Who Fills the Seats? Offering Extra Credit and Instructor Perceptions of Who Will Attend

Past research on the effectiveness and fairness of offering extra credit opportunities to students has been mixed. This paper contributes to this ongoing literature in two ways. First, we develop a student effort model that investigates how student utility, study time, productivity, and knowledge change when faculty offer extra credit opportunities. Second, we employ a survey of 251 college instructors from across the United States to examine instructor perceptions of which students attend extra credit events and at what point in the semester students are more likely to attend.