Many day-to-day activities for the Machine Technology program are now being manged using out-of-the-box features in SharePoint and Office 365 as we’ll see below with a quiz built using Microsoft Forms. Those features are complemented by custom page layouts and our Mobile Apps to manage grading and submission of homework assignments.  Each time new features and components like these are added to the environment one should carefully consider the right way to implement and build those components based on several factors ranging from general best-practices and SDLC management/cost to the specifics required by the scenario, its participants, and the best way to create their user experience.

Now, we know that students’ final grades are made up of more than the scores they receive for documents and homework assignments. We are also all familiar with the fact that artifacts like quizzes, tests, mid-terms, and finals feed into students’ final grades. And, though some students do dread tests and quizzes, at least Office 365 made them easy to create, distribute, and submit.

Let’s look at a designing forms in Office 365 for Education with Microsoft Forms – for our scenario we’ll focus specifically on forms for Test and Quizzes.

Education Solutions with Microsoft Forms in Office 365

The word “ubiquitous” comes to mind when thinking about forms and the web. Microsoft has long been focused on web-forms scenarios…whether it be for the Internet, intranets, extranets, stand-alone apps, and so on. They often refine and reshape the design, publish, fill[ing], and follow-up data mining experience around web forms…in multiple software suites and platforms.

And, with the deprecation of InfoPath in SharePoint, it was obvious that Microsoft would be implementing new-and-improved functionality for the forms experience in O365 to coexist with Microsoft Access, SharePoint forms, and others that still have a mid-to-high bar for entry.

We see that new-and-improved functionality in the Office 365 Education portal dashboard as “Forms“:

Microsoft Office 365 Forms

Creating a Microsoft Office 365 Forms Quiz

When clicking on this new entry point, Microsoft makes the first steps obvious and consistent with what we see in other newer applications like Microsoft O365 Planner.

Adding Quiz Questions with Microsoft Forms

There are a few types of questions that Teachers can add. Of concern for our scenario is the “Quiz” type of question. It comes with two features that are particularly useful:

• “Correct Answer” – lets the Teachers specify which of the options is the correct choice.
• “Points” – assign points to a question, and those point values can vary from question-to-question in the quiz allowing the teacher to weight questions.

Sending the Quiz to Students

After all questions are added, Teachers need to publish the quiz for their Students. Yet again, the UI is very straightforward and we see help toast as is consistent with the Office 365 experience:

Send the Office 365 Forms Quiz

Teachers have all of the choices for distributing the quiz they expect and some they will not (e.g. QR Code):

One potential shortcoming for Teachers is that the “Email the link” supports client “mailto:” behavior. Teachers are often working in the Outlook O365 web application and do not have the client installed or launched. This and other opportunities for improved integration with the O365 ecosystem are open for Microsoft to tackle, and with the Evergreen cycle at full-speed I’m sure we’ll be seeing such enhancements in the near future (whether we’re ready for them or not).

Taking the Quiz with Office 365 Microsoft Forms

The most effective choice for distribution in our scenario was to take the link and surface it through a web part on the home page. Students navigate to the Machine Technology Education Solution home page at their desk and click the link to launch the quiz form. Aside from being simple and automated, students also get immediate feedback after submitting (this is an option you can enable/disable when sending the form. Note, “See all settings” in the previous diagram.):

Viewing the Quiz Responses in Microsoft Forms

To view the quiz, Teachers click the “Responses” tab, and they are given several useful views of results:

1. Summary: shows reports over all submitted responses.
2. Individual: lets the Teacher select a specific Student and traverse over submission(s) for the quiz. Allowing multiple submissions is another publish option.
3. Details: shows all Students’ responses for a given question.

These reports and drill-ins render quickly, are clean, and provide relevant/useful data through which the Teacher can easily identify patterns where certain subject matter are misunderstood, certain students consistently fail to perform, and if the Teacher wants to go deeper into reporting s/he can export to Excel and manipulate the data through powerful Excel reporting and BI features.

Next

In previous posts, we’ve covered:

• Basic Information Architecture and Aligning IA with Search.
• Bootstrap and custom navigation added to promote intuitive discovery and a standard mobile user experience.
• Important reference information apps accessed on the shop floor through custom page layouts.
• Assignments being submitted and graded through a combination of SharePoint OOTB Document Set architecture and a Provider Hosted Add-In.

And, now we have the broader Office 365 Education tenant providing access to a simple yet powerful forms designer, filler, and reporting UI for Tests/Quizzes, general surveys, and date specific feedback – Microsoft Forms.

It’s still a priority to cover portions of the SQL BI side of our EMS – hopefully enough of that stack will be built-up in time for the next post.

Categories: Education Solutions, Machine Technology, Office 365 and O365

Tags: Education, EMS, Office