Docs > Chapter 6: Forms

With Google Docs, you can quickly create a form or survey, send it to students, parents, teachers, or staff, and keep track of the answers in one spreadsheet.

Since forms are filled out online, there’s no need to enter in results manually. Responses are collected and displayed immediately in a corresponding Google Docs spreadsheet which allows you to sort, analyze, and visualize the information.

You can send forms to anyone - even those outside of your school Apps domain. Respondants can access the form via email, a published webpage, or embedded on a site.

Forms also generates an automatic summary with charts, graphs, and statistics about your form responses and can notify you when new responses are submitted.

In this chapter we will review how to create, customize, and publish forms as well as walk through examples of how forms can be used at your school.

Here are some live examples of forms you can preview and try:

And other ideas that could be conducted using forms:

Structured peer editing and feedback
Assignment checklist and submissions
Applications for positions in clubs, students, government

Create and customize forms

Create a new form

Although forms are part of spreadsheets, you can also directly select the form type when creating a new doc. You can create a new form from your Docs list, from a spreadsheet or from a template.

Create a form from your Docs list:

Click Create new > Form.
In the form template that opens, you can add any questions and options you'd like.

Creating a form from a new or existing spreadsheet:

Click the Tools drop-down menu and select Form then Create a form.
If you already have names entered in the columns of the active sheet, the form will populate with those names as questions.
In the form template that opens, you can add any questions and options you'd like.

Creating a form from a template:

From your Docs list, click the Create button and select From template.... From within an existing document, click the File menu and select New and then From template....
Click Forms under 'Narrow by type,' on the left side of the page.
Browse through the different options. Once you decide what template to use, click Use this template next to it.

Forms have the same limitations as spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet can have up to 20,000 cells with formulas. Of this total, the following limits apply:

Up to 1,000 GoogleFinance formulas
Up to 1,000 GoogleLookup formulas
Up to 50 Import formulas

Form question types

When you create a form, you are automatically provided 2 questions. You can edit these questions however you like and add additional questions. To collect the information you need, select from 7 different types of questions, see this sample form below:

Drop-down lists with options
Single line text box
Multiple choice
Scale, to ask your invitees to grade something in a scale from 1-5, for instance.
Checkboxes
Paragraph text, which allow for long answers
Grid

Please note: Forms only display in single columns. This image was created just for showing the different types of questions.

Add and edit questions

To add questions to your forms, follow these steps:

Clicking Form in your spreadsheet
Add item at the top of the editing page.
Select the type of question you wish to add.

You can make any question a required question by selecting the option labeled 'Make this a required question.

Use the icons next to each question to edit, delete, or duplicate:

Edit: To edit an existing question, just click the Edit button to the right of the question you want to edit.

Delete: To delete a question, click the Delete button to the right of the question you want to delete.

Duplicate: To quickly duplicate a question, click the Duplicate button to the right of the question you want to duplicate.

If you are creating a form with your school Apps account, you can also choose to record the email addresses of people who fill out your form. This can help you identify who submitted the response and also filter to find those who submitted multiple responses.

To do this, select the checkbox next to 'Automatically collect respondent's myschool.org username' - where myschol.org is yous school Aps domain - while you create the form. Recipients of your survey will see a message at the top of the form explaining that their username will be collected automatically.

You can also require your respondents to sign in to view and fill out a form. This provides an additional layer of security for sensitive forms.

Note: if you're inviting people outside of your domain to fill out your form, make sure you don't require them to sign in; otherwise, they'll get to the domain sign-in page and won't be able to access the form.

Format form appearance

You can modify the layout of your form by rearranging questions, adding section headers, or selecting a designed theme.

Please note: Changing the formatting of your form in this way will not change anything in your spreadsheet. Question columns will not move to reflect a new arrangement, section headers are not included as a column, and the form does not appear while editing the spreadsheet. Making the following changes only reflect how individuals see your form.

Rearrange questions

You can move questions around simply by clicking and dragging. Make sure that you are not editing the question – if you are, you must click the Done button before rearranging your questions.

Section headers

To help make your form easier to read or to organize sets questions, you can add section headers. To add, simply select Section header from the Add item drop-down menu. Each section header can have a title, which appears in a larger font, and a section description.

Themes

There are nearly 100 themes of all different colors and styles you can choose from for displaying the form when viewed as a webpage or embedded on a website. Themes will not appear within an email client.

To pick a theme for your form, click the Themes button at the top of the form and select your favorite theme.

Then, click Apply and edit the form.

Allow respondents to skip or jump to different sections

Some forms you create for a diverse audience might require different sets of questions based on a previous answer.

Examples of when a form could have different questions for different respondents:

Parents filling out information for the school year, with different questions about 8th grade students versus 6th students.
Students completing a writing assessment, with different prompts depending on the book or genre selected.
Applications for different positions in a club or organization, with some common parts like contact information and some role-specific questions depending on the application type.

By adding page breaks into a form, you can separate information and allow respondents to skip irrelevant sections and go directly to other parts of the form.

To allow people to move to different parts of a form, use the multiple choice question type and select the option labeled Go to page based on answer.

To add a page, just click the Add item drop-down menu, and select Page break.

Using page navigation, you can redirect form respondents previously split apart back to the same page. Under the Add Itemmenu, select Page break. Then, select what page you’d like your form respondents to be directed to under the drop down menu in the page break.

Provide respondents a custom form submission message

If you have more instructions to provide after respondents complete a form, provide any additional information detailing what will happen next, or explain how you will be using the submitted information, you can edit the form confirmation message.

To customize the confirmation message, follow these steps:

Go to edit your form if you are not already on the editing page (from the spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Edit form).
Click the More actions button at the top right of the form and select Edit confirmation from the drop down menu.
Enter in your message. You can only include text in this message. If you include a URL, then it will be hyperlinked upon submission.

Set default text and answer fields in a form

You can pre-populate a form with default text and answers using URL encoding.

Please note: URL encoding only works when users click the direct URL of a form. Adding these default values will not appear for forms that are emailed.

To add pre-defined values to your form, you must append an entry string for each response field you'd like to pre-populate. Since each question has an unique id like "entry_0", in order to repopulate the entry, append "&entry_0=prepopulated answer" to the URL of the published form.

The entry numbers do not necessarily correspond to the order of questions on your form. To find out the correct entry number, try adding only one string at a time using trial and error. For example, if entry_0 does not change the field, try entry_1, then entry_2, etc.

Tips for coding in your answers:

For answers that have spaces, use the + sign, i.e. entry_0=First+Presentation
For answers that have multiple selections, use pipe character (“|”) to separate your answers. Do not include spaces between the answers, i.e. entry+1=Introduction|Preparation|Organization
For multiple choice answers, you must match one of the answers exactly with correct spacing and capitalization, otherwise “Other” will be selected.

Here's an example:

The URL for this form:

http://spreadsheets2.google.com/a/g1usd.org/viewform?formkey=dDB6dXlGSGZzNG5vdkRyVFVYZjFKS0E6MQ&

entry_0=Final+presentation&entry_5=Book+report&entry_2=3

Adds pre-defined values to the form like this:

Note that the entry numbers do not correspond to the order of the questions. You may need to use trial and error, adding just one entry at a time, to correctly populate the fields.

Collect Form Responses

Send form via email

You can email the form to anyone in the world, even those outside your school Apps domain. This makes forms an ideal way to collect information for those outside the school such as contact information from parents or survey data for a research project.

If the individual has a Gmail account, they can actually respond to the form directly in the email message. Others can complete the form by clicking the link included in the email message.

The email message you send contains the form title, description, and a link to submit the form. At this time, you cannot add a separate email message when you send the form to recipients.

You can email you form as often as you like to recipients from two places:

Response spreadsheet: Click the Form menu and select Send form. Enter the email addresses and click Send.
Editing form page: Click the Email this form button and enter the email addresses of the recipients. Click Send.

You can also email recipients again for reminders or other notifications by going to the Form menu in your spreadsheet and selecting Email X Recipients, where X is the number of email addresses you’ve already sent the form.

Mailing to groups

You can take advantage of Groups in Google Apps or Google Groups to use a single email address to send to multiple people. If you view your group discussions on the group page only, not in email, you will be able to access the message and click the link to complete the form.

Share the form to Google+

Sharing to Google+ is a cinch! When you’re in edit mode, you can click the G+ Share button and then select the Google+ circle or contact you want to share the form with.

Access the form with a URL

Whenever you create a form, Google Docs automatically publishes it with a public URL that anyone can access. You can then tweet, IM, email, or post the link to inform others about your form.

To find the URL for your spreadsheet, follow these steps:

While in the spreadsheet of form responses, go to the Form menu and select Go to live form

If you are editing the form, click the See responses button and select Spreadsheet to get to your main spreadsheet.

Copy the URL of the form.

This is also how you would get the URL for adding pre-defined answers to your form.

Review how to add default text and answers »

Embed the form on a website

Another way to collect information from your form is to post it on a website. This can also be a way to collect information from visitors to your website.

For example, you can have a volunteer form on a class website or a feedback form on a school website.

If you have a common form that is used for students in your class, you can also post that form to the class website so students do not need to search for an email or the original URL. This could be useful for things like daily or weekly journal entries, equipment check-out forms, or tutoring requests.

If you'd like to embed your form in a website or blog, after you create and save your form, follow these steps:

While in the spreadsheet of responses, click the Form menu and select Embed form in a webpage.... Copy and paste the code and paste into your site or blog.
While editing the form, click the More actions button at the top right of your form and select Embed from the drop-down menu. Copy and paste the code into your site or blog.

Allow individuals to edit form responses

Google Docs now allows you to change your form response after you have submitted it. The modified response will not create a new entry, but modify the existing entry on the spreadsheet. These edits will be reflected in your spreadsheet and in your summary of responses.

Please note: If you provide the option to edit a response, an individual can modify their response as many times as they like.

Form respondents will receive a custom URL to access their response and resubmit answers on the form submission confirmation page. If you collect their school Apps username, they will also be sent an email with the link to edit.

To enable the option for respondents to edit submitted forms, check the Allow users to edit responses box displayed at the top of the form while editing.

All respondents will then have the option of editing their form responses via a custom Edit your response link on the form submission confirmation page. These links will be different for each respondent.

If you also check the Automatically collect respondent's domain.com username box, your respondents will have the option to have a copy of their responses sent to them via email. This email will have an Edit your response link that will allow them to edit their form responses.

Edit a submitted form response

If the creator of a form sent to you has enabled the Allow users to edit responses option, you'll be able to edit your responses to a form. There are two ways to do this. First, if you check the Send me a copy of my responses box on the form, the you'll receive an email confirmation showing your form responses.

If you click the Edit your response link in the confirmation email, you will be taken to a screen that allows you to edit your responses.

You will be able to see your previous answers and make edits. Once you click Submit, these changes will be reflected in the form owner's spreadsheet and summary of responses. You can edit your responses as many times as necessary using the Edit your response link.

Second, you can edit your form responses on the form submission confirmation page. On the confirmation page, click the Edit your response link.

Please note: If you give away the URL from the form submission confirmation page or forward your confirmation email, other people will be able to edit your responses.

Automatically collect username

At this time, it is not possible to limit responses to one per individual. However, when you create a form with your school Apps account, you can select to record the email addresses of people who fill out your form, and then easily identify any duplicate responses.

You can also use the timestamp included with each form entry to identify the earliest (or latest) response from a specific individual.

To automatically include a respondent’s username, select the checkbox next to Automatically collect respondent's myschool.org username while you create or edit the form, where myschool.org is your school Apps domain.

On the published, embedded, or emailed form, individuals will see a message at the top of the form explaining that their username will be collected automatically.

Stop accepting form responses

When you create a form, you begin accepting responses by default. If you have a specific end date or time in mind for accepting responses - as you might for an application or assignment - you will need to manually change the setting.

To stop accepting entries to the form, click the Form menu of your spreadsheet and uncheck Accepting responses by clicking on it.

Set notification for new form responses

You can set notifications to receive emails whenever someone fills out your form. These are the same notifications that alert you to changes in a spreadsheet.

This can be useful if you have embedded a web form that receives only occasional responses. The notification will alert you to any new submission. This can also be useful for tracking and graphing the rate of response for your forms.

You can set the frequency of notifications for form responses to be sent right away or aggregated into a single daily email.

To set up notifications for your form, follow these steps:

Click Tools in the menu bar and select Notification Rules...
Select When a user submits a form.
Choose the frequency by selecting either daily digest or right away.
Click Save.

View form results and share with others

Access form response spreadsheet

Responses to your form are automatically entered into a spreadsheet where you can view, organize, and visualize the data.

Your form response spreadsheet is created with the same name as your form and acts just as any other spreadsheet – in fact, it’s listed under spreadsheets in your Docs list.

To access your form response spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the See responses button at the top-right of the form and select Spreadsheet from the drop down menu.

Finding a form in your Docs list is the same as finding any other document: you can search for the form name, browse files owned by you, or look just at the spreadsheet file types.

Make changes to the form response spreadsheet

When you create a form, responses are automatically collected into a sheet in a spreadsheet. You can insert or move sheets, sort, and perform other operations you would in any other spreadsheet. The responses will continue to be collected in the same sheet.

Specifically with the sheet where form data is collected, you can do the following:

Insert columns to add your own content, such as calculations, notes, or lookups, next to form responses.
Add response data directly to the spreadsheet by adding rows above, below, or between your existing response rows. You can add data one row at a time, or paste it in in bulk. Rows you add will be absorbed into the table that stores your form's data.

Please note: Some changes to your spreadsheet aren't allowed, once your spreadsheet is storing form responses in a table. This is so that you don't make changes that would stop your spreadsheet from being able to read your form responses properly. For example, you can't move columns in the table from side to side, since doing so would disrupt the structure of the table.

Automatic summary of form responses

Google automatically generates some basic statistics from the responses your receive in a form summary.

The summary will calculate totals, percentages, add graphs, and grab snippets of free responses. You will also be able to see a graph charting the daily response rate.

To access the summary from your form response spreadsheet, go to the Form menu and select Show summary.

The response summary page opens in a new window.

From the edit form page, you can access the summary by clicking the See responses button and selecting Summary from the drop down menu.

If you'd like to print your form responses summary, open your browser's Print menu.

Please note: Because the summary is automatically generated, there’s no way to select specific entries to be included. This means that if you have multiple responses from the same individual, they will all be included in the final summary. If you wish to have more control, you can generate charts and graphs as you would with any other spreadsheet data.

Review how to create charts and graphs in spreadsheets »

Share automatic summary with others

You can allow those who filled out your form to see the automatically generated summary of the responses. The link will be offered in the form confirmation window.

Please note: If you are collecting a username or name, those will also be displayed in the summary. However, the answers they submitted will not be associated in the charts and graphs.

To allow responders to see the summary, follow these steps:

Go to edit your form if you are not already on the editing page (from the spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Edit form).
Click the More actions button at the top right of the form and select Edit confirmation from the drop down menu.
Beneath the message area, select the option Publish response summary.

If you allow publish your form response summary, you can also generate the URL that displays the results, just follow these steps:

Find the URL to your live form from your response spreadsheet (Form > Go to live form). It should look something like this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/a/myschool.org/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cnNIUF92UWZ2dDZUc2EweFBJMWpPemc6MA..#gid=0
Replace viewform with viewanalytics.
You can now send or post the URL for everyone to see the form summary.

Share custom form results

Google Docs creates an automatic summary that you can share, but you cannot customize which data appears and how.

If you wish to create custom form results, you can add formulas and create charts and graphs from your form results just as you would any other data in a spreadsheet.

Review how to analyze data in spreadsheets »

Review how to create charts in spreadsheets »

To share these custom results, you can then publish the charts and graphs to embed in websites.

Review how to publish charts »

You can also visualize the data with gadgets, then choose to publish or share the gadget.

Review gadgets in spreadsheets »

Design and deliver quizzes and tests using forms

Deliver quizzes and tests online with forms

You can use forms to create quizzes and tests with various types of questions. You can then post the exam on a website or send it directly to students or other recipients.

To set up an online quiz or test, follow these steps:

Create a new form

From your Docs list, click the Create button, then select Form.
From a spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Create a form.
From any other doc, click the File menu and select New then Form.

Add and arrange questions by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page.

Add section headers to organize your exam by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page and selecting Section header. Enter the section header and a description
Make the form available to students or recipients:

Email the form to your class list or individuals by selecting the Email this form button and entering in email addresses. Or select the Send form option from the Form menu in your response spreadsheet.
Embed the form in your blog or site by clicking the More actions button and selecting Embed. Copy and paste the code into your site.
Embed the form in a Google Site by going to your site, clicking the Insert menu and selecting Form. Pick your form from the list.
Post the link to the form. Find the URL in your response spreadsheet by clicking the Form menu and selecting Go to live form. Copy the URL of the new window. To get to your spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the View responses button and select Spreadsheet.

When the time for submitting forms is over, stop accepting responses by going to the Form menu in your response spreadsheet and click Accepting responses to remove the checkmark.

Create and use a quiz template

You can browse the Google Docs template gallery to find existing forms that you can customize for your own courses and content.

Review how to create a form from a template »

If you have a standard format for a quiz that you think others may benefit from at your school, you can also choose to upload the form to your school Apps domain template gallery. This way other teachers could take advantage of the quizzes you have created for vocabulary, for example.

Review how to upload docs to the template gallery »

Tips for automatically grading quizzes

There are several templates available in the Google Docs template gallery that have pre-designed quizzes with spreadsheets that calculate the answers.

Using formulas to grade quizzes works best with the multiple choice, choose from a list, grid, and scale questions. You can use the checkboxes as well, but because all the selections are stored in a single cell separated by commas, you can’t easily check for partial credit. You can easily compare against an answer key that has the exact correct values.

If you wish to create your own template or spreadsheet to evaluate your form, here are a few useful formulas and tips:

Create a separate sheet where you can copy the form data and do the calculations.
Reference an entire column (like your form responses) in another sheet by using the syntax Sheetname!A:A where A is the letter of the column and Sheetname is the name of the sheet. Copy that formula for all cells in the column to refer to the corresponding cell in the original sheet.
Set-up a new row or column that has your Answer key.
Use the $ sign in front of the column letter and row name when comparing against the answer key. This makes sure that when you copy the formula, the answer key reference remains the same.
In your clean “calculation” sheet, you can modify the form responses to make it easier to compare against an answer key. If you use letters to identify the multiple choice (A: answer 1, B: answer 2), you can truncate the form response to be a single letter using the LEFT(celltext, number) function. For example, LEFT(B3,1) will take the text in B3 and return the first character on the left.
Compare a selection of cells directly to an answer key and sum up the number that match using the arrayformulas and sum function:

Arrayformulas allows you to compare a set of cells directly against another.
Summing a series of comparisons will add the number of comparisons that are true.
For example for this formula: =ARRAYFORMULA(sum($B$2:$E$2=B3:E3)), the answer key would be from B2:E2, and the selected student grade would be B3:E3. The number returned by the formula would be the total number of cells that matched the answer key.

Assign grades based on percentages using a series of IF functions. The format for IF functions is =IF(comparison, value if true, value if false).

Structure peer reviews and feedback

In addition to testing knowledge, forms can be used instructionally to provide feedback or conduct peer reviews. Creating forms with a clear structure and detailed step-by-step instructions guide students to complete assignments and tasks.

Here’s one way you can use forms to conduct peer reviews:

Create a new peer review form

From your Docs list, click the Create button, then select Form.
From a spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Create a form.
From any other doc, click the File menu and select New then Form.

Add and arrange questions by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page.

Add “help text” to the questions to provide more context or examples of the types of answers you’re looking for.
Include questions to collect information about the reviewed document, including name, link to the document, class information, assignment, etc.
Include free-form critical thinking questions to help students identify the strongest and weakest parts of the assignment (such as strong sentences, weak sentences)
Include a checklist of necessary organization elements for the assignment and have students select if they were included (such as thesis statement, conclusion statement, supporting evidence, etc)
Include a checklist of formatting/review elements (proper citation or bibliography format, spell-check

Add section headers to organize your exam by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page and selecting Section header. Enter the section header and a description.

You could include headers like “Formatting,” “Structure,” “Organization,” “Content”

Make the form available to students:

Email the form to your class list or individuals by selecting the Email this form button and entering in email addresses. Or select the Send form option from the Form menu in your response spreadsheet.
Embed the form on your class site in a common “Peer review” section where students can always access. From the form, go to the More actions button and selecting Embed. Copy and paste the code into your site. From the response spreadshet, go to the Form menu and select Embed form in a webpage....
Embed the form in a Google Site by going to your site, clicking the Insert menu and selecting Form. Pick your form from the list.
Share the direct link to the form (you can then create a shortlink using a URL shortner to bookmark) Find the URL in your response spreadsheet by clicking the Form menu and selecting Go to live form. Copy the URL of the new window. To get to your spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the View responses button and select Spreadsheet.

Organize feedback by student, subject, class, or date.

View the response spreadsheet and select and sort columns to view feedback for the same student/class/etc.

Compile a list of feedback for each student

You can quickly filter the results for a single student if the name has been consistently entered for all the form data (one reason why you might want to consider a drop down menu for student names, so that the name is always consistent), using a combination of the filter function and the arrayformula function
For example, if your form questions use the columns C:L and you want to filter to show just the responses corresponding to Stephanie, you could use this formula:
=FILTER(C:L,ARRAYFORMULA(C:C="Stephanie"))
Or if you were using this filter on a separate sheet, you would need to add the sheet reference:
=FILTER(Sheet1!C:L, ARRAYFORMULA(Sheet1!C:C="Stephanie"))
This formula will only return the results in the sheet that belong to Stephanie. By specifying the entire columns, even if there are new form responses, the formula will still capture the data.

Share feedback with student

After you have filtered the feedback for the student, you can copy and paste the list of relevant feedback into a separate spreadsheet. You might consider having one spreadsheet for each student that tracks the feedback for all assignments. You could also paste the feedback into a document and share it with the student.

Check and submit assignments

Forms can help teachers streamline assignment submissions and ensure that students have completed all parts of the assignments. Students will have to review a checklist before entering an assignment to be submitted.

You can have a form for each assignment that collects all the student information, and then save each of the assignment spreadsheets in a folder for each class. You should then be able to easily find information by assignment for any class.

Here’s one way you can use forms as a way to check assignments before they are submitted:

Create a new assignment submission form

From your Docs list, click the Create button, then select Form.
From a spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Create a form.
From any other doc, click the File menu and select New then Form.

Add and arrange questions by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page.

Include class and student information for sorting and reviewing later such as name, class period, subject, assignment # etc. It is helpful to have drop down menus for entries like class periods and subjects. This will make sorting your spreadsheet easier because they are set values that students will not misspell or forget.
Include a checklist for the parts of the assignment you wish to confirm they have completed before you grade, like running spell-check.
Include any other questions you wish to make sure students review before completing an assignment
Include a text box for the student to paste in the URL to the assignment (in Google Docs)

Make the form available to students:

Email the form to your class list or individuals by selecting the Email this form button and entering in email addresses. Or select the Send form option from the Form menu in your response spreadsheet.
Embed the form on your class site. You could include different forms for each individual assignment, create forms for types of assignments, or have one general assignment form. Depending on the type of form, you might place it in different parts of your site.

From the form, go to the More actions button and selecting Embed. Copy and paste the code into your site. From the response spreadshet, go to the Form menu and select Embed form in a webpage....

Embed the form in a Google Site by going to your site, clicking the Insert menu and selecting Form. Pick your form from the list.
Share the direct link to the form (you can then create a shortlink using a URL shortner to bookmark) Find the URL in your response spreadsheet by clicking the Form menu and selecting Go to live form. Copy the URL of the new window. To get to your spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the View responses button and select Spreadsheet.

Organize feedback by student, subject, class, or date.

View the response spreadsheet and select and sort columns to view feedback for the same student/class/etc.

Organize assignment spreadsheets in your Docs list.

Create a folder for each class and place the appropriate assignment spreadsheet. If you save your spreadsheets by a convention such as Date_AssignmentNumber_Class, you can easily find assignment information.

Log reports and information into a single database

The structured setup of forms makes it easy for teachers to log information into a shared database that everyone can search and access. Forms can be filled out anywhere - embedded on a website, viewed in an email or published URL, or even on a mobile device - allowing teachers the convenience to log this information immediately.

For example, you could create a form and response spreadsheet for school-wide student behavioural logs. Teachers could access a single form and file a structured log that is added to the spreadsheet database. Each Google Spreadsheet can store up to 200,000 cells of information. For a row with ten pieces of information (such as first name, last name, ID, year, teacher name, subject, period, type of log, log report, and notes), a single spreadsheet could store 20,000 students logs. Teachers could then open the log and search or filter for a specific student to have relevant information from all the other teachers on hand for evaluations or parent teacher conferences. School administrators would then also be able to easily analyze the log reports and track patterns.

Here’s one way you can use forms to create a student log database:

Create a new peer review form

From your Docs list, click the Create button, then select Form.
From a spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Create a form.
From any other doc, click the File menu and select New then Form.

Add and arrange questions by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page.

Include questions for items that would make it easy to find information in a database such as student contact information, ID numbers or usernames, teacher and class information.
Include drop-downs for the type of log reports - useful for sorting in the spreadsheet.
Include a text type question for reporting the log, as well as a paragraph type for adding additional notes.

Make the form available to teachers:

Email the form to the list of faculty (i.e. faculty@myschool.org) that they can star and search for in their Apps mail account.
Embed the form on your faculty intranet site that is only accessible to teachers that are signed into Apps. On a Google Site, click the Insert menu and select Form. Pick your student log form from the list.
Include the direct link to the form in a faculty handbook document that is shared with all faculty. Find the URL in your response spreadsheet by clicking the Form menu and selecting Go to live form. Copy the URL of the new window. To get to your spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the View responses button and select Spreadsheet.

Organize feedback by student, subject, period, teacher, log type, or date.

View the response spreadsheet and select and sort columns to view feedback for the same student/class/etc.

Compile a list of feedback for each student - useful if evaluating the activities of a single student

Create a separate tab that is used for teachers to filter information from the primary database, such as “Filter for a single student.”
The easiest way to identify students would be by an ID or a username
For example, if your log information was entered in columns C:L, where the student ID or username is in column C and you want to filter to show just the responses corresponding to student123, you could use this formula:
=FILTER(C:L,ARRAYFORMULA(C:C="student123"))or if you wanted to compare for First and last name
Or if you were using this filter on a separate sheet, you would need to add the sheet reference:
=FILTER(Sheet1!C:L, ARRAYFORMULA(Sheet1!C:C="student123"))
This formula will only return the results in the sheet that belong to student123. By specifying the entire columns, even if there are new form responses, the formula will still capture the data.

File and track school-wide requests

Forms can bring transparency and organization to administrative processes in a school.

For example, instead of filling out paper requests that could potentially be lost en route to the correct department (IT, library, central office), a teacher could submit an online form that feeds directly into a spreadsheet. Administrators can then update the spreadsheet with the status of the requests and share it with all the faculty so they can track the progress as well.

Here’s one way you can use forms to track and receive school-wide requests:

Create a new request form

From your Docs list, click the Create button, then select Form.
From a spreadsheet, click the Form menu and select Create a form.
From any other doc, click the File menu and select New then Form.

Add and arrange questions by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page.

Include questions to identify the requestor - name from a drop down, class/building/school.
If the form is for multiple types of requests, create a drop down or multiple choice question to select the request type.
Include additional information to evaluate the urgency of the request - date needed by, severity of issue, etc.
Add “help text” to the questions to provide more context or examples of the types of answers you’re looking for.

Add section headers to organize your exam by clicking the Add item button at the top of the editing page and selecting Section header. Enter the section header and a description.

You could include headers like “Request type,” “Contact information.”

Make the form available to students:

Email the form to your class list or individuals by selecting the Email this form button and entering in email addresses. Or select the Send form option from the Form menu in your response spreadsheet.
Embed the form on your class site in a common “Peer review” section where students can always access. From the form, go to the More actions button and selecting Embed. Copy and paste the code into your site. From the response spreadshet, go to the Form menu and select Embed form in a webpage....
Embed the form in a Google Site by going to your site, clicking the Insert menu and selecting Form. Pick your form from the list.
Share the direct link to the form (you can then create a shortlink using a URL shortner to bookmark) Find the URL in your response spreadsheet by clicking the Form menu and selecting Go to live form. Copy the URL of the new window. To get to your spreadsheet from the edit form page, click the View responses button and select Spreadsheet.

Organize feedback by student, subject, class, or date.

View the response spreadsheet and select and sort columns to view feedback for the same student/class/etc.

Compile a list of feedback for each student

You can quickly filter the results for a single student if the name has been consistently entered for all the form data (one reason why you might want to consider a drop down menu for student names, so that the name is always consistent), using a combination of the filter function and the arrayformula function
For example, if your form questions use the columns C:L and you want to filter to show just the responses corresponding to Stephanie, you could use this formula:
=FILTER(C:L,ARRAYFORMULA(C:C="Stephanie"))
Or if you were using this filter on a separate sheet, you would need to add the sheet reference:
=FILTER(Sheet1!C:L, ARRAYFORMULA(Sheet1!C:C="Stephanie"))
This formula will only return the results in the sheet that belong to Stephanie. By specifying the entire columns, even if there are new form responses, the formula will still capture the data.

Share feedback with student

After you have filtered the feedback for the student, you can copy and paste the list of relevant feedback into a separate spreadsheet. You might consider having one spreadsheet for each student that tracks the feedback for all assignments. You could also paste the feedback into a document and share it with the student.