Google Drive - Forms
Name of Tool | Website URL | Cost | Download or Web-based | 1 sentence description of the tool |
Google Drive-Forms | Free | Web-based | Create forms for surveys for free. |
Description of Google Forms
Google Forms is a free service within the applications of Google that allows people to simply and easily create forms to gather information. Expert computer skills are not necessary to create a Google Form. With Google Forms, you can create your own surveys or polls. You can then send those forms to people you know and Google Forms will collect the information you need from your contacts through the answers you receive. The information from the survey will automatically be put into a spreadsheet to be analyzed.
How to Use Google Forms
In order to use Google Forms, you must have a Google account. This will not be discussed in this paper, but it is simple to create an account.
To access Google Forms, get to your internet browser. If you do not use Chrome as your primary browser or do not have Google set as your homepage, go to www.google.com. To get to Google Forms:
Log in with your Google account by clicking on the blue “Sign In” button in the top right corner of the screen.
Go to docs.google.com/forms for easy access or click on the “Google Apps” icon in the top right of the screen that is nine black squares. Scroll down or find the yellow, blue and green triangle icon that says “Drive” and click on it.
Click on “New”, a blue button on the top left of the screen. Scroll down to find “Google Forms”. You may need to scroll down and click “More” to see it.
At this point, the screen should look like the image below. It is very simple to create the form. To name the form, click on “Untitled Form” and type in whatever you would like the title to be. Create a description of the title by clicking on the box below and typing. You can do the same thing to type in each question by clicking “Untitled Question” and typing it in.
For each question, you can select what type of response you would like by clicking on the arrow with the box labeled “Multiple Choice” when you first set up the form. When creating a form, you can add up to ten types of different fields, depending on the information you want to collect:
Short answer: Small text box that is ideal for collecting telephone numbers, names, surnames, addresses, etc.
Paragraph: Text box with several lines, suitable for fields where you have to write comments.
Multiple choice: Single response fields with several mutually exclusive options, visible in the form of a list. You can add an "open" option that includes a short text field for the person filling in the form to specify their response. They can be used for questions like "Is it the first time it comes? (Yes / No)”
Checkboxes: Field with several possible answers, which are shown as a list with boxes that can be marked.
Drop-down list: Single response field in which the options are displayed as a drop-down list. It is good to use this instead of a test type when the list of answers is long and you do not want it to occupy much space of the form.
File upload: Files will be uploaded to the form owner's Google Drive. Anyone looking at it or responding will be required to sign in to Google.
Linear scale: This will be responded to with a numerical value between two values given between 0 and 10. A label can be assigned to the lowest and highest value, but not to the middle one. Linear scale would be ideal for questions such like "Rate from 1 to 5 how well you feel you understand the material".
Grid: It works like "stacked" scale fields, where different aspects are valued. It comes in handy to evaluate several aspects at once. For example, “Evaluate from 0 to 10 each of these aspects: friendliness of staff, cleanliness, and comfort.”
Date: Request a date and show a calendar to select it. Year can be indicated or not, and hour can also be included.
Time: Request a time in “hh:mm am pm” format.
In addition to the questions, design elements can be added to the form. The background color can be changed by clicking on the color pallete icon in the top right or a picture can be added for the background banner. By clicking on the icon with two T’s on the sidebar to the right of your question, you can add a new title that helps to organize the questions into blocks. This works well in long forms. In the same side-bar, you can add an image with the picture icon. With the video icon there is the option to insert links to YouTube videos, which are embedded in the form. A form can consist of several different pages. To do this, click on the icon on the bottom of the list that looks like a split page. When people answer the questions, buttons will appear at the bottom to move forward or backward between the pages of the form. In addition, it is possible to direct users to one page or another depending on what they answer a question, which can be used for example to create multi-language forms, asking first what language they want to answer and creating a page of questions for each language. You can see how the form will look by clicking the eye icon in the top right of the screen. It says “Preview” when you hover over it.
Once the form is designed, it is automatically published as a web page. However, it will not be visible until you share it. By clicking on the "Send” button in the top right of the screen, you will see the different options such as copying the link to paste it where you want, sharing directly as a publication on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter. The form can be sent via email to a series of recipients. The form can be embedded using an HTML code that you can paste on a website, blog, or Facebook page.
To link a spreadsheet to the form, go to the “Responses” tab and click the green icon. Click “Create a new spreadsheet” and then “Create”. Once you do this, that green icon will take you to the spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet will have the same name as the form, followed by "(Responses)". Each time someone sends their response, a new line will be added to the page. Each column will include the corresponding response to each field.Additional columns can be added to the spreadsheet if you would like. However, eliminating those that were created by default will cause the responses to not be stored correctly.
How Can Google Forms be Used by the Trainer/Teacher?
Google Forms can be a great resource to many teachers and trainers. It can be a great tool to help teachers and trainers learn, grow, and develop themselves as well as make things easier when teaching and grading. A couple of things that a Google Forms would work great for are:
Share examples in professional development- Teachers and trainers can use Google Forms to share their learning by directing other teachers to a Google Form where they can share their ideas, reflections, or experiences from the classroom. The teacher or trainer can then put a link to the spreadsheet of results for everyone in the group to read and learn. (“20 practical ways to use Google Forms,”2016)
Grade Book - To mark grades for assignments, teachers can create a Google Form with each student’s name to put each student’s score into that form. This can be used as the grade book or transfered later by looking at the spreadsheet.
Lesson plans -To quickly create a lesson plan with standards, learning objectives, and activity descriptions, teachers and trainers can add all the parts they want in a Google Form. To do this, add all of the individual standards as checkboxes. Then view the form and fill in the information. Use the Autocrat add-on to turn the responses in the Google Form into custom-created documents. When you are finished, you will have created a document with all of the lesson plan information for each day. (“Benefits of using Google Forms in education,”2017)
How Can Google Forms be used by the Trainer/Teacher to Support Student Learning?
Creating tests and assessments for students-
Teacher Tech blogger Alice Keeler, who earned honors on EdTech’s 2016 Must-Read K–12 IT Blogs list, tells five steps for assessing students through Google Forms:
Create the Google Forms quiz.
Create the Google Sheet for housing student responses.
Create an answer key by taking the assessment yourself.
Freeze the row containing the answer key.
Set conditional formatting before students begin the assessment. (“Tech Tips for Teachers,”2016)
Get To Know Your Students Using Forms On The First Day of School- Create a form to collect and learn facts about your students to be able to teach them better.
Feedback Surveys- Teachers and trainers can easily create a survey to ask students and parents their opinions on lessons, how well they understood the material, what they liked, what they didn’t like, any challenges they may have, and many more things.
How Can This Tool be Used by Students?
Google Forms is a great tool for learning not only for teachers and trainers, but for students as well. There are many ways that students or learners can use Google Forms to better their education and grow themselves. Here are a couple of ideas for students or learners to enhance their experience:
Students Create Their Own Surveys - Students can create their own surveys using Google Forms to poll their peers. This could be beneficial for conducting research, looking for ideas, or seeking feedback.
Student Self-Reflection - Teachers and trainers can create a self-reflection sheet on Google Forms that helps students learn more about themselves and one another.
In “Settings,” click on “Edit After Submit” and “See Summary Charts and Text Responses.” Selecting these settings will allow students to not only review what they wrote for their personal reflection, but also to see what other classmates have written as well.
Peer Reviews and Feedback - Students can create forms to connect with other students and gain feedback on assignments.
When sharing their work with peers, students can put a short memo in the Google Forms descripting what they would like feedback on specifically. This could also be used for feedback on speeches, presentations, or other assignments.
Training and Other Resources
At Ditchthattextbook.com, this article titled 20 practical ways to use Google Forms in Class, School really does a great job giving ideas to use Google Forms for learning. It gives ideas for teachers and instructors, ways to create assessments, and other ideas for being creative and brainstorming.
Cyberacoustics.com has a short article titled Tech Tip:The Benefits of using Google Forms in Education that lists good uses for Google Forms. It doesn’t go into detail, however it does show scenarios and occupations in which Google Forms can be helpful.
Edtechmagazine.com’s article Tech Tips for Teachers: 4 ways to Use Google Forms explains how to create assessments for students, build rubrics, collect web-based assignments, and solicit feedback from parents and students through Google Forms.
This YouTube video by the channel Highfill Crew simply shows how to create a Google Form and send and share it with students.
References
20 practical ways to use Google Forms in Class, School. (2016, September 13). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://ditchthattextbook.com/2016/09/08/20-practical-ways-to-use-google-forms-in-class-school/
Tech Tip: Benefits of Using Google Forms in Education. (2017, April 7). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://cyberacoustics.com/education/Blog?archives=04-07-2017&title=Tech-Tip-The-Benefits-of-Using-Google-Forms-in-Education
Conlan, M., M., & CDW. (2016, May 20). Tech Tips for Teachers: 4 Ways to Use Google Forms. Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2016/05/tech-tips-teachers-4-ways-use-google-forms
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