Abstract
Many courses still utilize a traditional one chance testing model to assess student understanding. If the purpose of assessment is to reflect the mastery a student has in a course, then there is benefit for students to have multiple opportunities to show mastery. This paper outlines the results of a course policy of full grade replacement retesting that required students to first pass a “recertification” quiz. The goal of this policy was to adopt a pedagogical style that more readily reflected the opportunity of continued learning that many workers experience in the professional world while simultaneously aiming to engage students in an online course during the COVID-19 pandemic. A hypothesis test was conducted to determine if this retake policy helped to improve student grades during the course. The results indicate there was a statistically significant difference between the mean score on the first exam and the retest where, on average, students who utilized the exam retake increased their score. Time was found to have a positive relation with retest scores, but even after accounting for time, retesting was found to have a practical and significant effect on student performance. Retesting policies consistently show positive impacts on grades (e.g. Roszkowski & Spreat, 2016; Herman et al., 2019) and should be more widely considered when developing and updating course policies.
Highlights
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most courses at all levels of education were forced to be offered online in 2020
This paper describes the retesting policy and results of one professor’s new assessment strategy for a required finance course in a college of business at a Midwest university
The research problem presented in this paper is to investigate the results from a course policy of full grade replacement retesting that required students to first pass a “recertification” quiz
Summary
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most courses at all levels of education were forced to be offered online in 2020. Teachers responded with a wide variety of innovative pedagogical methods to engage students in an educational format unfamiliar to many of them (for example, see Jandrić, 2020). One specific change to which teachers adjusted was the use of online examinations. This change in modality for exams provided an opportunity to reconsider the role traditional testing policies have in the modern classroom. This paper describes the retesting policy and results of one professor’s new assessment strategy for a required finance course in a college of business at a Midwest university. Giving students a second opportunity to take an exam incentivizes continued engagement in the material while providing a structure for feedback within a course. Retesting may help prepare students for adult life where one can often learn from their failures and move past them without being weighed down forever (Wormeli, 2011)
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