Gathering Information with Microsoft Forms
What will this topic cover?
This topic is part of the wider Effective Communication & Collaboration pathway. The topic will introduce you to Microsoft Forms as a tool for gathering information from both colleagues and students.
Efficient data collection and analysis are crucial for making informed decisions. Microsoft Forms offers a user-friendly solution for gathering and reviewing data within an organisation. With MS Forms, you can easily create surveys, quizzes, and polls to collect valuable feedback from colleagues and students. The platform’s intuitive interface allows for quick setup and customisation, ensuring that your forms meet specific needs.
Collect data from a large group quickly and efficiently.
Keeping data within MS Forms and MS 365 helps to protect your data and keep it secure.
View responses in real-time, generate visual reports, and export data to Excel for deeper insights.
How to use this topic page
This topic page is split up into different sections. Each section has a step and an activity to complete. These include scenarios and links off to instructions to try elements for yourself. Each learning unit also has a reflective section to think about how this will be used within your own practice.
Step 1: How to create a Form
How do I create a Form?
Follow the link in Activity 1 to learn the basics of creating a Microsoft Form. The following questions in this step will help you decide what type of Form and questions will suit your needs.
What options do I have when creating a Form?
Form:
The form option is typically used to create a general survey where there are no correct or incorrect answers, but rather you are just trying to gather general information from those responding. All question types can be used.
Note, if you are conducting live quizzing or polling within a meeting or teaching session, a form is generally the better option over a quiz as automatic marking is typically not required in this approach.
Quiz:
The quiz is typically the option you would choose when you want to check knowledge and have the responses automatically marked.
Only Choice and short-form Text questions can be fully automatically marked. Any other question type will require you to review the response and mark it correct/incorrect or provide a mark.
Activity 1: Try it yourself
Visit the link below, read through the instructions and try creating your own MS Form.
Step 2: Creating a Complex Form (Branching Questions)
Why use branching questions?
Having mastered the basics of creating an MS Form, you now move onto more complex Forms. This step looks at branching, which can be used to tailor what the responder sees depending on how they answer certain questions.
Including branching in your Forms allows you to be more targeted with your questions and prevents responders wasting time reading through additional questions that aren’t relevant to them.
Activity 2: Scenario
Read through this scenario and think about the question below. Click on the answer button to find out an example solution.
Jem recently organised a conference and sent round a link containing two feedback forms, one for presenters and one for attendees. They have had lots of questions back from presenters about whether they should fill in both forms and many people have filled in the wrong form.
What could Jem have done differently?
Using branching questions could have made this process much simpler for Jem. They could have started the form with general questions about attendance at the conference. Following these questions, Jem could have included a Choice question asking whether the respondent also presented at the conference.
Using branching, if ‘No’ was selected, the respondent would be instructed to finish and submit their responses. If ‘Yes’ was selected, the respondent would have been asked to answer a few additional questions relating to their experience of presenting.
Using this method, Jem would have been able to send out just one feedback form, reducing confusion, and helping to keep all their responses stored in a single place for easy reviewing and comparison.
Step 3: Collaborate on a Form
Should I add my colleague as a collaborator to my Form?
It’s typically helpful for colleagues to collaborate on the creation of a Form and to be able to view the responses. Sharing editing access to a Form helps to prevent a single point of failure and streamlines workflows. As with sharing files, it’s important to make sure that only the right people are given access through the proper sharing option to ensure that data is protected.
Activity 3: Try it yourself
Visit the link below and try adding a colleague to a Form.
Please make sure that this is a draft Form that is safe to share.
Step 4: Share a Form to collect responses
How do I collect responses to my Form?
Once your Form is ready to go, you’ll need to share it with your intended audience to start collecting responses. You can easily do this by generating a shareable link or sending the Form directly via email. This ensures that everyone can access and complete the Form, allowing you to gather the necessary data efficiently. Complete Activity 4 to learn how about to share your form and the different options you can choose from.
As with file sharing, you should manage your access permissions appropriately to ensure you only collect data from the required people.
What options do I have for sharing?
Via email or Teams:
Sending a Form directly within an email or Teams message would be useful in situations where you have a pre-determined short list of people or an exisitng email group/Teams channel from which you are looking to collect the data.
QR Code & URL:
Using a QR code and/or URL is typically beneficial when you are collecting responses as part of a presentation or meeting. The QR code can be accessed by those with phones while the URL can be clicked if presenting with PowerPoint Live or shared in a Teams chat.
Embed code:
An embed code is appropriate if you are wanting to include your Form as a permanent feature on a website.
Activity 4: Try it yourself
Visit the link below and learn how to share your Form to collect responses. You may want to try sharing the Form with a couple of colleagues and asking them to submit responses to test it.
Please make sure that this is a draft Form that is safe to share.
Step 5: View and Share your Form Responses
How do I see the responses to my Form?
Once you have created and distributed your Form, you will want to be able to review the results you collect.
Can I share the responses with a colleague that isn’t a collaborator?
We should be purposeful with the data we collect, only asking for the information we need and keeping it stored securely within Microsoft and the University of Lincoln’s systems. If you need to share your results with colleagues, you should do so by using the ‘share’ function within Microsoft. Read the Microsoft Support page below to learn how to review and share your results effectively.
Activity 5: Try it yourself
Visit the link below to learn how to view your Form responses and look at the different viewing options available to you.
Step 6: Reflection
What have I learnt from this learning topic?
This step is designed to help you think about what you have learned and how this applies to your own practice and context. Learning Activity 6 will ask you some questions to help you with this reflection.
Activity 6: Reflect
Use the following questions to help you think about your own practice.
- Do you use often have to collect data and do you use the methods above?
- Do you think you can improve your practice and how?
- How do you currently store responses? Are there any single points of failure in your workflow and has this learning topic taught you anything new you could implement?
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