124 - The Effect of Exam Retake Timing on Exam Retake Performance

Poster Board Number: 124
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Assessing student mastery is often done using exams. Some instructors provide students with the opportunity for remediation in the form of exam retakes. This provides students an additional opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of material by completing an exam that assesses the same objectives, but with different questions. One factor that potentially influences how well students do on an exam retake is how soon an exam retake is completed after the original exam. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to see if the timing of an exam retake affects performance. We hypothesized that students who completed an exam retake soon after the original exam would see a larger improvement in score.

This study utilized data collected over 5 semesters from 476 students who were enrolled in a 200-level introductory human physiology class. This class was broken into five 3-week blocks, with initial exams being offered during the 1st week of the subsequent block, and retakes were administered during the 2nd week of Blocks 2- 5. Consequently, students had the ability to retake the Block 1 exam during the second week of Block 2, 3, 4 or 5. For students who took an exam retake, the finals grade was calculated using the higher of the original exam and exam retake score. An independent t-test was used to compare original Block 1 exam scores between students who chose to complete a Block 1 exam retake and those who did not. A 1-way ANOVA was run (alpha = .05) to determine if there was an effect of timing (Block 1 exam retake completed during Block 2, 3, 4, or 5) on exam retake score.

In all 87 students completed a retake of the Block 1 exam and they improved their scores by 10  11 points, with 73 students improving their score by completing the exam retake. Scores on the original Block 1 exam for students who took the Block 1 exam retake (66 +/- 12 points) were lower than the Block 1 exam scores for students who did not take the Block 1 exam (77 +/- 16 points, p < .001). Additionally, there were no differences in initial Block 1 exam score when comparing Block 1 exam retake timing (Retake during Block 2 = 65 +/- 12 points, n = 73; Retake during Block 3 = 69 +/- 6 points, n = 5; Retake during Block 4 = 70 +/- 15 points, n = 7; Retake during Block 5 = 69 +/- 4 points, n = 2; p = .64). Surprisingly there was not an effect of timing on exam score improvement (Retake during Block 2 = 10 +/- 11 points, Retake during Block 3 = -1 +/- 12 points, Retake during Block 4 = 11 +/- 5 points, Retake during Block 5 = 20 +/- 1 points, p = .07).

These findings suggest that students score higher on exam retakes when compared to their original exam score. However, the timing of when students complete an exam retake might not influence performance. However, more data needs to be collected to better support this conclusion.