Creating an Effective Google Form

Google forms are a great tool for collecting interest, votes, and information. However, poorly made google forms can make a simple project unnecessarily complicated, tedious, and labor-intensive. There are a few key things that will make your life so much easier:

1. Export your form responses to a google sheet

   1. this lets you see all your data at once, without having to click through each individual response

   2. the sheet can be shared with other people, so that they don’t have to have access to the google form

   3. the sheet will continue to update as you get more responses

   4. you can filter or sort columns on the spreadsheet so that you are only looking at certain responses, such as only viewing responses who selected “yes” for a particular question

2. ALWAYS: make first name and last name two separate fields in the google form

   1. this way you can sort the spreadsheet alphabetically by last name or first name

   2. even if you need first and last name together (like a list of names to print) you can merge cells later.

   3. name should usually be required

   4. keep in mind that some students go by a different name than what is in the system!

      1. if you are going to need to look them up (ex. to find out where their classes are for deliveries), ask for their preferred first name and their name in the school’s system.

      2. do not require an alternate first name

      3. Sample Form:

         1. Last Name*:

         2. First Name (in school database)*:

         3. Preferred First Name

3. Make sure the settings on the form are correct! Examples:

   1. collect email addresses

   2. required questions

   3. send a copy of responses

   4. allow response editing

   5. limit one response per user