APPENDIX F

What Are Exam

Wrappers and How
Can We Use Them?

A ll too often when students receive back a graded exam, they

focus on a single feature—the score they earned. Although
this focus on “the grade” is understandable, it can lead students
to miss out on several learning opportunities that such an assess-
ment can provide:

• Identifying their own individual areas of strength and weakness

to guide further study
• Reflecting on the adequacy of their preparation time and the
appropriateness of their study strategies
• Characterizing the nature of their errors to find any recurring
patterns that could be addressed

So to encourage students to process their graded exams

more deeply, instructors can use exam wrappers, short handouts
that students complete when an exam is turned back to them.
Exam wrappers direct students to review and analyze their perfor-
mance (and the instructor’s feedback) with an eye toward adapt-
ing their future learning.
One way to use exam wrappers is to ask students to complete
the handout when they get back their graded exams. This way,

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students are immediately encouraged to think through why they

earned the score they did (what kinds of errors they made, how
their performance might relate to their approach to studying) and
how they might do better next time. Once students complete the
exam wrappers, they should be collected, both for review by the
instructional team and for safe keeping (because they will be used
before the next exam, see next paragraph). In terms of reviewing
the completed exam wrappers, the instructor, teaching assistants,
or both should skim students’ responses to see whether there are
patterns either in how students analyzed their strengths and
weaknesses or in how students described their approach to study-
ing for the exam. These patterns may give the instructor some
insights into students’ patterns of performance and what advice
might help students perform better on the next exam (for example,
if students only reread their notes but did not do any practice
problems for a problem-oriented exam, the instructor could advise
students to actually solve problems from sample exams).
Then, a week or so before the next exam, the exam wrappers
are returned to students, either in a recitation section or in some
other setting where there is opportunity for structured discussion.
Students can then be asked to reread their own exam wrapper
responses from the previous exam and reflect on how they might
implement their own advice or the instructor’s advice for trying a
better approach to studying for the upcoming exam. A structured
class discussion can also be useful at this point to engage students
in sharing effective study strategies and getting input and encour-
agement from the instructional team.
For a sample exam wrapper from a physics course, see
Exhibit F.1.

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 Appendix F: What Are Exam Wrappers and How Can We Use Them?

Exhibit F.1. Sample Exam Wrapper

Physics Post-Exam Reflection Name: ___________________________

This activity is designed to give you a chance to reflect on your
exam performance and, more important, on the effectiveness of your
exam preparation. Please answer the questions sincerely. Your
responses will be collected to inform the instructional team regarding
students’ experiences surrounding this exam and how we can best
support your learning. We will hand back your completed sheet in
advance of the next exam to inform and guide your preparation for
that exam.

1. Approximately how much time did you spend preparing for this
exam? ______________
2. What percentage of your test-preparation time was spent in each
of these activities?
a. Reading textbook section(s) for the first time ________
b. Rereading textbook section(s) ________
c. Reviewing homework solutions ________
d. Solving problems for practice ________
e. Reviewing your own notes ________
f. Reviewing materials from course website ________
(What materials? ____________________)
g. Other ________
(Please specify: ____________________)
3. Now that you have looked over your graded exam, estimate the
percentage of points you lost due to each of the following (make
sure the percentages add up to 100):
a. Trouble with vectors and vector notation ________
b. Algebra or arithmetic errors ________
c. Lack of understanding of the concept ________
d. Not knowing how to approach the problem ________
e. Careless mistakes ________
f. Other ________
(Please specify: ____________________)
4. Based on your responses to the questions above, name at least
three things you plan to do differently in preparing for the next

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exam. For instance, will you just spend more time studying, change
a specific study habit or try a new one (if so, name it), make math
more automatic so it does not get in the way of physics, try to
sharpen some other skill (if so, name it), solve more practice
problems, or something else?
5. What can we do to help support your learning and your
preparation for the next exam?

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