Digital Assessment with Google Forms

During this course on assessment we have been bombarded with so many different options for digital assessment.  I kind of have a core set of apps that I use on a regular basis, but I'm always open to trying new things.  Unfortunately, I'm not very good at giving something a second chance after I've ruled it "unfit" for my classroom.    This is what happened with Google Forms.

Yeah --- I've tried giving quizzes using google forms, and when Flubaroo came out and blew up the teacher web I tried that too, but it didn't work for me, I didn't like the quizzes I was writing.  Because ...

I felt that using Google Forms meant asking multiple choice questions or fill in the blanks and that really limited the type of understanding I was able to assess using this tool.

So I wanted to try a new add-on for this assignment.  I chose SuperQuiz.  And my assessment .... it's super cool!  SuperQuiz has a ton of really cool features that make it different from other add-ons.  Like other add-ons, it creates a series of tabs which will analyze the data in your spreadsheet in different ways.   My favorite tab that is generated looks like this:

I know the tab looks a little confusing, and slightly overwhelming, but in my opinion, this is where the magic of SuperQuiz happens.   This is where you can personalize the feedback that you are giving to students based on their responses to the quiz.  If you are able to design an appropriate assessment, this automation of personalized feedback could save teachers so much time, and really be meaningful for students.

The only area for improvement of this add-on is that it's a little bulky.  I like how the varying analytics are separated out into tabs, that helps, but like any other add-on, it takes some time to get what you want out of it.  SuperQuiz also does not have a feature to manually grade free text answers.

My final reflection on this tool is that while SuperQuiz has the function to auto-grade and give you decent analytical data from your responses, it only works for responses that are multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank.  It doesn't work for free text answers.  If I were to use google forms for a math assessment, I can really only see if the students are getting the correct answer.  It's much more difficult to design a way to assess their thinking, the strategy they developed in their mind, their thinking, their use of multiple strategies, or how they can model mathematical situations.  Even their use of mathematical vocabulary cannot really be assessed using google forms.

I know there are some of you out there who have used google forms in ways that I can only imagine, and some of you who are masters at assessing student understanding with multiple choice questions ... I would love to hear from you.  Give me some examples, something to read.  I would love to learn to be better at this!!