e-Learning Post #6

Google Forms for Peer Evaluations

Over the years, as I’ve designed group projects for students, there’s always been an issue with the division of labor. A student or two always seem to do all the work … and students aren’t about to come to me and tattle on the slackers who they’re so frustrated with. So about five years ago I figure out how to create online forms using DreamWeaver. I created a peer evaluation form and had students fill one out for everyone in their groups. Then all I had to do was average the scores and add them into each student’s project grade.

Now, with Google Forms, I can have a peer evaluation up and running in about 15 minutes – once I have the questions, that is. This is the peer evaluation form I use with my undergraduates: Peer Evaluation.

Here’s a quick tutorial and some resources.

Building your form

• Write out the questions you want to ask – have an idea of the type of questions
• Log into Google and go to your Documents
• Click on Create new – then choose Form - the new form will appear in a new tab (or browser page)
• Give the form a title
• Choose the Question Type

• Start typing in your questions
• You can add questions by clicking on the +Add Item icon on the left at the top, or you can copy a question you’ve already created by clicking on the icon to the left of the trash can of any question you are editing.

• While you’re building your form, you can check to see what it looks like.
• At the bottom of your browser screen you’ll see: You can view the published form here
• Click on the link
• You can reorder the questions by clicking and dragging
• If the questions need extra explanations, you can use the Help Text text box
• You can also force a response by clicking on Make this a required question
• Once you’re happy with your questions, you can personalize the form by changing the theme
• Click on Theme: Plain in the upper left hand corner – you’ll see almost 100 choices
• Click on one and see if you like it
• If you do, click Apply
• If not, click Cancel
• Make sure to go to the live form to see how the theme works with your questions – the themes are very different and not all allow for good viewing of the questions.

Final Steps

You can give students access to the form by choosing one of the following before you close the form you’re editing:

• Send the form in an email
• Click on Email this form in the upper right corner of the form
• Enter the email addresses of your students
• Paste the link in your course website
• Click on the link at the bottom of your browser
• Copy and paste that link on a website
• Embed the form in a website – wiki, blog, etc.
• Click on More actions in the upper right corner of the form
• Copy the embed code and use it in your wiki or blog

As your students fill out the form, the information goes into a spreadsheet that you will see in your Google Docs list.

NOTE: When I first started using Google Forms it took me a while to figure out how to find the form to edit after I closed it out. Follow these steps:

• Go to your Google Docs home page
• Click on your form title in your list of documents – the spreadsheet will open
• Click on Form – it’s just above the toolbar icons
• Choose Edit form

Resources

More info on how to build forms and there many uses

• Tutorials
• More tutorials
• Resources from the Google Teacher Academy

General overview

Step-by-step

Leave a comment with other suggestions for using Google Forms.

e-Learning Tuesday #3

As you work on your elearning course, it’s important to keep the basics in mind.

1. Start with the end in mind

• Create your objectives – target learning outcomes
• What do you want students to know or be able to do when they finish the course?
• Align your assessments with the objectives
• How will you assess student learning or skill acquisition?
• Align appropriate technologies with the assessments
• What technologies will embellish student learning?

2. Organize, organize, organize

• Create a navigation that is obvious – out in the open
• Put links in a logical order – that may mean a combination of topics and chronology
• Communication and technology directions should be at the top
• Weekly or topical modules come next
• General resources at the bottom
• Provide a course calendar so students can see the course as a whole
• Seek out good models – take a look at other e-learning courses

3. Redundancy … over and over … again and again

• Provide links to important information in more than one place
• Multimodal instructions -  text, image, audio, video

4. Load as you go

• Create the skeleton of the course first so that as you finish building the components you can upload them right away

5. Back it up

• Make sure that you’re backing up your course in more than one place
• Archive a copy from your CMS, wiki, or blog (wherever you’re teaching the course)
• Amazon has recently made 5G available in their cloud
• Use Google Docs
• Save to a memory stick

6. Share who you are

• Letting your personality shine is more important and more difficult in the e-learning environment
• E-learning students need to know that you’re a real person, so do what you can to give them a glimpse at who you are
• Create a social presence in your classroom environment
• Use your voice – create podcasts
• Use your face – create videos
• Connect with Skype or Google Talk

Follow #elearning and #disted on Twitter for your 24/7 elearning professional development.

Resource

Thanks to Simon McIntyre from the College of Fine Arts at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia for this excellent video series:

Learning to Teach Online project http://bit.ly/d18ac5

Accompanying PDF documents with even more detailed tips and strategies: http://scr.bi/eAcz1k