Google Forms in the Classroom

In Google Drive you can not only create documents but also presentations, spreadsheets, forms and drawings.

We would like to point out how Google Forms can be used in an educational setting. Google Forms are very user-friendly and allow you to easily send surveys and gather information from students or record your own data. When you (or whoever you share the form with) fill it in, the owner of the form can receive all the responses in a spreadsheet. This makes it easy to view all responses in one place, summarize the data as a graph or even use other plug-ins to “grade” the responses.

To better understand how Google Forms work:

• click here to view a form - please fill it in so that we can gather some data
• click here to view a summary of the responses - this can be set for respondents to see or only for your eyes
• click here to view how data can be presented in a spreadsheet after a form is completed

Forms allow you to ask a variety of questions:

• Text - short answers
• Paragraph text - longer answers
• Multiple choice
• Checkboxes - tick multiple options
• Choose from a list - choose one option from a dropdown menu
• Scale - rank using a scale of numbers (e.g., from 1 to 5)
• Grid — respondents select a point from a two-dimensional grid

There are several websites and blogs that describe many examples of how forms can be used in education. Here are just a few:

1. Tom Barrett has a collaborative list of 80+ Interesting Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom that you can peruse as well as add to.

2. Mr. Sapia, describes how he uses Forms in his own classroom in his blogpost about “A ‘Semi-Paperless’ Classroom Using Google Forms and Edmodo”

3. This ed tech website describes how to use Google Forms as an In Box. Students can submit online work to you using a Form so that you can access all student submissions for an assignment in one spreadsheet.

4. On Kern Kelley’s website you can find examples of Google Form Templates that you can download to your Google Drive and use.

5. Molly Schroeder has a brief slideshow about how Google Forms work and then, below the slideshow, links to several examples of educational forms.

6. Flubaroo is a tool that you can use together with Google Forms to automatically grade Forms as students complete them.

If you would like some help getting started with Google Forms before the end of this year (maybe for exam review or a math unit on data handling or literacy assessments?) please don’t hesitate to let Sarah or Lara know and we’ll find a time to meet with you to help.

Update May 15, 2013: Images can now be embedded in Google Forms. Click the down arrow next to "Add Item"--- and images is now an option. (You can also find it in the "Insert" menu). View a sample here.