Scantron Is Not An Option
January 29, 2015 7:04 PM   Subscribe

Is there a way to create a Google Forms quiz which will grade itself and email or text me the results?

I run a live trivia show in a comedy club once a week. We perform what amounts to a game show onstage, and the audience is given the opportunity to simultaneously participate via Google Form.

Making and disseminating the form has not been a problem so far, and shockingly enough, people seem to be participating.

The problem is grading the quizzes in real time, while I also perform various show-related tasks. Without wifi or the ability to tether my phone (iPhone 4s) to my laptop (chromebook). So far I've been bringing up Google Docs on my phone and manually grading the results, but this is messy at best and will become unfeasible if the number of participants grows at all.

What I'd like is some kind of script, Google Forms add-on, or IFTTT recipe that will grade the quizzes at a predetermined time and then send me the results in a way that is easy for me to access using my phone's data plan (email would be ideal).

Is there an app for that?

I'm open to a different quiz app, but whatever we use needs to be as accessible to the general public as Google Forms is. In the long term I'd love to get a portable hotspot, but right now it's not in the budget.
posted by Sara C. to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
What about Quizlet? I don't think you can centrally manage the grading, but it would probably be easy enough to have competitors bring their smartphones to the front to register their grades.
posted by fifthrider at 8:07 PM on January 29, 2015


Best answer: This add-on to Google Forms seems like it might solve some, if not all, of your problem: Flubaroo.
posted by roshy at 8:12 PM on January 29, 2015


Another option: jotform.com has a template for a quiz that gets graded, or you can make one from scratch. You can set it up so that you get an email notifier of name & score, and/or sync the results with a google spreadsheet. The are only free for up to 100 submissions per month, as a caveat if your trivia night is really popular.
posted by neda at 8:43 PM on January 29, 2015


Response by poster: I've already discovered Flubaroo, which is half the battle just in quiz-grading alone. However, considering that it's a 50/50 shot whether Google Sheets will actually cooperate on my phone, adding Flubaroo to the mix in real time seems risky. What I'd really love is something that would allow Flubaroo to run itself and then ping me the results. (Whether via email, text, push notification, whatever.)

Having everyone bring up their phone might work OK for now, while we're a very small operation and typically get 3-5 audience members playing along. But the goal is for more than 10 people to come to our shows. And getting 10-20 people onstage to compare phones isn't feasible.

Jotform, on the other hand, might be an option. Especially if it's as user-friendly for the general public as a Google Form is (especially via smartphone), and if there's a built-in mechanism to have everyone's score emailed to me.
posted by Sara C. at 9:37 PM on January 29, 2015


Qualtrics should be able to do whatever you want in this regard. It's very extensible and the customer support has been great (caveat: I have an account through my university, but anyone can also create a free account. Not sure of the differences or if any of them would be relevant to your situation.)
posted by karbonokapi at 10:35 PM on January 29, 2015


Best answer: Google Apps Script is basically made for this. You can execute arbitrary Javascript functions in response to Google Forms submissions (among other things), which could include sending mail from Gmail or computing and adding a value to a column on the spreadsheet backing the form, or basically anything.

If you need any pointers please feel free to PM me, I worked with Apps Script a bunch a year ago.
posted by books for weapons at 2:15 AM on January 30, 2015


Seconding Qualtrics.
posted by puritycontrol at 7:17 AM on January 30, 2015


Best answer: You can do this with some fairly straightforward add-ons to google spreadsheets.

copyDown will automatically run a formula (or a few) to determine someone's score, and formMule will automatically send you an email with the results at a predetermined time!
posted by violetish at 1:57 PM on January 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: So it turns out the best solution right now is the Google Sheets app for my phone. Using the app, i'm able to open the quiz results spreadsheet quickly and manipulate it easily so that I can see everyone's answers. I haven't figured out if it's possible to use Flubaroo with the app, but since we're averaging 5-6 participants in the "audience play along" quiz right now, manually grading the quizzes is fine.

All of these suggestions are great for the future, when I can't visually scan across a spreadsheet to see who has the most right answers because we have a full house.
posted by Sara C. at 10:46 AM on February 1, 2015


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