Assessing with Google Forms: Tips for stopping cheating!

Bonjour à tous et à toutes!

Today I wanted to share some tips I have learned for making quizzes more secure when testing in my classroom! I have been incorporating more and more technology into my classroom this year. When things go wrong technology can become very frustrating. So in order to save you from pulling out your beautiful hair, I have decided to share some tips so that you can learn from my mistakes! (Not to mention save some time!)

       1. Turn off automatic fill-in for forms!
Choose the three parallel bars in the top right corner of the Google Chrome browser and go to settings. You will need to scroll down to advanced settings. Then make sure the box marked “Enable Autofill to fill out web forms in a single click” is unchecked! I always make my students do this part before every quiz.  I just sort of patrol and make sure they have done it. For the most part, this has not been a problem!

2. Password protect!

It is important to password protect your quizzes! I found out the hard way that this is a necessary step. If you are using Google Classroom or the like, students receive updates that new items are posted to their site. (One of my darling chouchous decided to preview my quiz and accidently hit the submit button,) Since then I have password protected all my quizzes and activities. It is quite simple and very customizable.  I suggest creating an exam template. That way you can skip the steps of adding a new password block, name, hour, etc. and other miscellaneous information you ask students to give each time. Then we will create our password.

1.       First create a short answer block.

2.       After filling in your password directive, click the three vertical circles for additional options.

3.       Choose data validation. Where is said number, change it to “regular expression”

4.       Then instead of contains, change it to matches.

5.       For the pattern, you will input whatever password you like with the character ^ above it.

6.       The error text shows what will appear if they put in the wrong answer. Feel free to get creative!

The next two steps are the most important for making sure your password works!!

7.       Make sure you click required! Otherwise, it is useless.

8.       Make sure you include a page break after this section. There will be no point in using the password other than to submit the form. (Although that may be a good idea for assignments that need teacher approval before submission!)

9.       All that’s left to do is preview your password to make sure it is functioning. Click what looks like the eye at the top of the form to preview it and test it out!

3.  GET FLUBAROO!

Flubaroo is a dream come true when it comes to grading. After you have completed your exam you can choose to save your results in a Google Sheet. Under where it says “Add-ons” simply select Flubaroo and download. This little gem will grade all kinds of exact answers for you. Or you can always print student answers and grade manually. I have found this to help me a lot with the consistency of my grading! 

              4. Attach accents!

One important thing for language teachers to remember is that accent codes will need to be included for PC users. I normally attach an image on the top so students need only to refer to it. (I start each semester with a short and sweet activity for students to practice writing accents in French!) Mac users have it easy, kids adapt readily to holding down the key for the accents to appear.  By posting it at the top, students need only to have one tab open at a time.   It may also be a good idea to print them and hand them out.

****Word to the wise, some Chrome books cannot type accents!!!

              5. Get in there and feel it out!

There are a lot of different things you can do with the forms. Such as receive emails with all new submissions, analyze student responses with data, and most importantly save everything you need on the cloud!

Bonne chance! -La Prof