A powerful assessment suite: Google Classroom, Forms and Flubaroo

Ask any student the following question and see what they suggest: 

"What happens when you know that the ability to do something exists, but you don't know how to do it?" 

Chances are, they're going to tell you, "Google it!" or "Look it up on YouTube!"

It's true... want to change out the alternator in your car? There's a video for that. Need to know the genealogical classification of the saber-tooth tiger? Google knows.

Learning some creative ways to put together classroom assessments is no different. I have some experience with Google Forms as an assessment tool (and have used them very successfully in the past for self-assessment surveys). Forms are easy to create and can be tailored to anything from simple quizzes to elaborate and dynamic evaluation tools with embedded links, videos and more. Over the past year or so, I've heard teachers rave about the possibilities out there for pairing Google Forms with an assignment in Google Classroom. Bring in the Google Sheets add-on Flubaroo, which will compile results, grade answers, and return feedback to students, and you have a powerful suite of assessment tools.

This is where "Mr. Google" comes in. My knowledge of how to make Forms/Classroom/Flubaroo work for me ended at colleagues suggesting, "this is so cool you have to try it!!" and then leaving me to fend for myself. So, a quick search led me to this tutorial by Google user Eric Curts, which was the "Goldilocks" of instructions for me... its "just right" format gave me exactly what I needed to know: not so much to be nauseating and not too little to leave me hungry for more. For those who like to watch a video before tackling a project like this, links are provided. Flubaroo has a great user guide as well and its use really was pretty intuitive, especially because I had some previous introductions to Forms and the data spreadsheets that are generated with the results.

I'm sure that what you really want to know is, "how long will it take me to master this technology?" Well, here's a timeline of my morning:

8:05 am - Decided to use Google Forms to make a quick reading quiz / entrance ticket for today's 2nd period class. It took me less than 10 minutes to copy/paste questions and answers from our online teachers' manual into Google Forms. If you're doing this for the first time, plan on spending half an hour or so learning the features here.

8:13 am - Googled "grading online assessments with google forms" because I couldn't even remember the name of the Flubaroo add-on. The first link just happened to be perfect (thanks, Mr. Google and Mr. Curts!).

8:16 am - Completed the quiz with my own correct answers so I could make the answer key, per instructions in the tutorial. Installed Flubaroo add-on in the spreadsheet that was created with my first quiz "result" (which was really from myself).

8:20 am - Created an assignment in Google Classroom and attached the Google Form so that I could push the quiz out to all my students.

8:22 am - Finished up some last-minute questions for the assignment students would work on after they did their quiz. I also linked this assignment to Google Classroom.

8:35 am - Got to the computer lab and was ready to go for my 2nd period class.

8:42 am - Students arrived to class, signed on to Google Classroom, clicked the quiz link (which I set to automatically collect their email addresses) and took the quiz. Submitting quiz results automatically marked the assignment as "Done" in Classroom, and gave me a preliminary overview of the class' progress (if you haven't seen the "responses" side of Forms it's really cool with some slick pie charts). Students could begin their next digital assignment at their own pace, and I was free to monitor those who took a little longer on the quiz.

After class was over, it took me no more than five minutes to go into the response spreadsheet, make a few clicks of the Flubaroo add on (just like the tutorial explained), and immediately get a report of the graded results. One more click and these results were pushed out to students via email.

Here's a screenshot of what the Flubaroo sheet looks like (I blacked out the user names). Notice that the rows in red indicate low-scoring students: 

When it comes to Google products like Classroom and Forms, I really have found that "the Internet knows all." Sometimes we might wish that this weren't true, but in this case we as educators really should take a cue from our students. If you know that the possibility is out there, just give it a quick search and see what you can find. The best way to learn a new technology is to try it out for yourself!