This afternoon I facilitated a workshop in which teachers, librarians, and school administrators explored Google Advanced Search, Google Sites, and Google Documents. One of the most popular aspects of Google Documents that I showed to participants was collecting information through forms in Google Documents. One of the aspects of using forms in Google Documents that I often demonstrate is using the Flubaroo script to grade multiple choice and or true/false questions.

Flubaroo is a free script that you can use grade the quizzes that you administer through Google Docs. Flubaroo provides great step-by-step directions for using the script. I’ll give an quick overview of how it works. First, create your multiple choice quiz using Forms in Google Docs (get directions here). Then take the quiz yourself and have students take the quiz (you can embed it in a webpage or direct students to the URL for your form). Now instead of trying to grade the spreadsheet cells you will insert the Flubaroo script by selecting it from the “insert” menu in your spreadsheet. Once the Flubaroo script is inserted just select it and it will grade the quiz for you.

Watch the video below for a demonstration of Flubaroo.

Applications for Education
While multiple choice quizzes definitely don’t fall into the category of authentic assessment they are still used by teachers for a variety of purposes. If you use multiple choice quizzes for any purpose, giving that quiz through Google Docs and grading it with Flubaroo could save you a lot of time that you can put to better use on other tasks.