Recently, computer science has become one of the most in-demand fields, attracting many students who want to learn programming. Therefore, with a diverse student base, we need to address students’ individual learning needs, to help each student succeed in their programming education regardless of their background. Approaches like mastery-based learning have great potential when it comes to individual-based learning, but there is little known about how to operationalize this pedagogy to foster student engagement. In this analysis, we study the impact of deadline frequency (weekly vs two broad deadlines) on students’ engagement with extra credit quizzes (ECQs). These ECQs are based on mastery learning activities to provide formative practice for learning CS concepts.
To understand the extent to which students engage with these quizzes, we analyzed the data of 271 students. The data is split over two semesters: Spring 2022, which had 2 broad exam-based deadlines for the ECQs, and Fall 2022, which had weekly deadlines for the ECQs. We found that overall, students with broad deadlines completed more ECQs than the students who had weekly deadlines. Upon further analysis based on students’ GPAs, we found that students whose GPA was in the lower 50% of the sample were more likely to engage in the ECQs when they only had 2 deadlines as compared to their counterparts with weekly deadlines. We believe that the results of this study have implications for how to increase engagement with mastery learning activities and resources in computer science education.