Intro

Microsoft Forms has released some exciting new features over the Summer. From presenting live, to allowing students to save and edit responses, there’s also an improved rich media experience. In this post, we will explore some of these features, and see how they can potentially transform your learning experience. In this post, we’ll take a look at these in more detail.

Presenting Live

Lets take a look at presenting live first. Previously, you could use Forms to deliver quizzes or forms via a weblink. Whilst this worked in real time, showing responses as they came in, you had to open up the Form in a separate browser. Now, you can embed your Form directly into a PowerPoint presentation. This allows you to run interactive quizzes and polls from within the presentation, allowing you to focus on lesson delivery rather than worry about technicalities.

To do this, first create your quiz in Microsoft Forms as usual.

When complete, click the Collect Responses in the top right of the page. Decide who can access the form. If you need to record student names, you’ll need to select either “People In My Organisation” options. As we’re going to use PowerPoint to deliver the form, we don’t need the link/embed options listed to the right of the Collect Responses panel.

Now create or edit your PowerPoint presentation. You’ll notice in the Insert menu ribbon, there’s a Forms option. When you click this, you will be presented with a list of all your previously created forms. Hover your mouse over the one you want to use, and select Insert. Now choose Present for Interactive Meetings.

When you deliver the presentation, students will be shown a large QR code that they can scan with their phones or tablets, and allow them to engage with the quiz. You can see responses coming in in real time, all within the PowerPoint itself.

At the time of writing this post, there is no option to control the delivery of questions. For example, if your quiz has ten questions, students get access to all ten questions immediately. However, you show the findings of the questions one at a time during the session, which should promote active discussion.

If it is essential students only answer one question at a time, one possible solution would be to create a series of quizzes, each quiz containing just one question. As you might expect, this would be time-consuming to set up. However, it would give you more control over question delivery. As ever, the Digital Learning team are available to discuss any such options: elearning@tees.ac.uk 

Note: To enable this exciting new feature, please contact the ITDS Help desk so they can enable access for your account. You can email them at ithelp@tees.ac.uk

Save and Edit Responses

Students are now able to save their responses in a Form, and return to it at a later date to continue. This could be particularly useful for long and complex surveys. The ability to save and edit allows students to reflect upon questions, perhaps research the topic or discuss with their colleagues before coming back to the form later on.

To enable this, go to the Settings of the form by clicking the three dots in the top right hand corner and access Settings. Now, you can see a list of options for your Form. By default, the option to “Allow respondents to save their responses” is turned on. Underneath this is the option to “Allow respondents to edit their responses”. Check this to enable it. Now, when students access Forms, they can see any form they have saved, and edit their answers if required.

Rich Media Enhancements

Forms now comes with more options to customise the look and feel of your quiz or survey. For example, you can add images to questions and answers when using Multiple Choice question types.

Another enhancement is to set a quiz to be time limited. For example, you might want to only allow students 10 minutes on a particular quiz. This can be done through the Settings panel (so click the three dots in the top right of the page and select Settings). You will see the option to Set Time Duration.

Finally, Forms will now attempt to identify a suitable style for you based on the title of your form. You can select from a list of possible matches, or choose your own style. In addition, you can now add music to your survey – which can be turned off at any point, you might be glad to know!

As ever, if you have any further questions, or would like to discuss in more detail how you could use something like Microsoft Forms to transform your digital experience, please don’t hesitate to contact the Digital Transformation team at elearning@tees.ac.uk