[This is a guest post by Thomas R. Burkholder, professor and chair of Chemistry at Central Connecticut State University. (Most important, he also maintains our renegade Moodle server!) -- JBJ ]
While signing up for the Boxee Beta trial I came across a fairly standard web form: you know the kind with name, email address, etc. When I was done and submitted the form, a message returned that said Thanks, don’t call us, we’ll call you. But what caught my eye was the GoogleDocs logo and an invitation to create my own form. I clicked on the invitation and lo and behold, GoogleDocs has a form maker which puts results into a GoogleDocs spreadsheet.
Previous posts have discussed some online scheduling apps like Doodle and Jiffle and survey tools like Survey Monkey and similar survey applications. GoogleDocs forms are both more generic and less powerful than dedicated survey tools but give most people reasonable functionality, have a much simpler interface, do not require you to have access to your own server and do not cost money. As usual, Google has a helpful example video and help pages.
What can GoogleDocs Forms do?
Results are all linked to a single page spreadsheet in GoogleDocs and each repsonse is recorded in a single row with a time-stamp. Results are updated automatically and reflect the current structure of the form but you may add columns and rows without changing the form. Forms are only limited by the size of GoogleDocs spreadsheets which is 200,000 cells; a 10 question form can accomodate 20,000 responses, and you can have up to 255 questions. Rows and columns may be added, for example to put in subtotals, but beware that moving columns containing results can cause problems.
You can create forms with variety of input choices, text box, paragraph box, multiple choice, checkboxes and drop-down menus. Scales and Grids are available and useful for opinion surveys, etc. There are also 71 available themes, just because.
The elements may be moved around; there’s a simple graphical interface to just click and drag items around. There are also some labeling tools for sections and pages:
You may require certain inputs to be filled in and you can do some conditional questions which allow you to direct people to specific pages of the form based on their answer to a question. You can customize the confirmation page and allow people to see the summary results page.
Forms may be embedded into websites or blogs or the link may be emailed.
What are the drawbacks?
The forms lack some features such as question logic and cross tabbed results that are available in the pro versions of SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. You will need a real spreadsheet like Excel with pivot tables (called the DataPilot in OpenOffice) to filter results by responses to specific questions. The forms also lack the scheduling abilities and calendar import features of Doodle or Jiffle.
You will need a Google account to use documents, but why wouldn’t you?
Redeeming qualities
It’s not $20/month or $150/year and it has the basic functionality to do student feedback surveys or to allow students to collect data, observations or information using mobile technologies. I’m imagining one of my colleagues sending her students to collect acorn density data in 10 different locations and using this form for them to get the data into a database.
Image by flickr user helenmoverland / CC licensed
5 Comments
I just started using Google Doc Forms last week since our college has cut back on student evaluations to one class per semester. I especially like the anonymity it offers the students even though it is linked through WebCT. I am still waiting for enough responses to determine if it is going to work for student evaluation, but do plan on using it for class projects during the spring semester.
If you have any administrative duties, Google Forms can also help out. I’m managing the Writing Center this year, and I use Google Forms at the beginning of each semester to gather information about my tutors’ schedules and availability. It’s much better than collecting 30+ emails (like we used to do) and sifting through them. Using Google Forms I get all the info back in a neat spreadsheet that makes actually creating the schedule much easier.
I’ve been using Google forms on and off for a year or so. I actually use it in my role as feedback coordinator – I set up a form for my colleagues to fill in, to let me know what types of student evaluation they’ve done, and what their return rate was (in my institution, student evaluations are confidential to the instructor, but we do need to check that they’ve been done).
I’ve found it very user-friendly and easy to set up, and would happily recommend it. It is far better, for instance, than the survey tool within Blackboard, which seems like a hacked version of the quiz tool and difficult to use unless you know what you’re doing. Google Forms is far more intuitive (and prettier).
VERY cool and useful. Thanks for writing this article. I’ve been hesitant to use survey monkey or other tools to poll students on which lab exercises they liked or types of tasks they enjoyed. If I can do it with a Google Docs form like this, it will be more appealing to everyone.
I have found Google forms really useful for keeping secretarial staff happy. This semester I had to organize a number of events, and we needed RSVP’s from faculty who wanted to attend. We needed to know how many meals to order and how many needed vegetarian options. By setting up a Google form (3 minutes) and including the respond link in my announcement message, I was able to let the secretaries easily keep track of how many meals to order. At the same time, since I asked people to supply an email address, I had a quick email list to use when sending out reminders to confirmed participants. I’m completely sold on GForms.
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