Spotlight: Assignment Retakes

This is the first article in the Spotlight series. Spotlight articles take a closer look at novel or interesting approaches used by real professors in their Sapling Learning course websites.

For this installment of Spotlight, I’ll discuss three different ways that instructors have effectively used retake assignments in Sapling Learning.

Style #1: Each required assignment has an identical, optional retake where the variables within each question have been re-randomized. This style has been used at Central Arizona College, CAC, for their Introductory Chemistry courses for two semesters and their General Chemistry courses for one semester. The impetus for adopting this style was the desire to enforce due dates (to help students keep up with work) without promoting the habit of abandoning a topic after the test. For CAC’s online homework assignments in Sapling Learning, the initial assignment always has a due date somewhere between lecture and exam, whereas the retake is due on the last day of class. The higher of the two grades is kept in each case. Most students use the retake as a chance to improve their original score, others use it merely for practice, and others miss the original assignment entirely and need the retake to get any points at all.

Style #2: This style is identical to the first, except the retake has a penalty. At Clark College, where this style was adopted this semester for General Chemistry, the maximum possible score on the retake is 75%. Texas Tech University adopted this style for Introductory Chemistry with a maximum retake score of 80%. In all cases, the higher of the two scores is kept. The main goal of this style is to deal with students who miss due dates. The added benefit is that students who complete the original assignment on time can use the retake as optional practice. There may even be some students who complete the original assignment in earnest, but still score better on the retake despite the penalty.

Style #3: This semester at the University of Pennsylvania, there was a concern about the gap in abilities between students. A particular professor wanted to provide sufficient practice for his lowest-level students without giving “busy work” to the highest-level students. To solve this dilemma, we made the initial assignments quite short (5-10 questions) but included only difficult, multi-concept questions to cover an entire chapter’s worth of material in as few questions as possible. We also set very strict grading policies (20% deduction per wrong attempt as opposed to the usual 5%) such that a student could not do well on this assignment unless they really knew the material. The retake, in contrast, has the normal 5% deduction per attempt, and included 20-30 questions of all ranges of difficulty. As with the other styles, the higher of the two scores is kept in each case.

We expected to see students choosing to complete only one of the two assignments, and that a pattern would emerge of particular students always choosing the long or the short version. So far however, we’ve mostly seen that everyone tries both, at least to some extent. This could be because the students find the Sapling assignments helpful and like the extra practice. It could also be that even high-level students at high-level universities have a hard time judging their own ability. Either way, the students and the instructor seem pleased with the set-up. We plan to give a survey at the end of this semester to get a better idea of what the students really think of this method.