Google Forms Tip

I think my favorite new-to-me feature of Google Forms is the email notification feature. You can set-up your Google Form to send you an email when someone submits the form. 

Here are two ways the Google Forms notification feature has helped me save small amounts of time and frustration this semester.

• I ask my students to submit a form to me if they have a question about their grade. The link to the survey is on MyBigCampus and I rarely have to think about it. A bonus is that they have to select from a list the standard which they are referencing; no more "Hey, I have a question about my grade for that one assignment we did." They are forced to own their grade enough to know what they are talking about. Also, no one asks me to stop what I'm doing to go to my computer to check or update a past grade during instructional time. I have a procedure in place and can take care of it on my own time during plan or after school.

• I ask parents to fill out a Google Form survey at the beginning of the year. The survey explains the course expectations and asks for parent contact information. The students receive a small grade for this assignment. I really want to make sure parents fill this out, so I will always take late surveys. This year, I used the notifications feature to receive emails when a parent updated the form after the deadline so that I didn't need to keep checking the spreadsheet results everyday unless there actually was a response.

If you want to receive an email every time someone submits one of your Google Forms, here are the instructions:

1. Open the Google Form you've created.

2.  Click "Tools"

3. Click on "Notification Rules"

4. Select the highlighted items for daily notifications when a new form is submitted.

5. Save Settings and close Notification Rules. 

I also learned how to send the person submitting the form a custom email. This is more complicated but may be a great way to provide automatic feedback to students, especially if you are using Google Forms as assessments. I haven't tried it with students yet, but promise to update this blog when I do!