Google Forms vs. CoStudy: There's a better way to run peer evaluations.
You built a Google Form. You exported to Sheets. You spent hours sorting, color-coding, and manually calculating contribution scores. You do this every semester. There's a reason you haven't found a better solution: most peer evaluation tools are expensive, complicated, or locked behind institutional contracts. CoStudy was built for you.
Building the form from scratch. Every. Semester.
Google Forms
Rebuild your survey each term. Copy-paste student names. Fix broken conditional logic. Hope students select the right teammate from a dropdown of 75 names. One typo and the data is useless.
CoStudy
Import your roster from Canvas. Assessment ready in minutes. Students see only their teammates. Roles auto-assigned. No rebuilding, no copy-paste errors, no broken logic.
The spreadsheet nightmare
Google Forms
Export to Google Sheets. Sort by team. Calculate averages. Flag outliers manually. A class of 75 students in 15 teams means 750+ data entries to process. And you teach three sections.
CoStudy
Dashboards auto-calculate everything. Team health heatmap shows struggling teams at a glance. Free-rider detection built in. Zero spreadsheet formulas.
No anonymity, no trust
Google Forms
Google Forms has no built-in anonymity for peer evaluation. Students know (or suspect) who said what. Feedback becomes political. Students rate everyone 5/5 to avoid conflict.
CoStudy
Anonymous by default. Students give honest feedback because they trust the system. Professors see everything. Students see aggregated results with no way to identify individual reviewers.
Grades don't flow back to Canvas
Google Forms
Manual grade entry. Copy scores from your spreadsheet, paste into the Canvas gradebook. Typos happen. Students email asking why their score is wrong. You check. It was a copy-paste error.
CoStudy
LTI 1.3 integration passes scores directly to the Canvas gradebook. Zero manual entry. Zero typos. Grades just appear where they belong.
No feedback for students
Google Forms
Students submit evaluations and never see results. No learning happens. Peer evaluation becomes a chore they rush through, not a growth opportunity.
CoStudy
Students get personalized feedback report cards showing strengths, growth areas, and self-vs-peer perception gaps. Peer evaluation becomes a learning experience, not just a data collection exercise.
No mid-project check-ins
Google Forms
Running a mid-project evaluation means building another form, exporting another spreadsheet, doing another round of manual analysis. So you don't. Problems fester until it's too late.
CoStudy
Click "create check-in." Done. Results flow into the same dashboards. Trend lines show if interventions are working. Students get feedback while there's still time to improve.
What you're actually spending
4 hours per evaluation cycle processing Google Forms data (building the form, exporting, sorting, calculating, entering grades)
2 cycles per course (midterm + final) x 3 courses = 24 hours per semester on spreadsheet work
CoStudy setup: 15 minutes. Ongoing work per evaluation cycle: near zero.
Stop rebuilding Google Forms.
One free course per year. No student fees. Set up in 15 minutes. Your spreadsheet era is over.