In principle, exam retakes could benefit students in part by providing incentives to review and re-attempt types of problems that initially took them by surprise. A possibly complementary way of reducing negative consequences of surprising exam problems is to use exam preview methods to make each exam less surprising. This four-part study explored the feasibility and efficacy of combining exam retakes with an exam preview method called Test Question Templates (TQTs). Part 1 shows that, in a sample of 93 undergraduate anatomy & physiology (A&P) syllabi, 85%. While exam previews and exam retakes both require up-front investment of instructor effort, this study provides quantitative and qualitative data to support the simultaneous use of both. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Crowther et al. (Fri,) studied this question.