Forms in the classroom

PDF Help Document

YouTube Videos

How teachers can use Google Forms
Google Forms a teacher/student connection
Embedding Google forms in Moodle
85 Interesting Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom

With Google Docs, you can quickly create a form or survey, send it to students, parents, teachers, or staff, and keep track of the answers in one spreadsheet.

Since forms are filled out online, there’s no need to enter in results manually. Responses are collected and displayed immediately in a corresponding Google Docs spreadsheet which allows you to sort, analyze, and visualize the information.

You can send forms to anyone - even those outside of your school Apps domain. Respondants can access the form via email, a published webpage, or embedded on a site.

Forms also generates an automatic summary with charts, graphs, and statistics about your form responses and can notify you when new responses are submitted.

In this chapter we will review how to create, customize, and publish forms as well as walk through examples of how forms can be used at your school.

Here are some live examples of forms you can preview and try:

• Collecting mailing addresses
• US History pop quiz for grade school
• Student group welcome form
• Club event requests

And other ideas that could be conducted using forms:

• Structured peer editing and feedback
• Assignment checklist and submissions
• Applications for positions in clubs, students, government

Create and customize forms

Create a new form

Although forms are part of spreadsheets, you can also directly select the form type when creating a new doc. You can create a new form from your Docs list, from a spreadsheet or from a template.


Create a form from your Docs list:

1. Click Create new > Form.
   
2. In the form template that opens, you can add any questions and options you'd like.

Form question types

When you create a form, you are automatically provided 2 questions. You can edit these questions however you like and add additional questions. To collect the information you need, select from 7 different types of questions, see this sample form below:

1. Drop-down lists with options
2. Single line text box
3. Multiple choice
4. Scale, to ask your invitees to grade something in a scale from 1-5, for instance.
5. Checkboxes
6. Paragraph text, which allow for long answers
7. Grid

Please note: Forms only display in single columns. This image was created just for showing the different types of questions.

Add and edit questions

To add questions to your forms, follow these steps:

1. Clicking Form in your spreadsheet
2. Add item at the top of the editing page.
3. Select the type of question you wish to add.
   

You can make any question a required question by selecting the option labeled 'Make this a required question.



Use the icons next to each question to edit, delete, or duplicate:

*	*	*
Edit: To edit an existing question, just click the Edit button to the right of the question you want to edit.	Delete: To delete a question, click the Delete button to the right of the question you want to delete.	Duplicate: To quickly duplicate a question, click the Duplicate button to the right of the question you want to duplicate.

If you are creating a form with your school Apps account, you can also choose to record the email addresses of people who fill out your form. This can help you identify who submitted the response and also filter to find those who submitted multiple responses.



To do this, select the checkbox next to 'Automatically collect respondent's myschool.org username' - where myschol.org is yous school Aps domain - while you create the form. Recipients of your survey will see a message at the top of the form explaining that their username will be collected automatically.





You can also require your respondents to sign in to view and fill out a form. This provides an additional layer of security for sensitive forms.



Note: if you're inviting people outside of your domain to fill out your form, make sure you don't require them to sign in; otherwise, they'll get to the domain sign-in page and won't be able to access the form.


Format form appearance
You can modify the layout of your form by rearranging questions, adding section headers, or selecting a designed theme.



Please note: Changing the formatting of your form in this way will not change anything in your spreadsheet. Question columns will not move to reflect a new arrangement, section headers are not included as a column, and the form does not appear while editing the spreadsheet. Making the following changes only reflect how individuals see your form.

Rearrange questions

You can move questions around simply by clicking and dragging. Make sure that you are not editing the question – if you are, you must click the Done button before rearranging your questions.

Section headers

To help make your form easier to read or to organize sets questions, you can add section headers. To add, simply select Section header from the Add item drop-down menu. Each section header can have a title, which appears in a larger font, and a section description.

Themes

There are nearly 100 themes of all different colors and styles you can choose from for displaying the form when viewed as a webpage or embedded on a website. Themes will not appear within an email client.







To pick a theme for your form, click the Themes button at the top of the form and select your

Collect Form Responses

Send form via email

You can email the form to anyone in the world, even those outside your school Apps domain. This makes forms an ideal way to collect information for those outside the school such as contact information from parents or survey data for a research project.


If the individual has a Gmail account, they can actually respond to the form directly in the email message. Others can complete the form by clicking the link included in the email message.

The email message you send contains the form title, description, and a link to submit the form. At this time, you cannot add a separate email message when you send the form to recipients.

You can email you form as often as you like to recipients from two places:

1. Response spreadsheet: Click the Form menu and select Send form. Enter the email addresses and click Send.
   
2. Editing form page: Click the Email this form button and enter the email addresses of the recipients. Click Send.
   

You can also email recipients again for reminders or other notifications by going to the Form menu in your spreadsheet and selecting Email X Recipients, where X is the number of email addresses you’ve already sent the form.

Access the form with a URL

Whenever you create a form, Google Docs automatically publishes it with a public URL that anyone can access. You can then tweet, IM, email, or post the link to inform others about your form.


To find the URL for your spreadsheet, follow these steps:

1. While in the spreadsheet of form responses, go to the Form menu and select Go to live form
   
   • If you are editing the form, click the See responses button and select Spreadsheet to get to your main spreadsheet.
2. Copy the URL of the form.

This is also how you would get the URL for adding pre-defined answers to your form.

Embed the form on a website

Another way to collect information from your form is to post it on a website. This can also be a way to collect information from visitors to your website.


For example, you can have a volunteer form on a class website or a feedback form on a school website.

If you have a common form that is used for students in your class, you can also post that form to the class website so students do not need to search for an email or the original URL. This could be useful for things like daily or weekly journal entries, equipment check-out forms, or tutoring requests.

If you'd like to embed your form in a website or blog, after you create and save your form, follow these steps:

• While in the spreadsheet of responses, click the Form menu and select Embed form in a webpage.... Copy and paste the code and paste into your site or blog.
• While editing the form, click the More actions button at the top right of your form and select Embed from the drop-down menu. Copy and paste the code into your site or blog.

*

*

Stop accepting form responses

When you create a form, you begin accepting responses by default. If you have a specific end date or time in mind for accepting responses - as you might for an application or assignment - you will need to manually change the setting.


To stop accepting entries to the form, click the Form menu of your spreadsheet and uncheck Accepting responses by clicking on it.

View form results and share with others

Access form response spreadsheet

Responses to your form are automatically entered into a spreadsheet where you can view, organize, and visualize the data.


Your form response spreadsheet is created with the same name as your form and acts just as any other spreadsheet – in fact, it’s listed under spreadsheets in your Docs list.

To access your form response spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the See responses button at the top-right of the form and select Spreadsheet from the drop down menu.

Finding a form in your Docs list is the same as finding any other document: you can search for the form name, browse files owned by you, or look just at the spreadsheet file types.

Make changes to the form response spreadsheet

When you create a form, responses are automatically collected into a sheet in a spreadsheet. You can insert or move sheets, sort, and perform other operations you would in any other spreadsheet. The responses will continue to be collected in the same sheet.


Specifically with the sheet where form data is collected, you can do the following:

• Insert columns to add your own content, such as calculations, notes, or lookups, next to form responses.
• Add response data directly to the spreadsheet by adding rows above, below, or between your existing response rows. You can add data one row at a time, or paste it in in bulk. Rows you add will be absorbed into the table that stores your form's data.

Please note: Some changes to your spreadsheet aren't allowed, once your spreadsheet is storing form responses in a table. This is so that you don't make changes that would stop your spreadsheet from being able to read your form responses properly. For example, you can't move columns in the table from side to side, since doing so would disrupt the structure of the table.

Automatic summary of form responses

Google automatically generates some basic statistics from the responses your receive in a form summary.


The summary will calculate totals, percentages, add graphs, and grab snippets of free responses. You will also be able to see a graph charting the daily response rate.

To access the summary from your form response spreadsheet, go to the Form menu and select Show summary.


The response summary page opens in a new window.

From the edit form page, you can access the summary by clicking the See responses button and selecting Summary from the drop down menu.
If you'd like to print your form responses summary, open your browser's Print menu.

Please note: Because the summary is automatically generated, there’s no way to select specific entries to be included. This means that if you have multiple responses from the same individual, they will all be included in the final summary. If you wish to have more control, you can generate charts and graphs as you would with any other spreadsheet data.

Twelve Ways to Use Google Forms

1. Word list to Wordle - have each student submit 3-5 words, then aggregate the list and create a word cloud (ProfHacker has more on Using Wordle in the classroom)
2. One minute paper – ask two questions about how a class went: the most important thing students learned and the muddiest point and (read about this technique)
3. Pre-test – find out if students “get it” by anonymously asking questions before class
4. Getting to know you – take a survey the first week of class and use the data to relate course content to students’ background
5. Preview opinions – before you start a discussion find out anonymously where everyone stands, not just the vocal minority
6. Place orders – students submit their requests for field trip options, Engineering Club t-shirts, or pizza toppings for the study group gathering.
7. Arrange a meeting – students choose their preferred date and time for a review session or movie screening
8. Collect account IDs – I need to view students’ Flickr photos for a project and I can easily copy the IDs to my grade book spreadsheet
9. Build a timeline – each student enters dates with descriptions, locations and descriptive tags – sort the resulting spreadsheet and voila!
10. Brainstorm or brain-write – students submit ideas regarding ways to solve a problem
11. Create an annotated bibliography – instead of a Word document, ask students to submit entries on a Google Form; it will be easier to format later on
12. Evaluate a guest speaker – ask students to fill out an online evaluation form to help you decide whether you will want to bring the person back next year