Jun 25, 2020 - 4 min read - 1,079 views
Most of the time you encounter forms they are sent in emails as a survey to gather information. The survey use of a Google form is valuable in itself, but there is so much you can do with forms that will help you in your classroom.
A google form is a lesser-known feature within google drive. Think of a google form as an easily shareable data input program. You can customize the form to suit your many different classroom needs. As you create the form you can add different sections that can be filled out and submitted. There are a variety of question options, short response, multiple-choice, checkboxes, etc. When the form is submitted, you can see data collected in a variety of ways within the form itself or export the data entries to google sheets. I prefer using google sheets to view responses because I can manipulate the tables to show me only the parts of the information I want. Here is a video that explains the basic features with more detail. It is longer than I wanted, but there is just so much I wanted to share about how to set these forms up.
Now that you understand a bit about the basic functions for Google forms. Let's look at how creating specific forms can help you streamline your classroom systems and teaching responsibilities. I have a personal classroom Ipad and an old personal laptop that I use every day in my classroom to facilitate the implementation of some of these ideas. I have them set up on a table near my entry to my room with a very long sleep timer mode set so I do not have to enter a password to access.
Summative assignments - You can of course use google forms to make your own summative assessments. Google forms have evolved greatly since being released, Google does an excellent job listening to feedback and has made these forms very teacher-friendly sections. You can easily chuck the assessment into sections and quickly insert diagrams or video clips. You have an array of question options beyond the traditional multiple-choice (short and long response, grid answer, multiple-choice, just to name a few) and you can make it so that some or all of the questions are required to be completed in order to submit. Now here is the best part, you can create an answer key and specific point value for each question. The form will then send the student their grade automatically (if you select that option) and you can even add question/answer feedback they receive so your students can instantly see error corrections. As with all google forms, you can see live data analysis in the results feature within the form, but you can do so much by manipulating the google sheets that you export the submissions to.
Remediation - If you have a remediation program for your students, you probably have content texts or videos you want them to re-read or watch and then answer comprehension questions. Well, all of that can be done through google forms. You can add long texts or reading passages, pictures, or even tutorial videos to a section of the form and then have your appropriate comprehension check questions after. As I said above, google forms allow you to give students feedback on their answers when they submit. This is ideal for remediation because in a class of 28 students it is really hard to find ample time to give 1 student needed 1 on 1 attention, not to mention that a lot of remediation happens at home or when I am not around. This way I know that my students will be getting the exact and correct feedback I want them to receive and they can relearn the material with more confidence.
Keeping assessment forms "closed" or private - I post all of my remediation and retakes for my summative quizzes and exams on our course website (see my Bitmoji classroom tutorials). That means each assessment is live and can be accessed by all of my students at any time. How do I prevent cheating or early access? Well, you can make the first section of the form only have 1 short response question, that question will ask for a code or password to move on. You are the only one with the code and unless the exact code or phrase in entered students are blocked from moving on to the next section. This means all of your assessments are secure until you manually enter the code or tell the students the code to enter. It is a brilliant use of the self-grading and mandatory question tools!
Using forms for digital escape rooms - This just combines all of the knowledge from above in a super fun way. You can make each section of the form a step in your sequential digital escape room. You can add videos or pictures to help give student clues to solve the problem or decipher the key/code. Your one required question at the bottom of each section is the answer to the riddle or challenge. You just have to make sure you use the "contains exact" word or number in your key and now you have a locked escape room level. You would repeat this with however many sections you want in your escape room and make the final section a "Congratulations on escaping" page before they submit the form! It works so well. My students love escape rooms for reviews and I love them because the students get so into the challenge they are quiet and reviewing all at the same time. If you make it a competition, the first 3 to escape get ____, it is even more intense lol! This way my I have some valuable quiet time to work more closely with the students that are struggling or need to catch up. The beauty of this is that since it is digital students can keep trying to escape from home and this is now a very valuable tool for the distance learning phase of education we are in.
If you want to know more about how I use google forms for classroom management and organization read this post. If you want to learn more about escape rooms there will be a future blog about that too.
