If you’re a teacher, you know that harnessing digital tools can significantly enhance your classroom experience. Your tools also need to facilitate not just teaching but essential administrative tasks.
Google Forms is a versatile and user-friendly platform that assists you in both. This Google Forms tutorial will show you how to get started and make the most of this powerful tool. So, if you’re ready to boost student engagement, let’s get started!
What is Google Forms?
Google Forms is a free, user-friendly tool that allows users to create their own surveys, quizzes, and forms quickly. It’s ideal for teachers to collect student responses, conduct assessments, and gather classroom feedback.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google Forms became a crucial tool in schools because it facilitated remote learning. However, even today, it remains one of the most widely used tools due to its versatility, ease of use, and features that cater to various educational needs.
Benefits of using Google Forms in the classroom
Google Forms offers several benefits that make the platform ideal for teachers:
- Free and accessible: Google Forms is free to use, making it accessible to all schools regardless of budget constraints.
- User-friendly interface: It has an intuitive design that allows teachers to create forms quickly.
- Versatility: Google Forms can be used to make quizzes, surveys, feedback forms, attendance sheets, and more. We’ll talk more about these below.
- Automatic grading: With integrated quiz features, Google Forms can automatically grade responses, saving teachers significant time.
- Data management: Responses are automatically organized in Google Sheets so teachers can easily track progress, identify trends, and tailor instructions.
- Integration with Google Workspace: Integration with other tools like Google Classroom, Google Docs, and Google Drive streamlines the workflow for teachers and students.
Kinds of Google Forms you can make for students
If you’re just starting with Google Forms, here are the different types of forms you can make to upgrade your student’s online classroom experience and learning:
Quizzes
Google Forms is ideal for creating quizzes for students. You can customize quizzes with various question types, including multiple-choice, short-answer, and true/false options. Adding images, videos, links, and the answer key can make the quizzes more interactive and educational. Learn how to add an answer key to Google Forms.
Teachers can set point values for each question, and students can receive scores immediately upon submission. When testing, you can also use the platform’s ‘locked mode’ feature, which was specially introduced for creating focused online learning environments.
Entry and exit tickets
Entry and exit tickets are excellent tools for gauging students' understanding of the lesson and setting expectations for learning. Google Forms can also be used to keep automated attendance records, saving you time.
Google Forms allows you to create a quiz, send it to your students, and collate the data received into a Google Sheet. This means that when you receive entry and exit ticket responses from your students, you can automatically keep track of attendance in Google Sheets.
Learn how to set up an attendance system with Google Forms for students that can integrate entry ticket questions.
Bellringers
Bellringers are short, introductory activities that help students transition into the learning mindset right at the start of class. With bellringers, teachers can review previous material, introduce upcoming concepts, or even stimulate critical thinking.
Google Forms is great for making bellringers because it allows quick creation and real-time response collection. Further, you can also make these activities more engaging by integrating images in questions like for a mind-bending quiz on the Mandela effect.
Feedback forms
Feedback forms are essential for gathering students’ input on lessons, assignments, and overall classroom experience. They allow you to tailor subsequent sessions to suit your student’s needs for better learning outcomes.
Google Forms lends itself well to feedback forms as it allows you to include multiple types of questions. To gauge your students' understanding quickly, you could use multiple-choice questions, but there’s also the linear scale for a more granular understanding of what your students need.
Permission slips
Permission slips are essential administrative documents that must be tailored specifically to the activity involved. This is where Google Forms shines. It allows you to quickly create permission slips for field trips, events, and activities.
Further, with a simple add-on, Form Publisher, you can route them through parents and even gather their e-signatures through an approval workflow. Learn how to make a consent form in Google Forms that gathers permissions automatically.
How to add a Google Form to Google Classroom
If you’ve made a form that you want to add to your Google Classroom or want to start using Google Forms for your virtual classroom, here are the steps:
Step 1: Create your Google Form
The first thing you need is a Google form. Navigate to Google Forms and start creating your form.
Click the ‘Blank form’ button to start creating a new form. Add your questions and check the settings to ensure you have all the relevant settings based on your preferences and needs.
Step 2: Make it a quiz
Toggle over to the ‘Settings’ tab from the ‘Question’ tab on the top of your form.
Turn the ‘Make this a quiz’ option ON. This will enable all the other quiz-related settings. Now, you can choose your preferences for your quiz. You can decide when to release the marks, whether students should see the correct answer, and much more.
Step 3: Go to the Classwork tab in Classroom
Once you have your quiz ready, go to your Google Classroom and open the class to which you want to add the form.
In the Classroom, toggle to the ‘Classwork’ tab from the default ‘Stream’ tab.
Click ‘Create’ to add a new classwork assignment.
Choose either ‘Assignment’ or ‘Quiz Assignment.’
Step 4: Search in Drive for your form
Title your assignment, provide a description or instructions for your students, and click the ‘Google Drive’ button.
Search for the form in the Google Drive locations, select it, and click ‘Add’ to insert it into the assignment.
The Google Form has now been added to the Assignment. All you have to do now is assign it to your students.
Using Google Forms in your classroom? You should download Form Publisher
Google Forms is designed to bring ease and functionality to online learning. To take everything that Google Forms brings one step further, you can download Form Publisher!
The Form Publisher add-on is designed to enhance Google Forms' functionality. So, if you love Google Forms but wish it could do just a little bit more, check out what Form Publisher offers.