StudentLife is the first study that uses passive and automatic sensing data from the phones of a class of 48 Dartmouth students over a 10 week term to assess their mental health (e.g., depression, loneliness, stress), academic performance (grades across all their classes, term GPA and cumulative GPA) and behavioral trends (e.g., how stress, sleep, visits to the gym, etc. change in response to college workload -- i.e., assignments, midterms, finals -- as the term progresses).
Much of the stress and strain of student life remains hidden. In reality faculty, student deans, clinicians know little about their students outside of the classroom. Students might know about their own circumstances and patterns but know little about classmates. To shine a light on student life we develop the first of a kind StudentLife smartphone app and sensing system to automatically infer human behavior. Why do some students do better than others? Under similar conditions, why do some individuals excel while others fail? Why do students burnout, drop classes, even drop out of college? What is the impact of stress, mood, workload, sociability, sleep and mental health on academic performance (i.e., GPA)? The study used an android app we developed for smartphones carried by 48 students over a 10 week term to find answers to some of these pressing questions.