Create a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story using Google Forms
- Go to forms.google.com and sign in if you aren’t already logged in.
- Create a Blank Form.
- Click Untitled Form and type a title for your form.
- Click Untitled Question and type in some background to set up the story and ask the first question.
- Click Option 1 and type your first choice in response to the first question.
- Press Enter or click Add Option (not ADD OTHER) to add another choice.
- On the bottom right of the question, next to Required click the white circle to make this a required question. This will force your students to answer the question before being able to continue.
- Next to the Required toggle switch, click on the 3 gray to bring up the More Options menu.
- Click Go to section based on answer. For each of your answers, you will now be able to select a section in order to direct the student to the appropriate next step by selecting it from the drop down menu of available sections to the right of each answer.
- Now let’s add a section. On the right sidebar menu, click the Add section button (looks like =).
- Click Untitled Section and type in a name for your new section corresponding to the answer chosen to arrive there, e.g. if the question was “Which door will you choose” and the answers were “The door on the left” and “The door on the right”, name the section “The door on the left”. Then create another section and name it “The door on the right” so that the sections are clearly labeled based on the choice made.
- Return to the previous question and use the Go to section drop down menu to the right of the answers to assign the appropriate sections to each of the answers.
- Now scroll back down to the newly created sections and fill in the question and choices for each section by repeating steps 5-13 for each branch on your flow chart.
- When you’re finished editing the structure and questions of the form, return to the first question and add a relevant image. Steps 16-21 will help you do this.
- Click the question text and to the right (between the question text and the question type) click the image icon to add an image to the question. This will insert an image below the text and above the answer choices. You can also add images for each answer choice by clicking the text of the answer and clicking the image icon to the right of the answer text.
- The Insert image pop-up window will appear. You may upload an image by clicking the Choose an image to upload button in the center of the window or you can search for an image via Google.
- To search for an copyright free image, click the Search tab at the top right of the window.
- Then type in some keywords in the Google Search bar and press Enter.
- Click an image (or multiple) to select it and then click the Select button at the bottom left of the window.
- You can align your image by clicking the 3 gray dots at the top left corner of the image or you can resize your image by clicking on the image and clicking and dragging the corners.
- To change the color or theme of your form, click the Palette icon at the top right of the screen and select a color or click the image icon at the bottom right of the palette menu to select a theme.
- Click the Settings icon at the top right of the screen to the right of the Palette icon.
- Under the GENERAL tab, you can opt to collect email addresses if you want to verify which students have completed the form and you can also limit to 1 response if you would like to (although it’s not necessary for our purposes here). Under Respondents can: you probably want to leave both of these unchecked because we are not using this as a quiz (other than for completion) and it’s also not necessary for students to see the summary charts and text responses since Choose Your Own Adventures are more about discovery and exploration than getting the right answer.
- Under the PRESENTATION tab (next to the GENERAL tab), you can show a progress bar, shuffle question order and show a link to submit another response when student’s submit the form at the end. Showing a progress bar isn’t useful in this case because students will jump around instead of going linearly through the form. Shuffling the question order is also not useful since they will be navigating through the form based on their responses so leave both of these options unchecked. In the Confirmation message: field, click Your response has been recorded. and type in a personal message to end the adventure e.g. Thank you for saving the patient’s life!
- We are not working with a quiz so you can ignore the QUIZZES tab at the top.
- Click SAVE at the bottom right of the window to save the changes you’ve made to your settings.
- When you are satisfied with your form, click the SEND button at the top right of the screen.
- You can enter the email addresses of the people you would like to send this form to, or you can click the Link tab to get a sharable link that you can post on your LMS or another website to allow students to complete the form. Click the Embed tab if you would like to embed the form directly into a web page or email using HTML.
- Congratulations! You have created your own Choose Your Own Adventure activity using Google Forms!
If you would like to share your Google Form CYOA activity with a partner, click on the 3 dots next to the SEND button at the top of the screen. Then click Add collaborators… and send them an email invite to edit the form.
When you finish, find another group and send them the link to your form and get them to send you the link to theirs (to complete it, not to collaborate). Complete the form and provide feedback on what you liked and how they could improve it.
Hint: you can shorten the link to your form by checking the Shorten URL box under the URL.
Online Web Apps to Create Flow Charts:
Flow Chart Templates:
Other Directions for How to Create a Choose your Own Adventure Story
Silva Duckworth's Directions
Sample Adventure Template by Silvia Duckworth
Edtech Blog - Using Choose Your Own Adventure with Google Forms
Bill Selak: Choose Your Own Adventure Directions & Example
Using Google Forms to Make a Pick a Path Book
Create 'Choose Your Own Adventure' using Google Forms
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