Create self-grading quizzes with Google Forms or Microsoft Forms

Everyone appreciates the power of tools such as Google Forms or Microsoft Forms for implementing contact forms, surveyes or collect various data / registration information.

But… did you know that both Google Forms and Microsoft Forms can be used to create quizzes? Quizzes are simple in nature and are not a replacement for your full blown LMS system, but they can still do the job for simple tasks. You can use Forms to send fun quizzes around your organization … or even quickly filter candidates that apply for a particular job.

However - these products are lacking one important feature that would transform basic quizzes into powerful assesment tools. That feature is: the ability to randomly select questions from a predefined database.

This feature alone was the star of the PowerTests.NET product that I architected / developed more that 15 years ago. It is true that this was developed as an assessment tool (which is outside the scope of Google / Microsoft Forms) and contained also other tools beyond forms.

However, Google / Microsoft you can implement this feature very naturaly in your Forms web applications like this:

add the ability to create forms with static questions as well as questions randomly selected from other forms.

In this way, one may create many forms with static questions (each static form acting as a repository of related questions) and then define one extra form that will become the assessment form. Perhaps the extra form will contain a few static questions and then will be configured to randomly pick the rest of the questions from the other static forms according to certain rules.

What do you think? I intended to create a Form to collect your feedback… but since is getting late I have to rely on the Comments below.

VMA

01 Aug 2017