“I’ve got time for that!” – No Teacher Ever

The above might be a joke, but virtual learning has indeed forced teachers to make time for “that,” whether they have it or not. As a result, every teacher is looking for ways to save time, while maintaining the rigor and best practices of their classroom. If your school is using Microsoft Office 365, you are probably already aware of many time-saving features, but have you taken advantage of Microsoft Forms? Delivering your assessments using Microsoft Forms is a great way to same time.

Whether you are teaching remotely, in-person, or within a hybrid setting, online assessments are not just the way of the future — they are the way of the present. Microsoft Forms provide the ability to quickly assess (and grade!) student knowledge. This allows teachers to trade time spent on making copies and grading papers for time spent analyzing student data and improving lesson plans. This is a trade-off that every teacher would gladly take.

5 easy steps to deliver assessments using Microsoft Forms

#1 Create a “New Quiz”

Head to your office.com account and find Microsoft Forms. It may be in your left bar menu, or you can search for “Forms” in the top search bar. Once you find Forms, you will see the option to create a “New Quiz.” Just click it, and you are ready to get started.

#2 Add questions

Microsoft Forms allows you to add different question types to best assess your students. To add a question, just click the “Add new” button. Then you will see your question types.

• Choice – Add multiple choice or true/false questions
• Text – Add short response questions or long essay questions
• Ranking – Add an ordering question
• File upload – Require your students to upload a file as their response

We particularly like the File Upload feature, which allows you to easily require that students submit video or audio files as their response. (What a great feature for ELL and Foreign Language teachers!)

Any math teachers reading? Another great feature when adding a “Choice” or “Text” question is that you can make specify that it’s a math question. This will allow you to type out equations or expressions, and allow your students to answer in the same manner. Enable this by selecting the option in the three-dot menu after you have chosen the question type.

How about some social studies or science teachers? You can add an image, like a political cartoon, graph, or timeline to your question by selecting the image icon while you are editing the text of the question.

Once you have added your question, be sure to mark any correct answers, add a point value, and make a response required. You can even add “Correct answers” for short answer questions. This will allow your assessment to be automatically graded!

#3 Adjust form appearance and setting

Once you have added all of your questions, you can take some time to ensure the assessment will look the way you want. You can change the color scheme of the assessment by selecting “Theme” in the top toolbar. You can also preview what the assessment will look like by selecting “Preview,” also in the top toolbar.

After your Form looks amazing, you can change any settings within the top toolbar’s three-dot menu. From the Settings menu you can allow students to automatically view their results when they finish their assessment, adjust who has access to assessments, and select other options, like shuffling the question order, or adding a progress bar. This is also where you can “end” the assessment by disabling “Accept responses.”

#4 Share with students

Once your assessment is ready for students, you can find the link to send to students by selecting the “Share” button in the top toolbar. From here, copy and paste the link to where it makes sense for you, or, you can even produce the assessment as a QR code.

If you are using Microsoft Teams to send assignments to your students, you can quickly add a Form this way as well. When you create a new assignment on Teams, you have the ability to add a quiz — this will allow you to search the Forms you have created and add the assessment you want students to complete.

#5 Grade and analyze data

Once your students have completed the assessment, you can view their responses the same place you created the questions! Just toggle to the “Responses” tab next to the “Questions” tab.

From here, you will see a summary report of your students’ collective responses, but you can also see a detailed breakdown of each student by selecting “Review Answers.” This is where you can see exactly which questions students got right and wrong, and if necessary, you can adjust grades and provide feedback as well. (If there were any essay type questions that require you to grade them manually, this is where you would grade these questions.) When you’re done grading, you can choose “Post scores” for students to view and access.

If you would like, you can also export assessment results to Microsoft Excel, where you can further manipulate and analyze your data to prepare for future lessons.

Creating and delivering your assessments using Microsoft Forms will save you time by eliminating the need for paper copies, automatically grading questions, sending results to students, and expediting the process of recording student data. Become a master at using Microsoft Forms, and maybe one day you will become the teacher who has “time for that.”

For more tips, tricks, and tools for teaching in and out of the classroom, check out more articles on the Teq Talk blog.

We also offer virtual professional development, training, and remote learning support for educators with OTIS for educators. Explore the technology, tools, and strategies that can spark student success — no matter where teaching or learning are happening.