Authors: Molly Harris and Laura Schmidli. Editor: Maria Widmer. Published on June 18, 2024.
Many students appreciate the opportunity to make up a missed exam. For some, this reduces pressure to meet academic requirements while also participating in important co-curricular experiences, like athletics or arts. For others, knowing a makeup exam is possible may ease stress about family obligations, like caring for sick children or parents. At the same time, for any instructor planning to offer makeup exams, balancing fairness, flexibility, and efficiency can feel challenging.
Both students and instructors may have concerns that makeup exams offer an unfair advantage. However, a 2020 study of undergraduate Biology courses found that students who take makeup exams do not gain a significant advantage over their peers (Tarasi, 2020). This corroborates findings in Psychology and Nursing courses for both undergraduate and graduate students (Bultas et al., 2024; Kahn, 1995, 2000). Overall, recent research suggests that makeup exams do not confer an advantage to students in most cases.
What’s Effective?
Recent research and examples from L&S courses suggest that planning in advance can help instructors offer flexibility that benefits students within boundaries that preserve efficiency. While no single approach is correct, ad hoc decisions can create uncertainty for both students and instructors . Below, we offer four effective strategies for makeup exams.
1. Plan your exam strategy well before the semester begins.
Planning a strategy for exams overall, and how makeup exams will work specifically, frees your time during busier points of the semester and requires less decision-making in the moment.
Set the content and format for makeup exams.
Using the same content and format as the regularly scheduled exam will be more efficient for you as an instructor, create clarity for all students as they prepare for an exam, and support equitable grading. Research has shown that students do not tend to do better on a makeup exam when the makeup exam has the same format and content as the regularly scheduled exam (Tarasi, 2020).
Determine the timing of exams and makeup exams.
It is not uncommon for multiple students to need a makeup exam, especially in large-enrollment courses. Planning in advance can prevent an overload on instructor workload for scheduling and staffing those makeup exams. Instructors likely plan exams considering natural content breaks in material, features of the semester like holidays and breaks, and personal workload. Instead of addressing each student’s need for a makeup exam individually, you might choose to offer “bounded flexibility,” allowing students to choose from a set of makeup exam times that are all workable for you. This offers each student flexibility, while maintaining efficiency and predictability for your own schedule.
When planning makeup exams, also consider their timing relative to the regularly scheduled exams. This is especially important if future course material builds on that which comes earlier (McCann, 2005). If the purpose of your exams is to reinforce learning, consider limitations for how soon or within what range students should complete a makeup.
Anticipate accommodations.
If a student requires accommodations and a makeup exam, how will you meet their needs? Often makeup exams can be scheduled outside of regular class time, providing more flexibility for students who require more time. See the McBurney Disability Resource Center’s Instructor Guide to Student Accommodations, specifically the section on Testing and Assessment, for more information.
Tip: If you administer exams in Canvas, creating question banks in advance of the semester can introduce variability in the questions students receive. It can help you distinguish the makeup exam from the regularly scheduled exam while maintaining consistency of content and format. In addition, some instructors have begun experimenting with AI to efficiently generate variations of exam questions that can then be used for makeup exams. All UW faculty and staff have access to Microsoft Copilot, but be sure to be thoughtful about the limitations of AI tools if you choose to use them.
L&S Instructor Example
Soledad Benguria, Calculus Coordinator, Department of Mathematics
What do you do?
For our main Calculus sequence (Math 221/222/234), we have a scheduled makeup and a scheduled alternate makeup. We have a page within Canvas with the times of all three exams posted, and with a Google form that students can use to sign up for the makeup. The Google forms explicitly list the conflicts that we accommodate, as well as an option for “instructor approved conflict”, which allows us to decide whether to accommodate students who have more unusual circumstances. Students are only allowed to take the alternate makeup if they have a conflict with both the regular exam and the first makeup. If a student is not able to take either of the makeups, we drop their exam and replace it by their average on the other exams. Due to the large volume of students, we don’t check every request. Rather, we let students know (in writing, right below the makeup sign-up form) that we will randomly check conflicts and pursue as academic misconduct if students misrepresent their conflicts on the sign-up form. Our second makeup is on a Friday evening, since we have found most students don’t have labs or other classes at that time. On the weeks leading up to the exams, we remind students to check their calendars and sign-up for the makeups if needed.
Why do you do it?
Since we have evening exams that are often taken by well over 1000 students at a time, we expect a substantial number of students to have conflicts with the regular exam time. Since we are working with such large volumes, having two pre-scheduled makeup times allows us to ensure that students who have conflicts have the flexibility of finding a makeup time that will work for them, while also keeping the administrative aspects of scheduling makeups manageable.
What impact does it have on students?
Students know from the very first day of the semester what our policies and makeup times are. They are able to plan their time better, and don’t need to go out of their way or stress out if they do have a conflict.
What might you change in the future?
We’ve been fine tuning our system for a number of years, and we are at a point where our system seems to be working fairly well. I don’t expect to make any major changes in the near future.
2. Communicate transparently with students.
Early in the semester communicate your makeup exam plan alongside your expectations for students. This helps students understand how to plan their time and prioritize their various commitments across the semester. Transparency provides an opportunity to build trust with your students by minimizing miscommunication and assumptions.
Create a process for requesting a makeup exam.
Make it clear to students how to proactively notify you about a conflict or request a makeup exam. Establishing this process can help you manage your time by reducing in-the-moment decisions and communication. It can also help students plan their semester and prioritize competing obligations. You might indicate a time period within which students should notify you so that you can efficiently manage all requests together rather than addressing them one-by-one. You also might consider what your plan will be if an emergency situation arises for a student. When a student notifies you of a conflict or makes a request, be sure to respond promptly and clearly. This can help you both avoid making assumptions that may later create conflict.
Determine and communicate acceptable reasons for requesting a makeup exam.
Indicate to students if there are any restrictions on the reasons you will accept for offering a makeup exam. If you will only provide a makeup exam under specific conditions, consider how you will communicate your rationale to students and whether you will require documentation. Keep in mind that adding conditions and requirements may impact your relationship with students. What you deem an acceptable reason for offering a makeup exam will likely be influenced by your own teaching philosophy and course context. This can be challenging to define and may evolve over time. At a minimum all instructors are expected to know and abide by the UW-Madison Policy on Religious Observances.
Tip: Canvas and other survey tools can be effective tools for two-way communication with students. A survey can collect required information from students into a single place accessible to your teaching team. It can also communicate what flexibility is available to students, like specific times available for proactive scheduling or acceptable reasons for a makeup exam. Learn more about Canvas surveys on the Canvas Instructor Guide.
3. Provide students with agency.
Student agency is beneficial for motivation, confidence, and ownership in their own learning (Brooks & Young, 2011; Hogan & Sathy, p. 173, 2022). Providing students with agency changes how negotiation about exams and flexibility happens; instead of students negotiating with the instructor, students need to negotiate with themselves by planning ahead and budgeting their time. While this strategy may not completely eliminate the need for makeup exams, it can reduce the number of individual requests.
Let students choose which exams they will complete.
Many instructors incorporate flexibility within lower-stakes assignments, like quizzes or weekly discussions, where students are required to complete X of Y assignments. This flexibility provides students with a choice of when they will complete work, and in some cases choice in which topics they will be assessed on. With a higher-stakes assignment, like an exam, a similar strategy can allow students to choose what will comprise their final grade. For example, an instructor may offer four exams, with only three counting toward a student’s final grade. In this example, some students may choose to skip an exam entirely, and others may choose to take all exams and only keep their best score. In courses where exams are not cumulative, this can introduce student choice related to topics or content as well.
Let students choose an exam time.
The ability for students to schedule exams at a time of their choosing is associated with reducing stress (Meredith et al., 2021). Letting students choose exam times can also minimize or eliminate the need for makeup exams, offering efficiency. To do this, an instructor might offer multiple regular exam times on differing days of the week and times of day. Students can then choose between options outside of class time that work with their schedules. To make this successful, gathering information about students and their schedules is essential. For example, you might ask students in a survey or poll to choose days and times that work for them in order to guide the options you provide.
Let students take makeup exams for any reason.
While this may seem inefficient or counter-intuitive, it can reduce communication, mediation, and decision-making required during the semester. If you are already providing a process for requesting a makeup exam, and have planned its timing and format, removing the approval process or the need for students to provide documentation can reduce student anxiety and minimize decision-making for an instructor during the semester. This can also increase trust between students and instructors. In an article that surveyed instructors about their makeup policies, several instructors reported that blanket policies of flexibility avoid awkward discussions, communicate support, and prevent students from feeling alienated. “I think there’s more benefit to them and to the relationship by my choosing to believe them,” reported one Political Science instructor (Rosenblum, 2005, p. 160).
Tip: To make grading more efficient when students can choose which exams they complete, use Canvas Assignment Groups. All exams can be included in the same Assignment Group, which can be set to drop the lowest score. Students who don’t complete an exam should then be graded with a zero. If your course structure requires you to use Assignment Groups in a different way, you can instead enter a grade of “EX” to excuse any students from an exam. If you have questions about the best way to set your exams up efficiently, please request a meeting with us.
4. Reconsider traditional exams.
Reconsidering the format of all of your exams can remove time, space, and academic integrity concerns that make scheduling makeups challenging. Rather than offering scheduled, in person exams at a specific time for all students, some instructors experiment with alternative formats that increase flexibility and offer efficiency. Changing the parameters of the exam can reduce or remove the need for makeup exams, and in some cases provide additional flexibility for students in situations where a makeup exam at a fixed place and time will not be possible.
Assign take-home exams.
A take-home exam gives students a longer window of time in which to document their learning, such as by responding to essay questions, completing a computer program, or preparing a project proposal. This style of exam typically disincentivizes academic dishonesty by requiring personalized, authentic work. Take-home exams are often open-book or open-note and sometimes encourage collaboration with other students. Strategies like allowing group work, using rubrics, and eliminating the need for proctoring or makeup scheduling offer efficiency.
Use portfolio assignments.
In place of an exam with time constraints, some instructors ask students to complete a different assignment that summarizes their learning across the semester. These summative assignments are communicated to students early in the course, and may be scaffolded throughout the semester. For example, students may complete a series of smaller assignments across several weeks. At the end of the course, students complete a portfolio that compiles these artifacts and documents their learning through reflective writing or a presentation to their peers.
Reduce the stakes for exams.
By offering students multiple attempts on exams, providing opportunities to correct their exams for partial credit, or pulling exam questions from prior quizzes and projects, instructors can lower the stakes of summative assessments. Some instructors report that these strategies increase student confidence and preparedness, while reducing the number of requests for makeup exams because students perceive less advantage in delaying an exam. In a 2023 study, students who had the opportunity to retake lower-stakes quizzes displayed increased confidence compared to students who took traditional high-stakes exams (Vyas et al., 2023).
Eliminate summative assessments.
In some courses, a summative assessment of learning is not necessary to demonstrate mastery of the course learning outcomes. Taking time to map your assignments and activities to your course learning outcomes can help you understand which outcomes students have the opportunity to demonstrate and receive feedback on. Before eliminating summative assessments, consider the norms of your department and discipline, as well as where your course fits into course progressions. For example, students in foundational courses may need to demonstrate mastery as a prerequisite for other courses; however, students in a capstone or internship course may demonstrate mastery through completion of activities and assignments outside of an exam.
L&S Instructor Example
Sara Kelm, Teaching Faculty and Associate Director of English 100
What do you do?
In the English 100 program, instructors use portfolios to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their growth and reflect on their learning. For each sequence, students write multiple drafts and revise according to feedback from both peers and their instructor, and they compile these project iterations alongside in-class work into their portfolio, including a cover letter that explains the rhetorical choices and progress they made over the course of the sequence.
Why do you do it?
Portfolios foreground the process of learning and developing rather than just the final product. As students refine their portfolios, instructors can give holistic and comprehensive feedback that reflects the Communications A learning outcomes and the English 100 core beliefs of discovery, practice, and revision. Portfolios also provide the opportunity for students to pause and evaluate the effectiveness of their writing process, and these reflections give the instructor insight into students’ intellectual and affective experiences during each project.
What impact does it have on students?
Portfolios encourage an extended process of drafting that disrupts the “one draft and done” approach to writing that students often fall back on in times of stress. Instead, portfolio assessment puts the focus on developing ideas and skills over time, delaying the “high risk” (graded) writing until students have received feedback and reflected on their work. Additionally, portfolios provide students with the opportunity to articulate and analyze their own writing process, encouraging them to take the initiative in their own learning.
What might you change in the future?
As an E100 instructor, I have been experimenting with using digital Google Site portfolios rather than “paper” (PDF) portfolios in order to help students learn a new tool and see the organization of the portfolio itself as a rhetorical argument; I would like to explore different options for digital portfolios for the E100 program as a whole. Additionally, critical reflection does not often come naturally for first-year students. They need to be taught to reflect well on their own processes, so we are always exploring dynamic ways to help students refine their own writing processes through different types of reflection.
Tip: Before revising assessments in your course, take time to map your course. This provides you with a high level view of how your course outcomes, activities, and assessments align. This view can help you understand where opportunities for students to demonstrate learning and receive feedback may be underdeveloped or missing in the course. See our Course Planning and Design Templates to download a Course Map Template.
Considerations for your own context
- What norms exist about exams and makeup exams in your department? What do your peers or co-instructors do and why?
- How do makeup exams fit into your teaching philosophy? What do you believe exams accomplish for students and why?
- What exam strategies are possible to implement based on your class size and staffing?
- How does your course modality impact your ability to administer makeup exams? Will you offer exams online or in person?
- How do your course outcomes need to be assessed and documented? Which assessments help you document your course outcomes in addition to exams? Might other forms of assessment provide stronger evidence that students have reached your course outcomes?
- How does your policy on makeup exams connect to other inclusive practices in your classroom?
Connect with Us
Would you like help getting started on making a change to your exam strategies? Do you want to discuss your ideas? Our team is happy to meet with you, brainstorm solutions that meet your needs, and help implement your ideas. Our work typically starts with one 45-minute virtual meeting. To get started, request a meeting.
Suggest a Topic
We want to hear your ideas for future articles in our Design for Learning Series! We focus on local L&S examples, backed by research, that can help solve common teaching challenges. We gather input from instructors and students, as well as research literature. What teaching topic or trend would you like to know more about?
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
References & Further Reading
Brooks, C. F., & Young, S. L. (2011). Are Choice-Making Opportunities Needed in the Classroom? Using Self-Determination Theory to Consider Student Motivation and Learner Empowerment. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 23(1), 48–59.
Bultas, M. W., Schmuke, A., Armstrong, K., Rubbelke, C., Alnawman, M., Moran, V., Fuller, K., Cole, B., & Lovan-Gold, K. (2024). “Make-up” Examinations: Comparison of on-Time and Late Examination Student Scores. Nurse Educator, 49(2), 80–84. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000001508
Hogan, K. A., & Sathy, V. (2022). Inclusive teaching : Strategies for promoting equity in the college classroom. West Virginia University Press.
Kahn, I. (2000). Students’ Performance on Makeup Examinations and other Evaluations. Psychological Reports, 87(3), 747–749. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.2000.87.3.747
Kahn, I. (1995). Comparison of Scores on Regularly Scheduled Examinations and Makeup Examinations. Psychological Reports, 76(3), 771–774. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1995.76.3.771
McCann, L. I. (2005). Dealing With Students Missing Exams and In-Class Graded Assignments. APS Observer, 19. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/dealing-with-students-missing-exams-and-in-class-graded-assignments
Meredith, L., Liu, Y., & Frazier, P. (2021). Student perceptions of instructor behaviors that impact stress: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(4), 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000268
Rosenblum, R. (2005). Standards and Sob Stories: Negotiating Authority at an Urban Public College. In Classroom Authority. Routledge. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wisc/reader.action?docID=274533&ppg=167
Tarasi, D. D. (2020). An Analysis of Students’ Makeup-Exam Results and Performance in Undergraduate Biology Courses. The American Biology Teacher, 82(5), 308–314. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2020.82.5.308
Vyas, V. S., Nobile, L., Gardinier, J. R., & Reid, S. A. (2023). Impact of a Low-Stakes Assessments Model with Retake in General Chemistry: Connecting to Student Attitudes and Self-Concept. Education Sciences, 13(12), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121235
How to Cite this Article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This means that you are welcome to adopt and adapt content, but we ask that you provide attribution to the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative and do not use the material for commercial purposes.
Example attribution: From Plan Flexible and Efficient Makeup Exams by the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative, licensed under the BY-NC 4.0 license.