As part of the Certificate of Innovation in College Teaching, I chose the exam wrapper as an innovation to bring into my teaching practice.
Exam wrappers were introduced by Marsha C. Lovett as a way to get students to reflect on their performance on exams (see M.C. Lovett (2013) Make Exams Worth More Than the Grade: Using Exam Wrappers to Promote Metacognition. Chapter 2 of Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve Student Learning). While exams are generally considered a necessary tool - especially in mathematics - for measuring student learning outcomes, it is important to question how students interact with the exam and what they get out of completing it (besides a grade). The basic idea behind exam wrappers is to encourage metacognition (thinking about thinking) in students by having them reflect on (i) how they prepared for the exam; (ii) what kind of errors (if any) were made on the exam; and (iii) how they may improve their approach to future exams.
My personal take on exam wrappers expands these ideas slightly by also including course feedback as well as reflection on particular mathematical aspects of the exam (see my current exam wrapper). My exam wrapper is organized as follows:
The first page concerns the exam as a whole. It not only addresses the recommended reflections (how did you prepare, what caused you to lose points), but also gives students a chance to be critical about the content of the exam and the structure of the course (did the exam reflect the course material, can I make adjustments to the course to help you succeed). My hope is these questions influence metacognition not only for how to prepare for the exam, but also how other aspects of the course can impact their performance.
The second page of the the exam wrapper asks the student to pick a particular problem on the exam they would like to improve. The student is now directed to process any particular mistakes or misunderstanding that arose during the problem and reflect on how to avoid these issues in the future. This is followed by a chance to show the correct approach to solving the selected problem. The hope is to inspire confidence that the student does understand the material, even if mistakes were make during the exam, and ensure that any feedback given (at least for the chosen problem) is absorbed.