The effect of optional retesting on college students' achievement in an individualized algebra course

The sequential nature of mathematics requires that students master each set of concepts before proceeding to the next. Retesting is a strategy for motivating students to relearn to a mastery level concepts and procedures not mastered initially. To test the effectiveness of this strategy, the authors allowed college students in an intermediate algebra course 1 retest of every test on which they had earned a grade less than B, A significant increase in performance between the initial test and retest was found for approximately 90% of the students who had earned a grade less than B on the initial test. Within each group of students eligible to retake a certain number of unit tests, the number of unit tests that they actually retook was correlated with their grade on the final course examination. None of the correlations were statistically significant. Thus, optional retesting appears to affect initial mastery, but not cumulative mastery.