Google Form add-ons and other cool tricks

The information and data you can collect with Google Forms is astounding! They have become so versatile that the uses in education seem to keep growing. Now with Google Forms one thing that needs to be remembered is that your responses are often collected in a Google Sheet (look for a post about the great add-ons and uses for Sheets coming soon!). You can now opt to see the results directly in "Summary of Responses" from the "Responses" tab.

By clicking on the "view responses" button you can choose to send your form responses to a Google Sheet which gives you more options in how you view, organize, and manipulate the data you receive from a Form.

In addition to questions there are several options for adding content to a Google Form that will make it more functional for you and your students/respondents:

Page breaks allow you to break your form into several different sections so you can avoid having an extremely long form if there are a lot of questions or you can then direct respondents to different sets of questions based on their answer. This allows you to use one form to address a multitude of respondents and gather your data in one location for easier analysis.


You can also insert images into your form to help better explain questions with visual information or mimic other types of assessment/question formats. Custom images can be created and/or labeled in Google Drawing to personalize the learning and assessment for your students.


If you're looking to flip the classroom inserting videos into a Google Form is a great way to have students watch and learn about a concept, answer some questions for understanding and come to class prepared to have an in-depth discussion. You can only insert YouTube videos, so that limits your content choices but does allow for you to upload videos you have created and put on YouTube for a customized learning experience.

You hopefully are familiar with the various types of questions you can ask in a Form (Text, Paragraph Text, Multiple Choice, Checkboxes, Choose from a List, Scale, Grid, Date, and Time.) Each question type can serve a unique purpose to helping shape the type of data you're collecting and how it can be used. Let's go over some of the advanced features you can enable for certain question types:

Multiple Choice - When creating a multiple choice question you have the option to toggle an advanced option. By selecting "Shuffle option order" you can ensure that your answers will be in a different order for everyone taking your form. Great option when using Google forms as a test or quiz.


Text - Text questions have an advanced option that allows you to set a data validation rule to ensure specific requirements are met in someone's response. Collecting email addresses? Make sure the from won't take the response unless there's an "@" in the answer. You can even set a custom error message to remind the Form taker what you're looking for.

Paragraph text - Similar data validation options apply as with text questions. As the From creator you can require a minimum or maximum character count.


Checkboxes - Advanced settings give you two additional choices to customize your question. The first is a data validation option that allows you to determine how many choices the participant can/should chose when answering. Just like multiple choice questions you can also choose to shuffle the answers for each participant.


Choose from a list - Advanced options let you shuffle the question order.



Grid - The Grid question is one of the more complicated question types to create, but if you're creating a question that asks the Form taker to rank choices or options you can force them to have a choice in each column or you can also shuffle the question order.

There are several add-ons you can use in Google Forms to make them more dynamic and useful. Here are some of my favorites and what they do:

CheckItOut- Allows you to modify several question types to create a dynamic system of check-in and check-out items. I have personally used it to create a Chromebook check-out for students in my high school.

Choice Eliminator- This add-on lets you pick or create a question with a set of answers that can be removed from the list as they are picked. Great for sending out a sign-up for snacks for a class party or time slots for a conference. You can even set the number of times an answer can be selected before being eliminated.

Form Notifications- Quick and easy way to have emails sent to one or multiple people when a certain number of responses have be collected with your Form. Respondents can also receive emails with custom messages after they complete the Form.

formLimiter- Lets you set a number of responses or set a specific date and time of when your Form is no longer accepting responses. Very useful if you are using a Form as some type of sign-up and need to ensure you only allow a specific number of participants.

formRanger- allows you to populate multiple choice, list, checkbox, and grid options from columns in any Sheet or Doctopus roster. When you've already done the work once use formRanger to ensure consistency and not retype the same information you have.

So if you haven't jumped into all the amazing uses of Google Forms, go a little deeper and see how you can utilize this amazing tool for the betterment of your teaching and your students learning!