
- In contrast, out-of-school homework had a strong, measurable effect (.28), meaning that each standard deviation (SD) increase in at-home homework led to a .28 SD boost in GPA. Simply put, the more time students spent on homework at home, the better their grades tended to be. Specifically, for every increase in the amount of homework completed at home, students’ GPA (overall grade average) improved by a noticeable amount.
- Further analysis confirmed that removing the in-school homework effect made no difference to the model’s accuracy—essentially proving that it had no impact.
- However, when researchers removed the effect of out-of-school homework, the model fell apart, reinforcing its importance.
Interestingly, in-school homework had a small indirect effect: students who did more homework at school were also more likely to complete additional work at home, which ultimately helped their grades.
Bottom line? If students want to maximize their academic performance, where they do their homework matters—home is where the grades grow!
