Last updated on 6 April 2023
An exit ticket (also known as exit slip or one-minute paper) is an active learning method. At the end of a teaching session, students write down what they still find unclear about the material or what you would like to know their opinion about.
Exit ticket - what is it?
- The Exit ticket technique is very suitable for letting students give their opinion anonymously about a subject.
- Type: short-term individual assignment.
- Suitable for: large lectures, but also small work groups.
- Time spent during a teaching session: two to five minutes.
- Group size: one.
- Preparation time: less than half an hour.
Getting started
- Start: Introduce the exit ticket assignment five to ten minutes before the end of the teaching session, and indicate what is expected of the students and how long they have for it. Examples of assignments are: "What was the most important concept of this lecture?" Or: "What was the most unclear subject of this lecture?" Or, if you want to ask about the safety of the learning climate in working groups or collaborative assignments: "Did you feel well understood?", "How did you contribute to a safe learning climate?" or "What worries you?" (see also this teaching tip).
- Hand out the post-it notes.
- Have student one write down two sentences. Give them two minutes to do so.
- Have students stick the post-its somewhere near the exit of the classroom when they go outside. For a digital variant you can use Mentimeter, this is useful for quickly collecting all answers, opinions and observations centrally and possibly sharing them.
- Come back to the results during the next lecture or workgroup.
Practical example of jigsaw at the VU
- Watch this video by teacher Rosa Pols on how she uses the exit ticket for active blended learning.