It’s finals week here at SUNY Fredonia, and I thought I’d share a quick and easy to record those final exam grades using Google Forms.

1. Create a Google Form with 2 Questions – one for Lastname and one for Points. (the resulting form will look like this)
2. Give yourself an easy way on your computer to refresh the browser and bring up that form. I go to it and then drag it to my firefox toolbar. After I submit a form, I just click the button and it brings up a fresh form.
3. Have your computer open as you grade final exams. When you’re finished grading a student’s exam, enter their lastname and exam points in the form and submit. Refresh the form and grade the next exam.
4. When you’re finished highlight the two columns, copy them and paste them into your main grade book.
5. Assuming your main gradebook has students alphabetized by last name, you’ll want to quickly sort your exam data to fit this. Highlight both columns and resort them alphabetically. If the lastnames column is the left column, the entries in the left column will re-arrange alphabetically. The entries in the points column will stay with their respective names. You might want to practice this a couple of times to make sure. Different spreadsheet programs have different rules as to when columns stay linked and when they do not

Why do this?

• Faster
  If you have 100+ students this is way faster than scrolling through the spreadsheet with mouse or keyboard and typing in the points in a column next to the students name in the main grade book.
• Reduces the possibility of recording errors
  (Example: Let’s say you’re entering grades into a spreadsheet the old fashioned way. Let’s say you’ve recorded Susie’s grade as a 94, and then you’re scrolling through the spreadsheet to find Tom and record his 80. If Tom is right next to Susie you could accidentally type the 80 over Susie’s 94 without realizing it. When you’re finished recording grades it will appear to you as if you skipped Tom. You’d go back, find his exam and enter his 80 that you think you’ve skipped over, but poor Susie is still stuck with Tom’s 80.

2 Responses to “Enter Final Exam Grades With a Google Form”

1. 

   FunctionPrintScreen

   December 22, 2009 at 2:37 am

   Print Screen, Andy. It’s your friend.

   Reply
2. 

   Andrew Cullison

   December 22, 2009 at 9:30 am

   I use the print screen function all of the time, but I don’t understand how it will help here. This has to do with entering the grades *the first time* so there is no spreadsheet with grades listed to use the print screen command on. (I’m assuming that’s what you had in mind).

   Reply