September 04, 2015

Using Google Forms to Get Started with Scheduling Therapy

use google forms to get started with the scheduling process

When trying to attack the daunting task of scheduling therapy in the past, I have handed out scheduling forms for teachers to attach their schedule or to write down the times that will absolutely NOT work for me to meet with students from their classroom. This has worked fine, but still resulted in me shuffling through a dozen different teacher responses to figure out how to fit my students into the times available. And you know there are never enough times available.


This year I decided to approach this in a different way at one of my buildings. I created a Google Form for teachers to fill out in which they can select all the times that WILL and WILL NOT work for me to meet with their students. Here's how:

Step 1: Sign into your Google account and go to Google Drive.


Step 2: On the left-hand side of the screen, click "new", then "more", then "Google Forms".


Step 3: Make sure to name your Form at the top, and then you can start adding questions. The "Question Title" is where you type what you want your question to say. This is what will show up on the response spreadsheet (more on that later). I made my first question "Name" so that I would be able to see who each response belonged to.



Step 4: Select the Question Type. Google Forms has a lot of different question types, but for this scheduling form's purpose I chose "Checkboxes" because I wanted teachers to be able to select more than one answer. You can also choose whether or not you want your questions to be required. I used the "Help Text" to provide further instructions ("Please select all times that would work for students to go to therapy.")


Step 5: To add another question, click "Add item". You will go through the same steps as you did to create previous questions. In this case, I created another question that allows teachers to select all times that do NOT work on a specific day of the week.



Step 6: This is optional, but at the bottom of my form I added an additional question using the "Paragraph text" option. This is a space where teachers can type in any other information that might be helpful for me to know.


Step 7: When you've added all the questions you need, you can change the look of the form by clicking "Change theme".


Step 8: When you are ready to send your beautiful form out to all your teachers, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "Send form". A pop-up box will allow you to copy a link to the form or type in email addresses to send invitations to.


Once people respond to your survey, their answers are automatically compiled into a handy spreadsheet for you to see their responses all in the same place! Now you will be able to have just one form to refer to when attempting to schedule students. (cue heavenly music)



Unfortunately, you're still on your own to put it all into an actual therapy schedule...but at least this is a great starting point! I liked that I wasn't shuffling through a stack of notes and teacher schedules to figure out where to put students on my schedule. So will you try this out? Let me know how it works for you!

If you'd like to watch a more detailed video tutorial, this is a great one on YouTube.

P.S. I also see this being a great tool for creating progress monitoring "quizzes" for students working on vocabulary skills!

8 comments:

  1. School starts September 8--I am definitely going to give this a try! Thank you!

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  2. Thank you!!! Got mine made using your tutorial. I am so excited to send it out and see how it works! Such a great idea:)

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    1. Excellent! I hope it makes scheduling easier for you :)

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  3. Ok. Has anyone gotten their schedule(s) down using this? I'm definitely contemplating this for my middle school scheduling!!!! I'd *LOVE* a follow-up!!
    Love the tutorial, too! Almost like you live your life doing task analysis for everything.... ;)

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    1. Thanks Sarah! I didn't get responses back from *all* the teachers I sent it to, but the majority did reply (and I was able to get a copy of teacher schedules from the ones that didn't respond). For me, it made scheduling easier because I wasn't shuffling through many papers with teacher schedules, I could simply click on their individual responses and double-check if a time did or did not work for a student. Also, since their responses are automatically stored in my Google Drive, I can always quickly look back at their times when scheduling conflicts arise or if I need to schedule a make-up session. Thanks for reading!

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