Google Forms Assessment Fundamentals
Assessments are an important tool for teachers. They provide concrete information about what students know and understand. Most of the assessments we provide to students are informal and some of them are probing. Formative assessments provide ongoing insights on how students are progressing. I apply the formative assessment definition broadly. I consider every assignment to be a type of formative assessment. The point of a formative assessment is in its name. How is what I am teaching forming in the mind of the student and class as a whole?
Quizzes have a little more structure. They ask concrete questions with definitive answers. They target core concepts. Quizzes still fall under the formative assessment branch of assessments. They are markers used during a series of lessons to check for understanding. Student responses to these quizzes guide what we do next in lessons. Do we go back and reteach? Do we move forward with the next concept? Are there students that are struggling and what can we do to help them keep up? These are some of the questions that are answered with formative assessments.
Summative assessments are the ones we are most familiar with state or federal standardized assessments. They are meant to take a snapshot of the sum of all that a student has learned during a school year. State and federal assessments measure Mean skills and concepts. By Mean, I refer to the statistical Mean.
Summative assessments are also given by districts, campuses and classroom teachers. They sum up in one report all that a student should have learned and acquired during a semester or school year. Summative assessments are given at fewer intervals. There are lots of concepts that need to be covered before we can provide a summative assessment. Keeping track of the data in our assessments is important. This is where tools like Google Forms are valuable.
In these lessons, I will introduce you to Google Forms. I will review the question types and create a few questions in a formative assessment. We’ll look at some of the useful tools built into Google Forms to help with formative and summative assessments.
Developing Assessments
These are the four question types that work best when creating assessments. There are a variety of ways to use the questions for formative and summative assessments. One assessment is useful as an introduction to a lesson. It allows us to evaluate what students know. The same assessment can be used at the end of the lesson to assess what the students have learned. This helps determine gaps in their understanding.
Use images, descriptions, and feedback to help students during the assessment. These options are a good way to provide differentiation, accommodation, and scaffolding. Scaffolding can be supplied through videos within an assessment. Scaffolding is useful when we are providing a formative assessment.
Take your time when creating assessments. Begin with short assessments and then gradually develop more elaborate ones. Once created, these assessments can be used year after year. It does take time to create these assessments and out time is valuable. Think of it as an investment in future time. You won’t have to develop these assessments again. They get easier to create with practice. Create your assessments during the year. Create them one by one and you will be surprised at the number of assessments you will have by the end of the school year.
Create assessments with colleagues in your grade level or department. It’s easy to collaborate and share assessment created with Google Forms. I cover how to collaborate and share assessments under Duplicate and Distribute.
Integrate with Google Classroom
Google Forms are set to collect the email address from anyone filling out the form. Anyone filling out the form must log in to their Gmail account. This is useful if you are not using Google Classroom to distribute assessments. When using Google Classroom we don’t need to collect their email because the assessment is tied to an assignment and their registration in the class.
If you’re not using Google Classroom then you might want to include the email option. Including the email eliminates the need to create a question in the form that asks for the student’s name. Student email in my district include some part of the student’s name. If their name was not part of the email then I would choose the option to ignore their email address. Overall it is better to use Google Classroom to distribute assessments.
Student Feedback
The feedback option is often overlooked. I encourage teachers to use this option. The importance of immediate feedback is well documented. The feedback should correct major misunderstandings. It should also praise correct responses with information that stresses the reason why the answer is correct. The feedback we provide ranges from simple suggestions and praise to demonstrations. We have the option of providing both.
The text feedback on incorrect answers should prompt the student to rethink or reimagine the correct answer. Feedback is directly tied to the assessment format. Introductory assessment feedback might list the first three planets to give the students a hint. A summative assessment at the end of the semester might provide a simple reminder. I will provide feedback listing the first three planets in the solar system.
Review Answers
The answers and their scores are available as students submit their completed assessment. As editors of the Form, we see their responses as they are posted. Google Forms provides lots of valuable information and tools when reviewing student assessments.
The Question section shows the individual questions and the responses for each. We can look at the responses for specific questions. This allows us to check off targeted objectives and to focus on questions that might have given students the most problems. I often address the question during the review. If students understand the concept during review then I might want to look at how I phrased the question. There are times when students might be confused about what I was asking in a question. They might also be confused at the answer options.
The Individual section shows all the questions and answers submitted per student. This is where we can see the overall responses of each student. The top left of each assessment review shows the number of points received.