Item: Google Forms
Rating: 8
Author: Jessica Meadows Rich

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Google forms in a couple of places on our website as student survey tools/to gain feedback. We have one form that is accessible from the footer of our site and asks students to provide suggestions of new topics and tutorials they would like to see at our site. This is pretty open-ended and is available to every visitor to our site. We use this feedback to determine which content we choose to add to the site.

Other forms are used to gather feedback regarding specific education programs and tend to be more specific regarding the student's experience within the program. These forms are used to ensure that we are providing a quality experience and determine if there are any issues with the program that needs to be addressed. These forms are provided to learners at the conclusion of the program.

Pros and Cons

Ease of Use: No special skills or even advanced experience with technology is required. Most employees should be able to use the products with little assistance.
Robust features: Google Forms was recently updated with more features, making it a rather robust, feature-rich tool. There are still limits to customization but it should provide you with at least 95% of what you need from it.
Cost: Using cloud-based, open platform tools like Google Forms (G-suite) helps organizations like mine (a nonprofit) to be productive without worrying about the bottom line.

Lack of options: For all of the features that have recently been added, Google Forms still lacks some customization options and may not provide you with some features that a paid option may provide.
"Clunkiness": Elements, once created within one question "box", can't be moved or easily duplicated and added to another box. There's a lot of manual copying and pasting/retyping when you'd expect to be able to just duplicated or freely move elements within the entirety of the form.
Lack of clarity around some features: With the addition of new features recently, it has also made the overall tool a little less intuitive. While still relatively easy to use, some features or options are not obvious from the start. There is probably more clicking around and exploring to discover what some features and options actually do now.

Return on Investment

We've been able to gather feedback quickly and efficiently without spending any of the organizational budget.
We've been able to address concerns or issues due to the feedback, therefore improving our programming.
We continue to get great suggestions and feedback from learners regarding what they want to learn or see on our site.

Alternatives Considered

I haven't used another product.

Other Software Used

Basecamp, Slack

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need some basic/straightforward forms, such as quizzes, surveys, or other form input, Google Forms will likely serve your needs 95% of the time. If you need a feature-rich, complicated form solution, you'll likely need to build something in-house or purchase off the shelf. Also: plenty of companies would prefer to have something that can be completely customized and not have the distinct look of a Google Form, from a branding point of view. But for small organizations that aren't bothered by the look of Google Forms, don't care if people recognize it as a Google Form, or if for the organization that needs an economical option, Google Forms is a great solution.

A surprisingly robust, free form option

Overall Satisfaction with Google Forms