What is MS Forms? 

Microsoft Forms is freely available for you to use as part of the MS365 suite at the University.  It’s a simple and versatile tool you can apply to teaching and learning. As a student response app, you can use it to support engaging students and check understanding, and it enables you to gather and respond dynamically to feedback, especially with large classes.

It allows you to create as many polls and quizzes as you like and there is no restriction on the number of responses. It can also be used securely with students with University authentication and anonymous response options.

 What can I do with MS Forms? 

You can use Forms to create interactive quizzes, surveys, and polls to incorporate active learning in your face-to-face and online teaching, to support student engagement and inclusivity. 

Here are some examples of how you can use Forms: 

Community building 

You can use forms to create ice breaker activities or warm up questions before or at the start of your teaching session.  

Provide a link to a Form on Blackboard and ask students to answer the question(s) to prepare for the session. You can use a Forms quiz as an activity at the beginning of a session to focus your class on the topic. 

Assessment and feedback 

You can create interactive quizzes, surveys, and polls using a range of question types (e.g. multiple choice, ranking, word cloud) and gather real-time feedback during in class or in an online session. You can use Forms to: 

• Create customised questions including multimedia elements 

• Set automated grading for quizzes 

• Check students’ existing knowledge 

• Ask quick questions for instant feedback – check in-class understanding 

• Conclude a session with a quiz and a debrief 

• Guide in-class discussions in the right direction 

• Share live results in real time and export them to Excel for deeper analysis. 

Sharing ideas and inclusion 

Forms provides a means for all students to contribute fairly, especially in larger classes where student numbers might pose limitations on equal participation. It can be an effective way to engage quieter students in the classroom, and the anonymous option might encourage participation and interaction 

Effective classroom engagement  

Forms can help you connect with students during the session, so they feel more involved. You can use Forms: 

• as an activity to gain/maintain students’ attention/interest 

• at strategic points to break up the session 

• to generate discussions – for example, discuss and analyse the answers with students. 

 For step-by-step guidance, please see the TEL support guide on MS Forms for teaching and learning.