Ultimate Guide to FEEDBACK in a Google Form – Part 1

Google Forms has several features that can provide feedback at different times based on responses to questions. This article covers how to provide DELAYED feedback after a form is submitted. We have a matching Group in SharingTree called “How to provide DELAYED Feedback in Google Forms” with all the templates used in this article. If you sign-in and click open, the forms are added to your Google Drive, and you can view and edit them as you progress through this article. 

Some of the WHY questions for using immediate (during) or delayed feedback (after submission) are discussed below by Christy Tucker. This article’s focus is to show HOW to provide DELAYED feedback after a Google Form is submitted. 

Providing feedback after a Google Form is submitted can help a student prepare for a future assessment by reviewing missed questions or improve their current score if they can retake the assessment. We will show three options to allow retakes using the settings (gear icon) options for a form.

Part A: How to allow RETAKES for a Google Form (three options)

For all these options you will need to have the option ‘Collect email address‘ in Settings -> General selected so anonymous responses are not allowed.

Option 1 – Select both ‘Limit to 1 Response‘ and ‘Edit after submission‘

In option 1, you select both ‘Limit to 1 response‘ and ‘Edit after submit‘. When both of these options selected, a form is limited to one attempt that can be edited after submission. When a student completes a form and clicks ‘Submit’, they will see two options. The first option is to ‘View score’, and the second option is to ‘Edit your response’.

The ‘View score‘ button will show which of their responses were correct or incorrect. They can also view any feedback you provide for each question, and we cover how to do this in Part C. The  ‘Edit your response’ link allows them to retry the quiz, and all their previous responses will show and can be changed. Using these settings, an instructor will only see a student’s final score and not any information on their number of attempts. You can view a Group on SharingTree with all the template forms for the options we share in this article here or you can just get the template for option 1 here. Our next method will let you track how many attempts they make.  

Option 2 – Do not select ‘Limit to 1 Response‘ or ‘Edit after submission‘

For option 2, you do not select either ‘Limit to 1 response‘ or ‘Edit after submit‘. Now when the student submits their form, they will see the ‘View Score‘ and ‘Submit another response‘ options. You can hide the ‘Submit another response‘ option in the Setting -> Quiz options.

Using option 2, the instructor can see how many reattempts a student makes and their score for each attempt. The downside is the student must enter all their answers for each attempt. The link to the template form for option 2 is here or to get all the templates see the group for this article.

Option 3 – Select only ‘Limit to 1 Response‘

A third option is to select only ‘Limit to 1 response’. Now students are in a typical summative assessment format with only one attempt. You can require students to do corrections using the feedback from the ‘View score‘ button, and then you can delete their response from the Response screen on the Google Form, allowing them a manual retake you control.  See the image below and next section for tips on easily finding and deleting responses. The link to the template form for option 3 is here or to get all the templates see the group for this article.

For option 3, it can be challenging to find the correct student response to delete, but you can open the email select box and use the three dots icon (⋮) with the Find option to search for a particular student’s response to delete.

Another option is to use a second identical/similar quiz and provide the student the URL or password for the retake Google Form once you review their corrections. This option avoids the hassle of deleting their response, but it may complicate importing scores if you use the form with Google Classroom. If you want to know more about how to import scores from a Google form to Google Classroom watch this three minute video. In the next part, we will cover HOW to give feedback.

Part B: Setting up your Google Form as a Quiz

In a Google Form to provide feedback, you must set enable the QUIZ option. You can set up a Google Form as a QUIZ by going to the settings (gear icon) and selecting Quizzes.

Here you can also set what shows when a student submits a form. For a formative assessment where I want to provide feedback and allow retakes, I use the following options.

For a summative assessment where I do not want to provide feedback or retakes, I use these settings.

The rest of this article will focus on the formative type of Google Form quiz and HOW to provide feedback.

Part C: Answers and Feedback on a Google Form Quiz

Now that you have your Google Form set as a Quiz, you can provide an answer for each question and feedback. To add feedback, select a question  and click Answer Key, then Add answer feedback and complete the Add feedback dialog box. You have the option of using text, a URL link, and a video for feedback for incorrect and correct responses.

The feedback you provide is shown when a student selects ‘View score‘ after submitting the form. The video below by Richard Bryne walks you through the process of adding feedback to a question.

Now is a good time, if you have not already done it, to open the Group in SharingTree called “How to provide DELAYED Feedback in Google Forms” with all the templates used in this article. Google Forms is a flexible tool if you understand the different options for questions and feedback. We hope this article helped and check out part 2 of this topic, where we cover providing immediate feedback during a Google Form. 

This article is part of a series SharingTree is creating focused on Distance Learning using G Suite. Click here to sign up to receive our weekly email.