Using Google Forms to make on-line quizzes: A tutorial (Part One: Creating the Quiz)

Google Forms can be used to make mobile friendly reading or listening quizzes for students. You can even have your quizzes set up to grade themselves. This tutorial will cover: How to create a quiz in Google Drive (below); How to set up automatic grading for your quiz; and How to share the quiz with your students.

Creating quizzes in Google Drive is a fairly straight forward process for anyone already using Google services, but I will assume zero experience with Google, and walk through the process step-by-step. Feel free to scroll down to a section which is helpful to you. While the final result works very well in mobile browsers, I recommend making the quiz on a desktop. If you do not yet have a Google Account, you will need to set one up (If you have Gmail, you have a Google account). If you are new to Google services and have questions, you can visit this page. 

NOTE: When working in Google Drive, there is no need to save your work. Immediately after making any changes you will see the auto save function at work. Moments later you will see confirmation that your changes have been saved.

PART ONE: Creating a quiz in Google Drive

Step One: Getting Started

1.1 You will first need to access google drive, and click the  button in the upper left area of the screen.

1.2 Then you will need to select,  from the drop down menu that appears.

1.3 You will be prompted to select a Title and Theme for your Form.

When you have finished, click:

A new editable Form will then be created for you and the first question of the form will be open in the editor and ready for you to edit.

1.4 Before you begin to create your actual quiz, I first like to set up the initial data collection necessary to track students. In my case I ask students to enter their: Name, E-mail, Class

1.4.a. Name

For Question Title: I enter, “Name,” or you can ask the question, “What is your name?”

You must also select the Question Type, in this case it will be Text. 

And this will be important information to gather, so don’t forget to check the Required question, checkbox. 

When you are finished, click:

To make each new question, you can click the  button.

NOTE: If you click the  only portion of the button, you will be given a ready to edit item of the same type as you just created. If you click the  portion of the button, you will be given a drop down menu of all the different types of items you can add to your form.

1.4.b. E-Mail and or Student Number

For now, click the  portion of the button, and create prompts asking the quiz taker to enter the other housekeeping information you need to collect, such as e-mail or student ID. Simply repeat the process done for 1.4.a., above. Don’t forget to check the Required question checkbox.

1.4.c. Class

If you are planning to use the quiz for more than one class, you might want to add a multiple choice option for students to select.

Click: 

For Question Title enter: “Select Course.”

For Question Type: select Multiple choice.

Next, enter names for the courses that students will recognize.

And finally, Don’t forget to check the Required question, checkbox.

Now you have a grasp on how to make questions, and by now you can probably see that there are many different types of questions you can make. Feel free at a later point to play around with the various questions types. You may also enjoy the feature which allows you to send your form takers to different pages within your form (once you start adding pages) based on their answers to multiple choice questions. But for now, lets move on to adding the content for your quiz.

Step Two: Adding Content

2.0 Reading Quiz: For the purposes of this tutorial we will make a simple reading quiz. After you have mastered the basics, you can try making audio quizzes using content you upload yourself to Google Drive, or content you link to, such as a YouTube video.

2.1 Adding Text

Click on the  portion of the  button.

Select, “Section header.”

You can enter the title of the article in the “Header text” field, and paste the article itself in the “Description” field. Click “Done.” If you put the title somewhere else in your quiz, you can leave the “Header text” blank, and simply put your reading text in the “Description” area.

You are now ready to write reading comprehension questions. Remember, that later we are going to set up automatic grading for the quiz, so to facilitate that process we want true/false, and or multiple choice, to eliminate input error.

2.2 Adding Images

At this point you may want to add an image to your quiz, this can be easily done using the   portion of the  button, once again.

Select, “Image.”

There are a number of options for adding images in the latest version of Google Forms. The default mode for the Add Image Dialogue Widget is ready for you to upload an image from your device.

If you do not yet have an image you want to upload, you can select the search option, to search for an image from across the world-wide-web, and then add it directly to your quiz. This streamlining of the image search/add process makes me a very happy Google Forms user, as it eliminates many extra steps in the process.

There are also some pretty cool search parameters you can select to hone in your search for the exact type of image you have in mind. For example, this search used the keyword “hats,” selected for the color green, and “Face” from the drop-down menu.

After you have selected your image, you can adjust its size. You can also give it a title, and hover text. When you are finished, click “Done.”

2.3 Moving Things Around.

Now that your quiz is nearly done, you may want to move things around, such as the image. You can do this by simply clicking on an item and dragging it to the location in your form where you want the item to be located. 

2.4 Final Touches

One thing you probably want to do, since this is a quiz, is uncheck all the options at the bottom of the form. You can also add a unique confirmation message, though leaving it default shows the message in each users native language.

When you are finished making your quiz, click the “View live form” button from the menu. 

If you feel you want to change things, now is a good time to go back and reword, or reorganize your quiz.

Click here to see what this tutorial sample looks like on your device. If you try it on a mobile device and on a desktop device and you will notice that it renders nicely, regardless.

When you are ready, move on to Part Two: Setting Up Automatic Grading.