Covid-19 has caused so many schools and universities to offer more online classes that teachers need to find resources that will help them with the time and effort required for online teaching. Google Forms is a free resource well known for its use in surveys, but it’s also a very useful tool if you teach online classes.
Quizzes and tests
You can use Google Forms to create quizzes and tests. It is especially useful if you want to create a multiple choice test. I always wanted a way to create a multiple choice test that would let me give the correct answer and explain to the student why that answer is correct. Google Forms allows you to do that. You can also use Google Forms to set tests requiring short answers and for quizzes in which the student can fill in answers in blank spaces.
You can create a test on Google Forms by choosing the Blank Quiz template under the Education section, or you could click on Settings and choose Quizzes.
If you choose to create a multiple choice quiz you type in your question and also type in the options which are possible answers to the question. Click on “Answer key” and that will let you identify which option is the answer to the question.
Self- grading and feedback
With Google Forms you can choose settings that allow you to let students know if their answer is correct or not. When you include the answer key students can then grade their own tests or if you wish you can let them do peer grading. When you choose to include feedback then the student can see the explanation for the correct answer. If a student chooses a wrong option then he can see why he is wrong. These features in Google Forms help both students and teachers.
In Google Forms, Settings for quizzes is the place where you will choose the features that allow you to show the correct answer and to provide feedback to explain the answer. Click on the Settings icon then choose Quizzes. Turn on the button for Make this a quiz.
When you make the form a quiz you have the feature that tells the students how many points or marks you are giving for a correct answer. You can change the points according to the question as you find appropriate. The same button allows the student to grade her own work. If you want students to see which of their answers were incorrect check the box for Missed questions. You can let students see which answer was correct by ticking the box for Correct answers.
Some other helpful features in Google Forms allow you to grade manually. This you can use if you are not giving a multiple choice quiz and instead you are asking students to give answers in short sentences or short paragraphs. You can also use manual review if you do not want students telling the correct answers to other students who are waiting to submit their quiz.
Evaluate your teaching
Google Forms has a feature that will give you instant feedback and a summary of how ech student performed. It gives you the statistics to show how the students performed for each question. This lets you see if all the students answered Question 1 correctly or if more than half the students missed that answer. This tells you what areas of the quiz the students found difficult. If a significant number of students were missing the answers to questions on a particular topic then you can use that feedback to evaluate your success in teaching that topic. According to the statistics you can make a decision to re-teach the topic or teach it differently. The information collected by Google Forms helps you assess your own teaching.
Google Forms will also allow you to focus on the performance of individual students. You can see if Student B answered all the spelling questions correctly but missed the answers to most of the questions on subject and verb agreement. That helps you to identify the problem areas of individual students and take action to help such students improve.
If you had to summarise manually these statistics that Google Form provides, you would find it very time-consuming and you may not note or record performances in such detail especially if you have large classes.
When you are teaching classes online you may not have the opportunity to read student’s body language and other cues that would tell you whether or not they are understanding what you are teaching. This feedback and summary in Google Forms is very helpful if you teach courses online.
Easy to distribute and submit.
When you are ready to send out the quiz, click send and the easiest method is to send by email to each student. You can also copy the link that is given when you choose ‘link’ and post it on your website.