Sections offer a number of ways to improve a Form, at first glance it mainly allows you to display groups of questions on separate pages so not every question is sat on the same page. A good example of this would be when you’re completing an online form and you fill in your personal information and click submit, then you are taken to another page with a new set of questions.
You could create a form to check your student’s knowledge on what they have learned over the last couple of months but divide the questions into sections to separate the different topics that you’ve gone through.
Sections are added in the same way you add questions, the horizontal icon bar on the right of the page has an icon of two rectangles, click this to add a section in. It will add a section after the question you have selected so if you want it at the end, make sure you have the final question selected.
Sections also allow you to do something called Logical Branching, don’t worry though, it’s a lot less scary than it sounds! It does only work on “Multiple Choice” or “Dropdown” questions though so you do need to make sure you limit your form to those options.
Some uses for Logic Branching:
- Students can be directed to a reteaching page if they get a question wrong and they can either have another chance to answer the question or can continue to the next question.
- Students can be directed to a different question set based on how they answer the first question.
- Students who are struggling with a concept can be given multiple questions or scaffolding for the concept while students who do understand it can move on to other questions.
- Students or staff members who are using a form can “skip” over questions that don’t apply to them based on how they answer one of the questions.
- Create a simple text adventure game based around a subject.
In order to start creating a logic branching form, you need to have a basic plan of what questions you want to ask and in what direction you want the person to be heading. It would be worth first writing some questions in a Google Doc file so you can easily move them around to build your plan.
Once you’ve got a basic plan, open forms.google.com and start a new form, set your title and add a description if you want. Enter your first question, remember it has to be multiple choice or dropdown.
At the bottom right of the question, you will notice the ‘Required’ toggle, set that to On and then click three dots to the right of it. Click “Go to section based on answer” and new drop down boxes will appear next to each answer you’ve inputted for that question.
Now you can set what answer goes to what section, you can then add more sections with however many questions you want to get your desired result.
With a bit more time and effort you can create a fun learning experience for students. You could replace areas of the college with countries and ask questions that may link two countries together for example.