The effect of preparing for an exam retake on future exam performance
Authors: Davis James , Adams Kristina , Morgan Ashley 
Published: May 2023

Assessing student mastery is often done using exams. Inevitably some students will complete remediation. One remediation method is exam retakes, where students take an exam that assesses the same objectives, but with different questions. While students who take an exam retake increases their exam scores, it is also possible that preparing for the retake limits preparation for upcoming exams over new material (i.e., preparing for a retake of Exam 1 would adversely affect preparation for Exam 2). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to see if studying for and taking a retake exam affected preparation for the next exam. We hypothesized that students who completed an exam retake would have lower than expected scores on their next exam. 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, each of which had ended with an exam. Retakes were offered during each of the final four blocks, and students could choose to retake any of the first four exams. 168 students completed at least 1 retake. Students who retook an exam improved their score by 13 ± 13 points. A series of 4-independent t-tests were run (α = .05) to see if there was an effect of exam retake preparation on future exam performance. In all cases, students who retook an exam had a greater increase in their subsequent exam score compared to those who did not retake an exam. Specifically, students who retook an exam during Block 2 ( n = 70) had an Exam 2 score that was 1 ± 11 points higher than their Exam 1 score, compared to students who did not retake an exam who had a decrease in Exam 2 score by 4 ± 10 points ( p < .001) compared to Exam 1. Students who retook an exam during Block 3 ( n = 80) had an Exam 3 score that was 4 ± 9 points higher than their Exam 2 score, compared to students who did not retake an exam who had a decrease in Exam 3 score by 0 ± 12 points ( p < .001) compared to Exam 2. Students who retook an exam during Block 4 ( n = 69) had an Exam 4 score that was 11 ± 16 points higher than their Exam 3 score, compared to students who did not retake an exam who increased Exam 4 score by 3 ± 12 points ( p < .001) compared to Exam 3. Students who retook an exam during Block 5 ( n = 49) had an Exam 5 score that was 10 ± 14 points higher than their Exam 4 score, compared to students who did not retake an exam who increased Exam 5 score by 1 ± 12 points ( p < .001) compared to Exam 4. These findings suggest that using exam retakes as a form of remediation serve two purposes. First, using exam retakes as a form of remediation improves exam scores. Second, and perhaps more importantly, students appear to perform better on subsequent exams. It is possible that studying for an exam retake helps students improve their preparation for the exam covering new material.

This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.