This week Google announced two new Google Workspaces for Education features that are sure to be beneficial to students. Both of the new features are things that teachers and students have requested for years. The first is a new set of citation options in Google Documents. The second is a new “save in progress” option in Google Forms.

Google Docs has included a citation and bibliography tool for quite a while. This week Google announced that new citation options are going to be available in Google Docs soon, if you don’t already have them. The new options include citing films (movies), television shows, and a catch-all miscellaneous category.

The other new Google Workspaces for Education feature that Google announced this week is an option to save Google Forms responses in progress. Google is calling this feature “draft responses.” Draft responses will let students save their responses to a Google Form without having to actually submit the form or leave the form open in the background. Draft responses can be saved for up to thirty days. Students will need to be signed into a Google Workspaces for Education account in order to save their responses in progress.

Draft responses in Google Forms is a beta product. Your Google Workspaces for Education domain administrator will need to apply for the beta in order for your school to use it. Domain administrators can apply for the beta here.

Applications for Education

As I mentioned above, the ability to save Google Forms responses in progress is a feature that teachers have requested for years. This feature will remove some of the pressure to give students a finite period of time to complete a quiz or other activity in Google Forms. I have never been a fan of timed quizzes so this new feature is particularly appealing to me.