Dive Brief:

• A New Jersey teacher is experimenting with a new take on document-based questions that uses  Google Forms and videos to create an interactive learning experience.
• Kelly Grotrian, a social studies teacher at East Brunswick High School, is creating video-based questions, where students view the content and then respond in Google Forms.
• The approach grew from Grotrian’s efforts to offer more engaging instructional methods.

Dive Insight:

Grotrian’s approach offers a quick and dirty way for schools to experiment with a more interactive, digitally driven approach. She embeds videos linked to current news events in Google Forms. For example, students recently watched a video of President Barack Obama speaking about same-sex marriage and then responded to questions about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

Grotrian also offered a tip for a way to take the interactive learning module and make it student-driven: Have students make their own videos around relevant questions aligned to the Common Core State Standards.