When students receive graded work, they often look quickly at their final score with pleasure, disappointment, or relief, and move on. But this is also a moment when instructors want students to slow down, understand the feedback, and develop plans for academic success. Exam wrappers are a powerful tool designed by the instructor to facilitate this kind of moment.
Typically, exam wrappers ask students to: (1) review how they studied, (2) reflect on the errors they made, and (3) modify their approach for the next exam/assignment.
Educational Benefits
Research shows that exam wrappers enhance student learning by increasing metacognitive awareness around the intellectual, emotional, or relational factors that shape academic performance.
- Academic performance: Research suggests that exam wrappers can help students learn more effectively and achieve better results on tests. (Chen, Chaves, Ong, & Gunderson, 2017).
- Study skills: By building metacognition around study skills, growth areas, and other learning patterns, exam wrappers help students learn how to learn (Rosales et al., 2019).
- Belonging: When used in relation to other reflective activities, exam wrappers can help students increase their sense of belonging (Brundage & Hudson, 2025).
- Student-Instructor communication and feedback: Wrappers help instructors understand student learning and adjust course if necessary (Lovett, 2013) and supplement the formative feedback process by helping students understand their result and how they can improve (Gezer-Templeton et al., 2017).
In Practice
See how BU professors and instructors are incorporating exam wrappers in their courses!
Boston University Large Course Initiative Examples
In collaboration with several programs in BU’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute is engaged in a multi-year initiative to redesign the student experience in large classes that typically have 100 or more students. This initiative provides an opportunity to reimagine and develop new approaches to course redesign, student assessment, classroom teaching techniques and the creation of instructional resources that promote engagement and learning in some of BU’s largest introductory courses.
In this video, Dr. Binyomin Abrams, Director and Research Associate Professor of General Chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences, explains how quiz wrappers help students learn more by giving students targeted opportunities to improve while keeping grading manageable.
Biology 1 & Biology 2
Instruction Team: Kathryn Spilios, Kale Hartmann, Lynette Strickland, Sarah Klionsky
Activity: Exam Wrappers and Metacognition
The Biology team integrates “RECAP” worksheets (Review, Evaluate, Correct, Analyze, Plan) into their quiz review. Biology has 5 quizzes scheduled during the semester in both BI107 and BI108. After grading, each quiz is open for students to review in person for five days. During this review, students complete their RECAP worksheets. Once completed and confirmed by the instruction team, students can gain 2 points back on their quiz grade. They also have an optional cumulative final exam during finals period that students can opt to take to replace their lowest quiz grade.
General Chemistry 1
Instruction Team: Binyomin Abrams, Keying Chen, Caroline Muteti
Activity: Exam Wrappers, Retake Qualifiers, metacognition
The Chemistry team delivers 6 quizzes throughout the semester, spaced out every 2-3 weeks. As part of this initiative, they have added an option to retake up to two quizzes during finals periods. Instead of allowing any student to retake any two quizzes, however, the instruction team used exam wrappers, which they called “qualifiers,” to qualify for these retakes. Students needed to complete the assigned exam wrapper within one week of receiving their graded quizzes to practice correct methods and retain accurate conceptual knowledge. Metacognitive coaching is a key learning goal for these exam wrappers, forcing students to reflect on their learning, difficulty, and future study strategies. Once completed, these students qualified to retake their desired quizzes during finals.
Basic Statistics and Probability & Applied Statistics
Instruction Team: Emily Stephen, Jonathan Huggins, Yongho Lim
Activity: Exam Wrappers, Retake Qualifiers, metacognition
After hearing of the success of the exam wrappers used by the Biology and Chemistry teams, the Math team adopted a similar approach as Chemistry to their exams. They shifted from a midterm and final setup to 5 quizzes spaced throughout the semester. Students were eligible to retake up to three quizzes during the last week of classes and the final exam period. To qualify, students needed to fill out a Quiz Retake Qualification Form within a week of receiving their quiz grade. Students could fill out the form for more than 3 quizzes, but needed to choose which 3 to retake at the end of the semester. The Math team also shifted from traditional grading to standards-based grading, which helped them connect their quizzes, quiz wrappers, and study recommendations directly to course learning goals.
Additional Exam Wrapper Examples
These select templates from around higher education can help instructors get started in creating and implementing exam wrappers in their courses.
Additional Resources
Biology
Brundage, C., & Hudson, D. (2025). Collaborative Study Strategizing Improves Student Performance and Sense of Belonging in an Undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology Course. Physiology, 40(S1), 1609. https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.2025.40.S1.1609
Chemistry
- Rosales, E., Chavarga, A., Grandoit, E., Mayer, S., Hackman, N., Elbulok-Charcape, M., Domzalski, A. C., & Horowitz, G. (2019). An Exam Wrapper Intervention in Organic Chemistry I: Impact on Course Performance and Study Behavior. Journal of College Science Teaching, 49(2), 53-61. 10.2505/4/jcst19_049_02_53.
- Grandoit, E., Bergdoll, R., Rosales, E., Turbeville, D., Mayer, S., & Horowitz, G. (2020). Exploring organic chemistry I students’ responses to an exam wrapper intervention. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v20i1.24825.
Food Science
Gezer-Templeton, P.G., Mayhew, E.J., Korte, D.S. and Schmidt, S.J. (2017), Use of Exam Wrappers to Enhance Students’ Metacognitive Skills in a Large Introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition Course. Journal of Food Science Education, 16: 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4329.12103
Health Science
Sethares, K. A., & Asselin, M. E. (2022). Use of Exam Wrapper Metacognitive Strategy to Promote Student Self-assessment of Learning: An Integrative Review. Nurse educator, 47(1), 37–41. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000001026
Psychology
LaCaille, R. A., LaCaille, L., & Maslowski, A. (2019). The Effect of Exam and Quiz Wrappers on Metacognition, Learning Perceived Competence, and Course Performance in Online Undergraduate Psychology Courses. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000114.
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