How educators and teachers can get the most out of online forms software
Online forms might not be the first thing that comes to mind as a helpful classroom tool. 10 years ago the idea would have seemed absurd. But today? Online form tools can save hours, paper, and your budget.
That’s because the way students and teachers interact with technology has completely changed.
I work for JotForm, a popular online form building platform, and below are a few of the popular ways that we’ve noticed educators are utilizing online forms.
Survey students and get instant results
Depending on your classroom cell phone policy, you could have all of your students submit survey responses at the same time straight from their phones and have the results show on a screen in front of the room. Interactive learning has come a long way, and online form builders have mobile-ready forms at the click of a button.
Scheduling parent conferences
Imagine a world where the only thing you needed to do to schedule important one-on-one meetings was just to distribute a single form that lets the recipient know what remaining slots are available.
Paperless quizzing
A quick trip to the computer lab is all it takes to administer a paperless quiz using an online form that grades itself and provides instant feedback immediately upon submission. Quiz responses can be sent directly to your inbox or integrated into a spreadsheet to make it easy to compare which questions students consistently had trouble with or answered correctly.
Collect signatures digitally
If you need signatures from a parent, skip the middle man (or child). Send permission slip and waiver forms straight to parents’ emails and use the e-signature capabilities already built into the form. No more printed paper, forged signatures, or nagging students to return the completed form. The added benefit to this method is that you don’t have to worry about organization; all of your signatures are neatly stored for you.
Student group project evaluations
It can be tough for students to give accurate feedback about fellow students for group projects, especially when one of them didn’t pull their weight. That’s why an anonymously submitted online form can be so effective: it encourages honest feedback. Consider open-ended questions like “how well do you think the group performed?”.
Online form building software has increasingly become a fixture in schools all around the world over the past decade, and for good reason: it just makes collecting and organizing information easier. The best part is that it’s insanely affordable. Most form builders are free based on a certain threshold of monthly responses, and generally pretty cheap even for the paid plans.
Chad Reid is the director of communications at JotForm, a popular online form building platform based in San Francisco.
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