Google Forms and Flubaroo

 Google Forms and Flubaroo 

22nd June, 2016

 

Will provides a short run through of one way to use Google Forms to quickly collect, mark and grade assessment data.

As a pre-service teacher, I am sure you have heard about or engaged with Google Forms before. They are becoming increasingly popular in the classroom and I have seen 4th and 5th grade students use them effectively. This post will share just one way to use Google Forms as a pre/post assessment tool that I have found extremely helpful.

I am not going to discuss how to actually make a Google Form test – this is self-explanatory and there are numerous tutorials already available. I enjoy the flexibility of the types of questions – short/long answer, multiple choice, checked boxes, drop down menu and more.

You want to make the first two questions of your test “What is your first name?” and “What is your surname?”. Once the test is created, you need to complete the test with the correct answers. You are now ready for students to complete the test. After they have finished, you want to click the Responses tab and the View Responses in Sheets button. 

Once in Sheets, you need to download the Add-on that will automatically mark the test for you. This is called Flubaroo and can be found under Add-ons > Get Add-ons. Once you have this installed, head to: Add-ons > Fulbaroo > Grade Assignment

Step 1: The first questions (What is your name/surname?) can be used to identify the student. Other options allow you to change the value of each question but the default is 1 point per answer. A new feature is manual grading for those questions that you need to read individually before marking. 

Step 2: You now chose a person’s response to grade all the other submissions from. This is where you select your response which will have the correct answers. Once you continue, Flubaroo will work its magic. It will produce a new sheet with some valuable data for analysis including:

• There is a nice little summary at the top. A good place to see how many students completed the test, the average score and summative grades can be recorded.

• Vertically you can see student names with their score and percentage. Flubaroo goes the extra step by highlighting in red any students who scored below 70%. This is excellent data to see the range of student abilities on the topic and help in forming focus groups.

• Horizontally every question is listed with the answers. Boxes are highlighted orange if they were poorly answered across the group. This can be used for key concepts to focus on in future lessons. For example, students may easily answer a multiplication question with 2-digit numbers but struggle with a question using a 3-digit number.

At the end of a unit, complete the same test and compare students’ before/after scores and clearly identify questions/concepts that they are still struggling with.

I encourage you to try out Google Forms and Flubaroo. This was just a short introduction to some powerful software that is valuable for assessment practices in the 21st century classroom.

- Will