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Online Assessment with Google Forms and Flubaroo

Abstract
With the increase in technology growth and integrating technology into
curriculum and instruction, there is a need to identify ways to incorporate technology into
every aspect of the curriculum, assessment included. There is a shift in the way students
are assessed today, as most state tests are computer-based assessment. The 21st century
emerging educational technology offers solutions and suggestions for formative and
summative assessments that incorporate technology. This paper highlights the
importance of assessment and especially how formative assessments drive instruction.
The paper also offers a description of how the integration of technology can alleviate the
stress and challenges teachers encounter assessing students. It recommends the effective
use of Google Forms and Flubarro to efficiently assess students while providing timely
and accurate feedback.
Overview
Education is in a period of major transformation; with these transformations come
changes. Huffman and Hipp (2003) declared that learning organizations are in a
continuous state of change driven by ongoing improvement through the continual
development and implementation of new ideas. Earl (2013) expressed that schools
reflect the changes that are occurring more broadly in society, and there seems to be no
end to the changes that schools are expected to keep up with. One of the biggest changes
in society has been the increase in technology growth. Schools are expected to adjust to
this growth by incorporating and integrating technology to enhance the teaching/learning
experience of our new digital natives. There has also been a heightened accountability

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for student learning. Teachers and principals face mounting pressure, as in schools, the
bottom line is the expectation to have ever-increasing student scores on standardized
tests (Hall & Hord, 2015, p. 13). Earl (2013) suggested the purpose of assessment in
schools is to support learning; to report achievement of individuals for certification,
progress, and transfer; and to satisfy the demands for public accountability (p. 19).
Assessment in Education
Assessment is important in education, however, Earl (2013) argued that
assessment is imperative in the middle of learning often more than once and not at the
end of learning as effective assessment empowers students to ask reflective questions
and consider a range of strategies for learning (p. 28). With continuing formative
assessment, instruction is tailored to each students needs as students are garnered
towards success. Students are motivated by success and by competence. And they are
influenced by their beliefs about what contributes to success (p. 44). Once students are
able to actively participate in their learning and assessment, they are more likely to work
toward performance.
Earl (2013) cautioned, assessment has become complicated, especially because there are
many forms of assessment and myriad purposed that assessment is intended to serve (p.
2). Undoubtedly, teachers are challenged with the demand to consistently formatively
assess students in order to ascertain students growth and inform instruction, remediation/
review or acceleration. Crow (2010) argued, too often the mind-set in education is
that theres one best way to do this (p. 10). We have moved from a paper and pencil past
toward a 21st century classroom. The deliberate inclusion of educational technologies
into the classroom to enhance 21st century teaching and learning experiences continues to

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be an integral aspect of (Hechter, Phyfe, & Vermette, 2012, p. 136) the challenges
teachers encounter, integrating and incorporating technology in daily assessment. Crow
(2010) spoke of the convenience that technology offers (p. 10) for teachers not only to
enhance learning time, but to also effectively and consistently assess students by
employing technology efficiently.
Self-grading Quiz using Google Forms and Flubaroo
Google Docs is a powerful tool for 21st century learning that offers an array of
free technological tools for teachers to incorporate technology in ordinary classroom
teaching and learning. Google Forms in particular is an easy way for teachers to collect
data from students and assist with instruction. Flubaroo is also a free tool, used with
Google Forms, to automate the grading of an online quiz that consists of multiple choice
and fill in the blank questions.
The author created a formative assessment for students using Google Forms and
Flubaroo. By using these tools, the author was not only able to accomplish 21st century
learning goals by utilizing technology, but also formatively assess the students, provide
individual and immediate feedback to each student, gather pertinent data, and inform
instruction. Using Google Forms to create the test was very user friendly and quite
simple. Once given a link, students were automatically taken to the quiz in which they
were able to work at their own pace (if preferred by the teacher) to complete and submit
the quiz. Students responded to multiple-choice, matching pairs, and true or false
questions using their individual netbooks. Google Forms allows the teacher to ensure
that students respond to all questions by selecting required question on the form.
Students will not be able to submit their responses until they have completed all the

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required questions.
To ensure that students are given immediate feedback, students were asked to
provide their first and last name as well as their e-mail addresses. The teacher has the
option to include in the e-mail an answer key or not. By incorporating these technology
based pedagogical strategies that teachers can use to locate where their students are
conceptually, what students next learning phase would be in the instructional sequence
(Hechter et al., 2012, p. 139-140), students were able to ascertain the grade they made on
the assessment and identify which questions they answered correctly and incorrectly.
This was quite impressive to students who did not have to wait a day or two for papers to
be graded and feedback given at a later date or time. Students instantly were able to
identify their areas of weakness and strength.
Conclusions
Hechter et al. (2012) explained, teachers integrate technology into teaching and
learning for a variety of reasons (p. 137). Such reasons they suggest include promoting
student engagement, teaching 21st century skills, as best teaching practice, to stay
current, for hands-on interactive learning, to vary instructional methods, to perform labs
and demonstrations and for research (p. 137). One of the most important reasons they
note is communication (p. 137). By incorporating these technological tools, the teacher
has immediate communicated access to a data spreadsheet, detailing each students
response, while highlighting by a color code the students and responses that were
correctly and incorrectly answered. The spreadsheet also shows the distribution of grades
and gives a detailed percentage of the students that correctly answered each question. As
Smaldino, Lowther, Russell, and Mims (2015) suggested, technology can help teachers

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become creative managers of the learning experience while working smartly by saving
time with technology.

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References
Crow, T. (2010). Learning, no matter where you are: Q&A with Chris Dede. Journal of
Staff Development, 31(1), 10-17.
Earl, L. M. (2013). Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximize
student learning (2nd ed.). Corwin Press, Inc: Thousand Oaks, California
Hall, G.E., & Hord, S. M. (2015). Implementing change patterns, principles, and
potholes (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hechter, R. P., Phyfe, L. D., & Vermette, L. A. (2012). Integrating technology in
education: Moving the TPCK framework towards practical applications.
Education Research and Perspectives, 39, 136-152.
Huffman, J. B., & Hipp, K. K. (2003). Reculturing schools as professional learning
communities. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Education.
Smaldino, S. E., Lowther, D. L., Russell, J. D., & Mims, C. (2015). Instructional
technology and media for learning (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Prentice Hall.