How to Write a Self Marking Test.

Google has a number of "apps" that can be quite useful if you are an educator and would like to try something different with your students. This Instructable will show you how to make a simple self marking test which will give loads of feedback. It will show which questions student struggled with, the answers each student gave as well as a grade in percent. The results are recorded on a spread sheet as well some nicely presented pie charts.

Now when I say "test" you may want to rethink what you are testing before you start. If you want to test what students can remember, Its way too easy for students to cheat, as they can just google the answer. But if you want to test what students can find out, its very useful as nothing motivates students more than them thinking they are cheating.

Students also enjoy getting the immediate feedback the test provides, they want to now their results NOW! not next week. Ive also said to students, you know I think you could do better, have another go, and usually they are happy to try and beat there old score.

So I use the test as a research skills test, and I was quite surprised that I got a wide range of marks. I was expecting everyone to achieve 100% but not one student has so far.

If you would like to look at a finished test to see what the kids see have a look here.....TEST

The stuff you will need

You only need a google account, some questions and a class full of kids.

So Ive presented this Instructable as a slide show so just click on the image and use the arrow keys to get step by step screen shots. Look out for the little boxes they have notes that pop up when you hover your cursor over them.

Just a note on inserting images, its simple, but the image will appear below the question and they can be difficult to move. This can be confusing for the students, so I insert the image into the previous question and it appears on top of the next question. Not perfect but it looks much better when the image is above the question.

Sending your test is just a case of coping the URL and writing it on the board or email your students. Once you ready to go, make sure you complete the test first with the name "answer key" or "Marking key" as the software needs to the right answers.

Click on the slide show and follow along.

Now you have got your first test down what next? There are a number of other features that can be useful, the grid function can be a little hard visualize the first time you use it but by click on the "view live form" button you can get an Idea of what the question will look like and how to use it.

Have a look here to see each type of question.

You will have noticed you can insert videos, dates, time, scale, text response and a number of other things. how you use it may be only limited by your imagination.