Xu Hartling
Exam wrappers are an evidence-based pedagogy and an effective approach for student reflection. In a quantitative business course at Salem State University, it was frequently and commonly observed that students made mistakes in their previous homework or exams and tended to repeat those mistakes on later exams. This observation raised a lot of questions on how students worked on their homework and how they prepared for the exams. Students may not spend sufficient time in reflecting and improving their mastering of topics covered in previous homework or exams. In order to increase student success in this quantitative business course, exam wrappers were developed and adopted. This paper studies the effectiveness of exam wrappers in student reflection measured by students’ exam performance. Preliminary results showed that the majority of students improved their exam performance after implementing exam wrappers. The results also showed that students in the lower grade group tended to benefit more from using exam wrappers which may shed light on using exam wrappers to improve DFW rates in some challenging business core courses. Additionally, a lot of positive behavior changes were observed among students, which were all related to self-awareness and self-assessment in metacognition. Therefore, exam wrappers could be a new and innovative way to increase student engagement.