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From the article: "Exam wrappers are short activities that direct students to review their performance (and the instructor's feedback) on an exam with an eye toward adapting their future learning... Exam wrappers ask students three kinds of questions: How did they prepare for the exam? What kind of errors did they make on the exam? What could they do differently next time?"

The author uses multiple-choice exams to make sure that students have at least read the material, and as a counterweight to any bias she might have about the content. What is your "theory of exams"?

Students tend to hate cumulative exams - partly because they're harder (which is good and proper) and partly because they may not feel prepped for them. This article suggests some teaching strategies which you can use to help students integrate material across the semester.

There's a survey instrument attached which you can use to have students reflect and report on how they study for exams. They can then ask themselves if their approach is working - or you could tally the data and tell them which approaches are being used by the students getting the best grades.

The authors describe a simple two-stage exam method used in the physics department at the University of British Columbia. Two-stage exams provide an engaging collaborative learning opportunity which very effectively increases student mastery of the material.

A good discussion of how on professor uses multiple choice quizzing to measure comprehension of the major concepts in the course, instead of just testing for the ability to recall facts.

Asking students to report their confidence in an answer is a way to get them to reflect on their own learning, and gives you a window on where understanding and error may lie.

This 2008 blog post from a mathematician at Dickinson College is the best summary of my thoughts on curving grades that I have ever come across. Other than the fact that there is more math in here, this is what I think of whenever my students ask me "Do you curve your exams?" Moreover, his discussion on assigning grades includes formulas that can be pasted into either Google Docs or Excel that will generate letter grades based on splits that you can set to your liking. (Note: I have my own blog post about this where I explain these formulas in a bit more detail. Just copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://cip.kenyon.edu/hells-bells-not-question-again-and-formulas-assigning-grades.)

How are you thinking about wrapping up your courses this year?

Rice University's Center for Teaching Excellence has updated their phenomenal course workload estimator to include time spent writing and studying for exams.

What do classes look like as you move from infrequent, high-stakes assignments and exams to frequent grading of low-stakes activities? Warnock makes a number of claims, backed up by the literature - students become more confident and motivated, there's less incentive to cheat, the dialogue between students and faculty improves. I particularly like the last half of the article, where he talks about the practical elements of increasing informal writing or quizzing in a course.

Do you allow rewrites or makeup exams? David Gooblar argues that these can be important opportunities for students to learn from their errors. (Also some good examples, alternatives, and disagreements in the comments.)

It seems early for this, with a week of classes and a week of exams left to go, but perhaps these tasks are good mental breaks from all the grading. They also might form the technical side of good reflective practice.

Some faculty share exemplar papers from previous courses to help students understand how a good paper works (or how to find the flaws in a paper). The idea of doing this with exam essays struck me as new and interesting.

This paper makes explicit a number of the implicit beliefs Kenyon faculty seem to have about essay exams. The tips on question selection and grading might be particularly helpful.

Lots of interesting ideas in this podcast episode for removing potential sources of unconscious bias from your grading.

Using the AP History exams as an example, Rick Warner from Wabash College shows how carefully-designed multiple choice questions can assess cognitive skills beyond "factoid recall."

Interesting to connect the job of helping students prepare for end-of-semester assignments or exams with the goal of bringing a sense of closure to your course.

Interesting study showing the importance of consistent sleep in the weeks and months before exams, and not just the night before or catching up on weekends. Your bleary-eyed colleagues at the CIP suspect we would see this effect among faculty and staff as well.

How do culminating exams and assignments also account for ongoing stressors on ourselves and our students?