This article describes how one simple activity, which is called one-minute paper, can improve students' learning and active participation in class. It also reports a pilot project to show the positive effect of using one-minute paper in university classes.

What is one-minute paper?
It is a modest, relatively simple and low-tech innovation designed to obtain regular feedback from students. In the final minute or two of class, the teacher asks students to respond to the following two questions:
1. What is the most important thing you learned today?
2. What is the muddiest point still remaining at the conclusion of today's class?
Before leaving the classroom every lesson, students drop their one-minute papers into a box located near the exit of the classroom. Teachers then take a look at them after every class.

What are the objectives of these two questions?
The first question directs students to focus on the big picture, that is, what is being learned, whereas the second seeks to determine how well learning is proceeding.

What are the advantages of using one-minute paper?

• One-minute paper provides the instructor with detailed feedback concerning what students are learning and how well they are learning it.
  
• One-minute paper provides feedback on a regular basis.
  
• One-minute paper encourages active engagement in the class process. Students who have genuine input and control will be better motivated to learn.
  
• One-minute paper gives chance teacher to demonstrate respect for and interest in student opinion.

Evidence of good effect of using one-minute paper
Author conducted a pilot project in which authors used the one-minute paper to augment instruction in introductory economics courses in three semesters. They used a control versus experimental group research design. In the project, four different instructors each taught control and experimental sections of the microportion of the principles of economics course identically except for the introduction of the one-minute paper into the experimental section. Relevant data collected from the project were used to run regression (If you are interested in the regression model used in the analysis, you can refer to the paper at: http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eeconed/pdffiles/winter98/chizmar.pdf.) Finally, the results of regression suggest that one-minute paper does enhance economic knowledge. Also, the results show that the effect of the one-minute paper on students' economic knowledge varies little across instructors and does not depend on the student's ability level.