Impact of Retake Policy on Student Performance in a CS0 Course with Mastery Learning

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 the exams by re-doing the questions they had initially answered incorrectly. Performance was analyzed by gender and race, revealing that women earned higher final grades and made more use of the retake policy compared to men. Underrepresented minority (URM) students had lower final grades and completed fewer retakes compared to students in the majority group. 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, gains were not evenly distributed - higher performing students disproportionately benefited, widening the grade distribution. This highlights the need for a more detailed examination of equity-focused policies in educational settings.