Virtual or digital exit tickets are a quick, easy and most importantly informative way of supporting teaching and learning.

Read on for a quick and easy 3 step process for using digital exit tickets.

1. Use the right tools

When running virtual exit tickets it’s important to pick the right tools for the job. 

Ziplet is a free, easy and comprehensive tool specifically designed for digital exit tickets.

Benefits include:

• No need for student email or  login
• Quick and easy to use - in as little as 30 seconds
• Dozens of questions covering all areas of learning and personal development
• Create and tailor your own questions
• Save your favorite questions for reuse 
• Make use of different response types - text answers, number scales, emoji reactions or multiple choice
• Schedule questions in advance to reduce your workload
• Make use of dashboards - review all your students' responses in one spot without having to sort through bits of paper

2. Ask The Right Questions

When using a virtual exit ticket, it’s important to make sure you’re asking the right types of questions. There are a few helpful guidelines for asking an exit ticket question:

• One question, one concept: To make the feedback as meaningful as possible, stick to just one concept per question.  Otherwise, students can get confused about what’s being asked. 
• Focus on what can change: According to students, the most meaningful questions inform changes in the classroom.  These questions focus on the future - not the past.  For example, “What topics should we revisit before the test?” and “What can I do to better support your learning?” 
• Student friendly language: Make teaching and learning most impactful by using the simplest language to enhance accessibility.  Consider the language capabilities of your students, particularly if English is not their native language, and avoid jargon and “Teacher talk” (a common suggestion from fellow teachers!). 
• Summative and formative assessment: Use a mix of questions to both assess student achievement and to inform your own teaching.
• Use different types of questions:  quantitative questions provide quick insight.  They are speedy for students to complete and receive the highest response rates.  For deeper understanding of your students, utilise qualitative questions.  An open-ended question enables students to offer a full answer to a question, drawing upon their own knowledge and feelings. Open-ended questions typically begin with words such as "Why" and "How", or phrases such as "Tell me about…".    
• Right question, right time:  Ask questions prior to, during and after learning.  Limit to 2-3 questions at a time, to ensure students are focused on the questions at hand. 
• Allow thinking and response time: Reflection takes time.  Give it to students and you’ll be sure to receive meaningful feedback.
• Enable anonymous responses: Teachers report receiving more honest responses when they permit their students to choose whether they respond anonymously. Providing students with this choice also maximizes the chances they’ll respond to your given question.

If you’re using Ziplet for your virtual exit tickets, you can choose from an existing bank of questions that adhere to best practice.  Questions cover categories including growth mindset, SEL, relationship building, classroom climate, problem-based learning, student voice, teacher practice and more.

3. Follow Up

Once you’ve asked a question, it’s important to follow up with your students to let them know their feedback is valued and important. 

There are a few useful steps for taking action based on student feedback.

Identify themes in student responses 

Take some time to review student responses. By reviewing the answers of multiple students you can start to identify patterns which allow you to take action.

Ziplet’s word cloud feature indicates themes of student responses, and how prevalent they were.  It’ll help guide how you target your teaching.

Reply to students

Once you have responses from your students you should take time to reply to them, either individually or collectively. This helps students know their responses have been read and encourages them to respond to exit tickets in future (something which is particularly important when running virtual exit tickets). 

You can send an emoji reaction to student responses in Ziplet, or reply to students within the app, so you can keep all your messages and exit tickets in one place. It even lets you send the same message to multiple students individually so you can save time if multiple students have a similar response.

Differentiate the curriculum

We all know that no two students are the same.  Each learns differently.  It’s our responsibility and privilege to differentiate the curriculum to suit individual needs.  

You can see which students had a similar response and what comments they have made. This helps you to spot patterns, message relevant students and follow up on students with similar issues.  It can also help know which students need to be extended in their learning.  

Revisit topic to enhance understanding 

At a glance, you’ll be able to gauge students’ levels of understanding as a cohort.  If many didn’t grasp the concepts, you can revisit next lesson.  

Conclusion

Virtual exit tickets can inform teaching and learning.  Using Ziplet’s virtual exit tickets is the easiest way to tailor teaching to suit student needs.