Google documents continues to improve. The latest addition is particularly interesting for teachers and researchers as it lets you create online forms. Of course many services (like www.surveymonkey.com) let you do this but what is really exciting here is that Google lets you either publish the form online or email it to people. The recipients then get an email with your questions (multiple choice, scale, multiple options, paragraph) and answer them in their email programme, click the included ’submit’ button and the answers come to you.

The integration with other Google programmes pays off because the form results are automatically captured in your online spreadsheets, so collating results is a thing of the past. The spreadsheet programme lets you do sums, averages and other basic calculations or you can submit the results to your favourite statistical package.

This is an excellent tool for obtaining course feedback from your students, for doing quick surveys (what topic would you like me to cover in next week’s class?) and of course for conducting survey research. Teachers could also use this form simple tests.

You can also embed the form in your website. Here is an example: