Google form for Departments to allow faculty to upload Reflection Forms

Google form that can be used by departments to allow faculty to upload their Faculty Reflection Forms

This is unrelated to the Summary web-app but this is related, so it seemed reasonable to move it here. We will add to this as needed (and as resources permit), but here are the instructions for how to easily set up a form for your faculty to use to submit their Faculty Reflection Forms in a way that is easy for you to access and send to reviewers. You can modify this upload form as needed (it links faculty to the main template for the Reflection Form that they can download and fill in and upload). You are welcome to customize either of these for your department (please do not delete elements from the Reflection Form itself or drastically increase the work needed to fill it out).

If you find parts of this unclear, please contact us; this Google form and/or these instructions may evolve in response to your feedback.

Important: These instructions are not meant for individual faculty to use; they are for departmental use only.

The person responsible for housing these files for the department should follow these steps (usually the Department Chair or departmental admin); these files can be moved elsewhere later (for archival), but it is recommended that they remain where they are uploaded to be certain that the links in the spreadsheet work properly. 

Get a copy using the template

1. Click here to access the template to copy to your Google drive

2. Click the  “Use template” button in the upper right corner

3. When it says “Missing File Upload folders”, click on “Restore” (far right)

This should put a Google form in your Google drive that you can edit (for example, you could delete the “Department” prompt or give them a list to choose from). Also, please do not share the folder so that "Anyone with the link" or "Austin Community College" have access; only share with the people who need to read the submitted forms.

Before use - setup and getting a link to send to faculty

1. If you would like to move your form to a different folder in your Google drive (it’s put in “My Drive” by default), open the form (it’s called “Faculty Reflection form uploads”), click on the triple-dot menu (upper right corner) and choose “Make a copy” and put it in a new folder (it cannot be on a Shared Drive, however).

2. Now, go to “Responses”

3. Click on “Link to Sheets”

4. Choose “Create a new spreadsheet” and click on “Create” (on the upper right)

5. Go into the folder where your form lives and share the folder "Faculty Reflection Form uploads (File responses)” with everyone who will need to view the reflection forms (this can be done later, after the forms are collected); uncheck “Notify people” - you will send them links to the files later from the Google sheet.

6. Click on the “Send” button at the top of the page, then choose the middle icon after “Send via” that looks a bit like (-) (the “link” icon) and click on the “Copy” button. You can then paste this link into an announcement for your faculty instructing them how to submit their Reflection Forms.

Viewing the submissions

You can track who has submitted a form and when by going into the attached Google sheet (go to “Responses”, click on “Link to sheets” after you have followed the instructions above to create it). You can also either use the file links there to review the files or copy/paste the links in an email/Google doc to whoever will review them (after you have shared the folder noted above with them).

So, as an example, I embedded this from the Google sheet for a form I uploaded for testing (the file isn't filled in); you can just copy the corresponding info for your faculty out of the sheet and paste it into something for your reviewers. All they have to do is click on the link (scroll to the far right in my example below) to view the file, as long as they have access to your folder above. (For my example, I have it set so “anyone with the link” can view, but you wouldn’t want to do that…)

Dean's offices

If you are in a Dean's office and would like to set something up as a central form that all of your departments could use the same form, please contact us and we can help you develop a customized version of this form. (This probably only makes sense if your departments are quite small.)

Quick note on security

Faculty do not need access to the folder in order to upload their forms (that's why we're using this method for upload). In fact, we strongly recommend that you do not have the Sharing settings for the folder "Faculty Reflection Form uploads (File responses)” set to allow "Anyone with the link" or "Austin Community College" be checked under "General Access" (at the bottom of the Sharing panel). Set it so that only the people who need to read the files can access this folder, and if it's more than just the Department Chair and the departmental admin, we recommend you just email them the list of links from the spreadsheet rather than having them open the folder directly.

Some technical notes about the form settings

There are some configuration notes about this form that you should be aware of and/or might want to modify:

• If you would like the form "owner" to get an email notification every time someone submits a form, you should open the form, click on Responses, click on the triple-dot menu just to the right of View in Sheets, and then choose Get email notifications for new responses.

• The form is set to require ACC sign-in, collect email addresses, and send responders a copy of the response. We recommend you leave these as-is.

• The form is set to not allow editing but to allow people to submit more than one form; if you plan to use this for more than just the fall reflection forms, you should continue to allow more than one submission, you should probably leave these as-is. If you plan to use different Google forms (you can Copy this one to a new one under the triple-dot menu on the upper right) for each semester, then you might consider changing these settings.

• The form is set to allow only a single file be uploaded per person with a maximum file size of 10 MB. You probably shouldn't change this unless you have a specific reason to do so. There is a 100 GB limit to the total files uploaded via the form, so you shouldn't need to reset the form for quite a while. (These files should generally be quite small...)

• The Google username for each person will be added on to the end of whatever filename they use on their upload, so even if something happens to the link in the spreadsheet, you should be able to scan the filenames to find the submitter. (You can find the files inside the folder "Faculty Reflection Form uploads (File responses)” and "Upload your Faculty Reflection Form for the semester by clicking on the button below/ (If you don't have the form, you can download a copy here.) (File responses)". This is why you should generally access the files from the links in the spreadsheet...)

Uploading into Box instead (does not work as well as Google for this)

There is a method to allow faculty (without a Box account) to upload files directly into a folder in Box instead, but it is very limited. Everything goes into the same folder, but you don't get the nice spreadsheet with info like time/date submitted, semester, year, name, and file links; you just get a folder with a bunch of files in it. The upload form for faculty isn't as flexible either (so much harder to include instructions, etc.), so this would mainly be of use to relatively small departments that are really focused on using Box rather than Google drive. If you really want to do it this way, please contact us and we'll send you some instructions, but the Google form is really a better option for most people.