Make exams worth more than the grade: Using exam wrappers to promote metacognition.Lovett, M.C. (2013) Make exams worth more than the grade: Using exam wrappers to promote metacognition. In Kaplan, M., Silver, N, Lavaque-Manty, D., & Meizlish, D.’s Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning. Stylus Publishing: Sterling, VA., pp. 18-52.
Exam Wrappers
All too often, when students receive back a graded exam, they focus on a single feature – the score they earned. While this focus on “the grade” is understandable, it can lead students to miss out on several learning opportunities that such assessment 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; and
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, several faculty members across the university have devised exam wrappers, short handouts that students complete when an exam is turned back to them. These exam wrappers direct students to review their performance (and the instructor’s feedback) with an eye toward adapting their future learning.
