Investigating the Effects of an Exam Replacement Policy

As a way to improve student motivation and ensure student learning is being accurately evaluated, there has been a recent push towards implementing alternative grading strategies in undergraduate physics courses. However, completely changing grading strategies can be difficult in large multi-section courses coordinated across multiple instructors. In this talk, we discuss a small change made to a large introductory calculus-based mechanics course where a new policy allowed for students' grades on portions of the final exam to replace their grades on the corresponding midterms if they performed better on the final. The goal of this new course policy was to prioritize whether the students ultimately learned the material over how quickly they learned it. In this talk, we discuss the effects of this policy including student perceptions of it, which students it impacted, and whether increases in grades from the policy may be linked to other metrics of student learning.