Checking for student understanding after a lesson is complete is what reflective teachers do. Today, with remote learning, it’s more important than ever. In the virtual classroom, paper exit tickets are no longer an option, so as we adapt to this new form of learning, the digital exit ticket is a new teaching strategy for formative assessment.

What is an Exit Ticket?

Exit tickets are a well-known tool that helps educators gauge student comprehension. They also allow students to reflect upon the lesson (what they understood, what confused them, etc.). Traditionally, they are used at the end of a lesson; on a piece of paper, teachers ask students one to two questions to see who grasped the concept. In the age of digital learning, exit tickets are no longer confined to a few questions on a piece of paper; the format can vary from multiple-choice, true-false, matching, short response, etc. And, with a plethora of digital tools at educators’ disposal, there are no limits to this formative form of assessment.

Benefits of Using Digital Exit Tickets for Remote Learning

Exit tickets check for understanding. They allow teachers to see which students understand the concept and which do not. Teachers can then take that information learned and modify their instruction plan.

An excellent example of the benefits of using digital exit tickets comes from a sixth-grade teacher. To ensure students understood the online lesson, she had students submit their exit tickets via Google classroom. She then uploaded them to Google Drive, which created spreadsheet that gave her an overall picture of which students understood the lesson and which did not. She then used this data to identify students’ strengthens and weaknesses in the lesson which helped her plan for the next day’s instruction.

Digital Exit Ticket Ideas

Once you are finished with a lesson, you can use a digital exit ticket as a means of assessment or to gauge how students feel about a lesson. Here are a few digital tools and ideas on how to use them in the virtual classroom.

An Exit Tweet

Students are no strangers to using social media, and if you want to find a way to check for understanding in as few words as possible, have them create a tweet. In 280 characters or less, students can answer a question after a lesson that is posed by you. You can have students actually “tweet” their responses on Twitter or you can simply use the concept of a tweet and have them send you their responses via email, Google Drive, etc. For example, you can pose the question, “In 280 characters or less, create a tweet to answer the question.”

An Exit Emoji

Emojis show emotion, and if you’re looking for a way to gauge how students felt about a lesson, using an emoji exit ticket where students use or circle an emoji is a great way to accomplish this. Have students choose the emoji that best describes how they felt about the lesson, then describe in as few words as possible why they choose that emoji. For example, if students just completed a history lesson on the American Revolution, you can ask them to choose an emoji that best represents how they felt about the lesson as well as why they felt that way.

Record a Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a video-based digital tool that is helping educators stay connected with their students. In short, Flipgrid works by having students record and share short videos with their teachers and classmates. Educators are using Flipgrid as an exit ticket idea for the virtual classroom because it’s not only fun for learners, but teachers get to read their students’ body language as they respond via video, which can help them measure how students are feeling about the topic. Simply create a prompt (such as: in a few sentences, talk about what you learned today), then ask students to create and share a video of their answer. It’s that simple.

Share a Tip

One way to get a glimpse into students’ understanding of a concept is to ask them an open-ended question. You can learn a lot about the overall understanding of a student by asking them to share a tip about what they learned. Ask students to share their tips via Flipgrid or Google Classroom. Once you’ve collected your tips, you can use them to review before your next lesson.

Google Forms

If you are already using Google Classroom to virtually teach, then you probably already know about Google Forms. You can easily build and create an exit ticket in minutes. Plus, recent upgrades allow a variety of question types as well as images and videos for you to easily pull together and send your students a link. You can view student responses in the “response” tab and then export them to a spreadsheet where you can assess students’ learning all on one convenient page. Here are some popular exit ticket questions teachers like to use on Google Forms.

  • Explain the most important part of today’s lesson.
  • In a few sentences, explain to your friend what today’s lesson was about.
  • What was the most difficult part of today’s lesson?
  • What part of today’s lesson do you need more practice in?

Digital exit tickets make it easy to check for student understanding. Many digital tools have features like scheduling questions in advance, reviewing student responses in one spot, and saving questions to re-use later. All of these features can be quite helpful as we try to navigate our way through this new digital era.