ITC in the Classroom: Google Forms

After last week’s successful trial of Padlet, this week I used Google Forms to make a short quiz for my learners to try. Google forms is part of the suite of applications available to anybody with a Google account (basically that means everyone who has gmail), just log on via the webpage, and select ‘Drive’ from the black option bar at the top of the page, press the ‘create’ button (red, on the left hand side) and select ‘Form’. You can also download the Google Drive application for your computer to speed things up a bit. Up until now I had used the Documents, Spreadsheets and Drawings, but hadn’t really tried Forms. I like Google Docs as they are accessible from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection, and you don’t have to worry about synchronizing over multiple computers or carrying a memory stick around (other than as backup in case the internet is down). They also save every few seconds, so it is much harder to lose your work - students please note, that’s one less excuse!

The concept is simple: you make the form, it has a unique URL which you can give to your students, they fill the form in and submit it, and the answers are recorded on a spreadsheet. You can choose from a variety of question types - short text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkbox, choose from list, scale (eg rank from 1 to 5), and grid; so plenty of opportunity to mix and match to suit your needs from a quick quiz to long-form answers. Actually constructing the Form is quick and easy, especially if you have questions pre-prepared.

Before trying it ‘live’ on the class I did a test run and was glad I did; I had forgotten to make ‘what is your name’ a question, without which the data is somewhat less useful! Also the grid question only allowed one correct answer per line, this restriction was not obvious.

Google Forms has been tried on three classes so far (one of which was an observed lesson), and feedback from the learners had been generally positive. You have a fair amount of control over the look of the form the learners see. I chose a  simple, clean layout and no learners had difficulties in understanding how to answer the questions or submit the form. The spreadsheet updates live and so if used in class you can give instant feedback to early finishers or encourage or help those who are a little slower completing the task. Although I have not tried it yet, they should also work well for homework tasks as once the form is live, there is no time limit for completion (unless you take it down).

Next week I will be trialling a different way of running quizzes; Socrative.