This year my school district significantly increased the number of scores, assignments, and assessments we are required to enter into our grading system. Of course, this is on top of the thousands of other things we as teachers always have on our plates. In the first couple of months of the school year, I was desperate for time. This led me to try out something new: quizzes using Google Forms. It has been a serious game changer!
The following will be a guide for how I create auto-grading quizzes for use in my classroom. Google is constantly improving their "quizzes" feature, and I am learning more about it almost every time I use it, so treat this as your diving board into the world of Google quizzes!
STEP ONE: I create a new Google Form. I am a little extra so I usually customize the theme and try to make it cute and kid-friendly, since my kids will be the ones seeing and using it.
STEP TWO: I always start my quizzes with a logistical question: "What is your name?" This helps me when I need to sort data if I export it to a spreadsheet. You can ask the form to automatically collect students' email addresses instead, which can be one way of sorting their data. This doesn't work as well for me because I always have so many students who use a nickname or go by something other than the name used to generate their email address.
STEP THREE: Next I insert the actual questions for the quiz! I have found multiple choice, checkbox, and dropdown questions to be the easiest for auto-grading quizzes. Short answer questions work, too, but they are a little trickier -- more on that later!
STEP FOUR: In the "settings" menu, select "make this a quiz." This enables you to set up the auto-grading function by inputting the correct answers and choosing the settings for the quiz. I usually set my quizzes to show my students their scores automatically (which they reflect on after they turn it in) and turn OFF "respondent can see correct answers," so they can work out missed questions. This also discourages cheating.
STEP FIVE: Once the quiz function is turned on, I input the correct answer choices by going back to the questions and clicking "ANSWER KEY." I decide how many points the question is worth and choose the correct answer(s). For any short answer questions, you can either opt to manually review students' responses or you need to anticipate multiple ways students might input their answer. My third graders aren't the best spellers, so I usually avoid short answer questions.
When my students take the quiz through Google Classroom, I always give them a physical paper to show their work so that they're not just clicking through the quiz. This is so important. My state is moving towards all of our standardized tests being computer-based, and I use these quizzes as an opportunity to teach my students how to show your work on paper while inputting your answers on the computer. It's not easy!
After the quiz has been administered, I love that the Google Form provides instant data in the form of graphs and charts. You can view the data by student, by class, by question -- there are so many options! Google will even present to you commonly missed questions.
I like to share some of the anonymous parts of the data with my class. It's a great opportunity for error analysis: "Wow! Look at this question...40% of our class thought the answer was A! Why did they make that mistake?"
If you're not already using Google Forms to create auto-grading quizzes in your classroom, you seriously need to try it! Because I don't have to spend time grading these quizzes, I can instantly analyze data to make decisions about my instruction in the classroom. I'm not sure about you, but there have definitely been times where it was a few weeks before I could grade something my students did, and by that time we'd already moved on to a new topic. If I realize then that my students missed a huge concept, it feels like that ship has already sailed. With this instant data, I can quiz them on a Tuesday, and make changes to my plans on Wednesday if I need to!
If there is something else you would like to learn about regarding Google Classroom, drop a comment below and I will try to address it in a future installment in this Google Classroom series.
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