[tweet]How do I keep kids from cheating on a Google Form?[/tweet] One of the ways we used to discourage cheating for paper assessments was to create different versions. [tweet]But, it is a pain to manage multiple Google Forms. You want all versions and all retakes to be in the SAME Google Form. [/tweet]
Shuffle Question Order
In the settings of Google Forms on the “Presentation tab” you can choose “Shuffle question order.” This is certainly one way to prevent students from sharing “the answer to question 5.” Note that ALL the questions shuffle including “What is your name?”
Create Sections
Suggestion to always create a section to separate out the demographic questions from the assessment questions. This way when you shuffle questions in the settings the questions only shuffle within the section preventing “What is your name” from being question #6.
Create a LOT of Sections
Try having only one or two questions per section. This will mean you need a LOT of sections. The idea is to create multiple pathways that would result in different versions of the same Google Form.
Use a Multiple Choice Branching
Within each section I give students a multiple choice question asking what kind of question they want to answer next. I then have a section for each question option.
3 Dots
On each question there is a 3 dots “More options” menu in the bottom right hand corner. Select this to “Go to section based on answer” and “Shuffle option order.” If the students strategy is to always pick the first option then if they take the assessment again the first option will send them to different places than the first time.
Add More Branching!
I add like 30 sections to my Google Form so that after each section they are asked where they want to branch to next.
If you want to keep it generic give them the option for “Question”, “Question “, “Question ” (Notice that one of the options has one space after the word question and the other has 2 spaces after the word question. You can not have choice options that are identical.)
Point Warning
If students never visit a section they will not get the points for the section. While this is expected, it will make their percentages artificially low. Be sure to look at how many points they did get rather than looking at total points in the Google Form.
