Setting Up Google Forms to Assess Student Learning
In what skill have you suddenly become proficient since becoming an online teacher? There are so many things that weeks ago I had limited experience with (if any at all): Google Classroom, Google Slides, Google Forms. All of a sudden, I am able to use these with ease. Now, I am by no means any kind of expert. I am not Google certified, although I may be interested in pursuing certification in the future. (Don’t hold me to that though.) One thing that I am now able to do at lightning speed is set up a Google Form to assess student understanding. Read below for a quick Google Forms Tutorial to set up forms for your students.
Go to Settings
Let’s speed through the obvious. Open a new Google Form. (My favorite trick is typing forms.new into the address bar.) Click on the settings button in the top right corner.
Google Forms General Settings
The first thing I turn on is the option to collect email addresses. My school formats student email address with their first and last names. So, by turning this option on my student’s information is automatically recorded with their responses. This eliminates the need for me to include questions for students’ first and last names.
To ensure that students log in to their school account, I select the option that restricts use to my school district.
This next part is up to you. Do you want your students to be able to edit their submissions? Do you want them to see summary charts and responses? For distance learning, I allow my students to re-submit their forms as many times as they want, so I do allow them to edit. However, I do not allow them to see the summary charts or responses. While I want my students to have multiple opportunities to succeed, I do not want them to find all the answers without doing the work either.
Presentation Settings
When it comes to presentation settings, I don’t change anything. Again, this part is up to you. The only thing that matters to me is that students see the link to re-submit their form. In this section, you can also choose to shuffle the question order or to show a progress bar. If you have multiple sections in your form, the progress bar is helpful. When you use sections, each section has its own “page” and students do not see the entire form at once.
Google Forms Tutorial: Quiz Settings
Do you want your Google form to self-grade? This is where the magic happens. First, I toggle the button that turns the form into a quiz. Then, I have to carefully consider how I want to release the grades. If my form is only multiple choice questions, then I select ‘Immediately after each submission.’ The forms will be instantly, automatically graded, and students get their scores right away. If my form has any short answer questions, then I select ‘Later, after manual review.’ This allows me to read through the answers submitted and determine if they are correct.
When I first started distance teaching, I made the mistake of immediately releasing scores for short answer questions. My poor students were so stressed out. They typed the correct answers, but it wasn’t an exact match with the answer I typed. So, Google was telling my students that they had every question wrong, even when they were right.
Additional Google Quiz Settings
Then, you have some final options. You can choose if you want your students to see their missed questions, correct answers, and the point values for each questions. I prefer to allow students to see missed questions and point values. Since I allow students to re-submit their forms, it doesn’t make sense for me to allow students to see the correct answers.
Hopefully, this information is helpful to you. If you want to see how to set-up your form to be self-grading, or want to see my process, check out my companion video to this post. Also, be sure to check out my previous post: The Best Google Classroom Tutorials!
