Impact of Retake Policy on Student Performance in a CS0 Course with Mastery Learning
This program is tentative and subject to change.
This study explores the impact of a flexible retake policy on student performance in a university CS0 course that followed a mastery-learning approach. Students were given the opportunity to retake exams by redoing questions they had initially answered incorrectly. Performance was analyzed by gender and race, revealing that female students earned higher final grades and made greater use of the retake policy in comparison to their male counterparts. Underrepresented minority (URM) students had lower final grades and completed fewer retakes compared to majority-group students. To evaluate the effectiveness of the retake policy, we developed the Exam Recovery Ratio (ERR) metric. Our findings showed that, while increased retake opportunities led to higher final grades overall, the gains were not evenly distributed — higher-performing students disproportionately benefited, widening the grade distribution. This highlights the need for further examination of equity-focused policies in educational settings.