How to make an answer key in Google Forms

Interactive step-by-step tutorial

It’s official — we’re now in the era of the digital classroom. Desktops, laptops, and tablets are now ubiquitous in modern teaching environments. Comprehensive learning tools and web-based assistants like Blackboard and Canvas enhance the experience and make connecting with your students and tracking their performance more hands-on than ever before.

E-learning is now expected to balloon to a nearly $375 billion market by 2026, a growth rate of 14.6 percent year over year. Thankfully, teachers don’t even have to learn cumbersome coding or use expensive technology to take advantage of these tools. There’s never been a better time to use e-learning solutions in your classroom, from interactive studies to game-based learning and beyond.

One way to keep your students engaged and make your job as an educator more manageable is through the accessible and convenient Google Workspace products. With Google Forms, for instance, you can create exams or pop quizzes that make grading a snap. To make tracking and grading your tests as seamless as possible, you’ll need to learn how to make an answer key in Google Forms.

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Create your answer key

Before you can figure out how to make an answer key in Google Forms, you have to nail down the kinds of questions you want to ask in your quiz. You have several options to choose from:

• Short answer
• Multiple choice
• Checkboxes
• Dropdown
• Multiple choice grid (responders select an answer within rows and columns)
• Checkbox grid (responders check off one or more answers within rows and columns)

Most of these are self-explanatory and familiar to teachers. For long-form answers, an answer key won’t be of use since you’ll need to grade each response individually — in that case, you can review and grade answers one by one.

1. Open Google Forms and create a new form. For a shortcut, you can also choose the Blank Quiz template.

2. Click on the Settings tab in your new form. Toggle on the Make this a quiz switch. You can now create your answer key as you build your quiz. 

3. Go back to the Questions tab to add your quiz questions.
4. As you add questions, use the Answer Key option in the bottom left of the question box to enter the correct answer. Enter the number of points the question is worth in the top right of the question box.

5. Click Add answer feedback to share a message, links, or even YouTube videos to provide more context for both correct and incorrect responses. 

This option helps students learn from their mistakes or get additional information on correct answers.

Grading with the answer key

Now that you know how to make an answer key in Google Forms, grading your quizzes is automatic, as you can see results immediately. Then, it’s easy to send results directly to your students.

1. After students finish the quiz, go back to the form and select the Responses tab.

2. Click the Summary tab to find the responses from all your students under Scores. If you previously chose to withhold scores from students until you had a chance to review them (in the Settings tab), you can now email the results to them by clicking Release scores.

Build and score quizzes with Jotform

Even when you know how to make an answer key in Google Forms, you might find that its features aren’t as comprehensive as you were hoping. If you’re looking for a quiz platform or form builder with more options for customization, Jotform is the solution for you.

With Jotform, you can build quizzes and tests effortlessly with more than 100 customizable quiz templates to choose from. Add custom images and fonts or, if you want a more interactive quiz, explore using conditional logic to hide or reveal questions based on a student’s previous responses. With Jotform’s Quiz tool, you can not only create tests of your own but also an answer key to automatically grade and collect results and export the results.

For large class sizes and schools, teachers can customize forms with branding and take advantage of unlimited submission storage with Jotform’s paid plans. The best part is that Jotform doesn’t have to break the bank for cost-conscious schools. Jotform offers educators and school administrators a special educational discount of 50 percent off the monthly cost of its Bronze, Silver, and Gold plans — making it a top choice for those looking for better form-building options at an affordable price.

With Jotform, reviewing and responding to your students’ performance is easier than ever. When you have a clear picture of class progress, you can better plan the trajectory of your teaching plan. Then you can give each pupil the attention they deserve and the opportunity to succeed.