Grades Earned in Repeated Courses

Southeast Missouri State University students earning low grades (D or F) have the option of repeating the course. The student's course of action may be to drop out, to change majors, to repeat with the same professor, to try again with a different one, to immediately repeat, or to wait one or more semesters. A purpose of this study was to help students make these decisions. Of 7100 students enrolled in fall 1971 courses, 885 students had repeated 1510 courses at the end of that semester. Six hypotheses were tested. Students were more suc cessful, in general, as additional semesters intervened before repeating. Students repeating with the same in structor had fewer A, B, and C grades. Both trends were relatively weak. EACH SEMESTER some students at Southeast Missouri State University earn one or more "D" or "F" semester course grades. Students who avoid academic suspension are eligible to repeat the course, but decisions to try again are primarily subjective. For example, in addition to the stu dent's ideas he has some access to opinions of other students, to advice from his advisor, and to recom mendations from other faculty members. It is un likely that any consensus exists among either stu dents or staff members on the merit of a particular student repeating a given course. This study is an attempt to provide organized and relevant objective evidence which can be used to improve student de cisions. Some students elect a second enrollment in the following semester; others defer the second attempt for two or three semesters; and some students wait until the semester in which they plan to graduate before repeating a particular course. The number of students who terminate their college experience without recognizing their ability to succeed on a second trial is unknown. Due to the nature of the university's drop-add process, students have limited selection of their instructor. Both attempts may be with the same professor or the second trial may be with a new professor. Some advanced courses which are re quired on a given major are taught by a single pro fessor and no selection is possible. HYPOTHESES As a basis for this study the following guiding hypotheses were developed and tested: 1. Second grades will be better when the course is not repeated during the following semester. Additional intervening semesters will show corresponding improvements in second grades. 2. Second grades will be better when the instruc tor of the repeated course has not taught the student during the previous enrollment. 3. For repeated courses second grades will be related to student classification. Freshmen will not be as successful as sophomores, soph omores less than juniors, and juniors will be less successful than seniors. 4. Most students who have repeated courses will have grade point averages below 2.5. 5. Courses will not normally be repeated more than once. 6. At least 40 percent of those students who re peated courses will have repeated more than one course. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.114 on Thu, 26 May 2016 06:05:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 12 THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL EDUCATION METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH SETTING Unlike studies in which a sample is analyzed and inferences made about the group from which the sample was drawn, this study is fully descriptive of the population of interest. This analysis is based upon data contained in the computer file of completed courses of approximately 7100 students enrolled in fall 1971 courses. Of this group, 885 students had repeated one or more courses as of the end of the fall 1971 session when data were collected. These student records contained some courses from as far back as the fall 1967 semester. There is little doubt but that other courses had been repeated by these active students, but both trials were not a matter of record. The classification of these 885 students and the number of courses repeated by stu dent classification level is below in Table 1. TABLE 1 NUMBER OF STUDENTS AND NUMBER OF COURSES REPEATED BY CURRENT STUDENT CLASSIFICATION LEVEL Number of Courses Current Student Number of Repeated by Student Classification Students Classification Level Beginning fresh men 0 0 Other freshmen 73 101 Sophomores 191 276 Juniors 264 461 Seniors 324 625 Special 7 10 2nd degree 3 3 Graduate 23 34 Senior and grad uate _0 _0 885 1510 To provide additional background information on the repeated courses, another table was prepared. In Table 2 the repeats are summarized by course level?freshman, sophomore, junior-senior, grad uate-undergraduate, and graduate. Of the 1510 courses identified as repeated courses, 1031 are courses considered to be at the freshman level. This does not necessarily indicate that the original "D" or "F" grade was earned while the student was a freshman. While approximately 68 percent of these repeats are at the freshman level, another 16 percent (247 courses) are at the sophomore level, and the remaining repeated courses (approx imately 15 percent) are primarily upper division level courses. The five graduate level repeats were students working on a thesis across two or more semesters. TABLE 2 COURSES REPEATED BY LEVEL OF CLASS Class Courses Level Repeated