Teaching Large Classes: Using the Exit Ticket Strategy

Due to the vast amount of students in large class settings, many professors face the same challenge of how to gauge what your students have taken away from a particular session.  Did they truly understand the main ideas of the lecture?  Did they have any questions that weren't answered?  These issues can be eased through the use of exit ticket strategies

An exit ticket is something each student hands in before leaving at the end of class.  On it, students might answer a question, state the main point of the lecture, or ask a question that they have about the content that had been covered.  The ticket can be a note card, a scrap of notebook paper, or a sticky note.  The only real requirement of the ticket itself is that it must be able to serve as a way for students to convey a message to the professor.

Here are some ways to utilize an exit ticket within your class:

1. Ask students to take the last few minutes of class to write about what they believed was the most important point in class that day.

2. Have students write a question they still have regarding the material.

3. Ask students to answer a specific question that you come up with regarding the material that was covered in class that day.

After this has been completed, simply provide a space for students to hand in or drop off their exit tickets before they leave, and viola!  You have instant feedback on your most recent lecture.

This strategy enables you to reinforce concepts that were confusing to students, and to see what main concepts students left class knowing.

Other ways to include the exit ticket strategy include:

• Requiring post-class discussion posts on D2L to see if students have questions about the content covered in class each day.
• Instead of handing in their tickets, students could use the last few minutes of class to discuss the things they wrote about on their cards with their peers around them.  Often, this leads to clarification through discussion with each other.
• Exit tickets don't necessarily need to used at the end of class.  If you'd like to implement them at the beginning or middle to evoke discussion or problem-solving, go for it!

 Tip Provided By: Jessica Moser