What is it?

Microsoft Forms is a tool that can be used to create quick surveys, quizzes and polls to gather information and data.

How might I use it?

With Microsoft Forms you can quickly create surveys, quizzes and polls to inform your teaching. Use Microsoft Forms for formative assessment by measuring student knowledge and evaluating course progress throughout a unit. The results of surveys could guide the learning as you may use it to ask students what topics they would like reinforcement on prior to their exams.

Within departments you may use Microsoft Forms to communicate between staff when gathering opinions to inform decision making, especially if you are already using Microsoft Teams. Forms integrates with Microsoft Teams, so it's possible to create a quick multiple choice question within a channel by typing @forms followed by your question and answer choices separated by commas (e.g. @forms What is your favourite colours? Red, Blue, Green). Similarly, add a form as a tab inside a channel to gather feedback.

How do students use it effectively?

Students can respond to forms or quizzes sent out by staff as part of formative assessment or for more general responses during a unit of study (e.g. what would you like to discuss in a revision session)? Students could also use Microsoft Forms to create quick, simple surveys. For example, to gather thoughts during collaborative projects.

What are the pros & cons?

Pros

• It is quick and straightforward to create a new form or quiz.
• Forms can be shared via a link, embed code, QR code or by email to anyone inside or outside of the organisation.
• Collaborate with others on a form.
• Forms can be made anonymous or names can be required.
• Further options include setting start and end dates, and shuffling questions.
• Export form data, such as quiz results, to Excel for additional analysis or grading.
• The dashboard presents visual representations of data.
• Forms is part of the University's Microsoft 365 package, therefore there is more control over data protection regulation than if you used an unsupported platform such as Google Forms.

Cons

• Question types are fairly limited. For a greater range of question types for teaching and learning you may wish to use Moodle quiz.
• Online Surveys (formerly Bristol Online Survey) is more appropriate for collecting more comprehensive research data.
• You need internet access to create and use Microsoft Forms.
• There is no mobile app available. You must use a mobile browser to create and view forms.

Accessibility

Microsoft have produced an overview of accessiblility features in Microsoft Forms.

Further reading and support

Complete an online course on Microsoft Teacher Academy (log in with your University of Bath username and password to track progress). Microsoft Forms: Creating Authentic Assessments 

Interactive ways to use Microsoft Forms - A short guide to features of Forms