Exam Wrappers
What are they?
Exam wrappers are short handouts that help students review their completed exam to understand their grade and to learn about how their own behaviors contributed to the exam results, e.g. the adequacy of their preparation and how they may improve their strategies for studying for exams.
Why use them?
When students receive their graded exam, they often focus only on the grade they earned. Exam wrappers ask students to look through and review their exams in order to:
- Identify what parts of the exam they did well on. Did they succeed at answering questions on particular content areas or in particular formats?
- identify what parts of the exam they did poorly on, Did they fail to answer questions on particular content areas or in particular formats correctly or completely?
- Review their study approach
- Resources and techniques utilized, time spent, and content covered
- Look for any patterns to guide future choices about coursework or exam prep
How can you use them?
- Add the questions to an online test and give them credit for answering them
- Distribute wrappers in paper form the day a test is returned (may be stapled to exams)
- Ask students to complete the exam wrapper and consider it on their own
- Collect the completed wrappers, briefly review, and offer the full class comments on any patterns you see
- Collect the completed wrappers and return them to students as they prepare for the next exam.
- Ask students who want to discuss an exam in office hours to bring their exam wrapper