Here are some of the best questions for an online course student survey about course content quality, plus tips to help you craft them. You can generate a survey like this in seconds with Specific, so you can collect truly useful feedback without all the manual work.
Best open-ended questions for online course student surveys
Open-ended questions let students give detailed feedback. They’re perfect when you want honesty, nuance, or suggestions that structured responses might miss. This approach gives students room to describe their unique experiences, which is especially valuable in digital learning environments where context often gets lost.
Here are 10 of the best open-ended questions to use when gathering feedback about course content quality:
What aspects of the course content helped you understand the topic most effectively?
Were there any lessons or modules that you found confusing or lacking details? Please elaborate.
How well did the course materials (videos, readings, assignments) support your learning?
Can you describe specific topics where the explanations could be improved or made clearer?
Did you feel the course content was relevant to your personal or professional goals? Why or why not?
Were there areas where you felt more real-world examples would have helped? Please give examples.
If you could add or remove any parts of the course, what would they be and why?
How did the pacing of new material feel — too fast, too slow, or about right? What changes would you suggest?
Were supplemental resources (like quizzes or discussion forums) helpful or distracting? Explain your experience.
What is one suggestion you’d offer to improve the overall quality of the course content?
This type of depth really matters. Recent studies found that completion rates for MOOCs are typically under 15%, but cohort-based courses—often more interactive and responsive to feedback—see rates above 85% [1][2]. Getting actionable feedback on your course’s content is key to raising engagement and improving those stats.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for online course student survey
Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want quick, easy-to-quantify answers or need to kick off deeper exploration. Sometimes it’s easier for students to pick from clear options—then you can dig for richer feedback with follow-up questions as needed.
Question: How would you rate the overall quality of the course content?
Excellent
Good
Average
Poor
Question: Did you feel the level of detail in the course content was:
Too advanced
About right
Too basic
Other
Question: Which type of course material did you find most valuable for your learning?
Video lectures
Readings
Assignments
Discussion forums
When to follow up with "why?" When a student’s answer could have multiple interpretations, or you want to know what led them to their choice, always follow up with “why?” For example, if a student selects “Poor” for content quality, ask: “Can you tell us more about what made the course content poor in your experience?” This uncovers actionable details and richer context, which are crucial for improvement.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? It's smart to include “Other” when you can’t guarantee your listed options cover every possible answer. A follow-up after “Other” lets you capture insights you hadn’t even considered—sometimes, these are the most valuable points in the survey.
Should you add an NPS question in your quality survey?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question is one of the simplest, yet most powerful, feedback tools for online course quality. It asks students how likely they are to recommend the course on a 0–10 scale, then follows up to understand their reasoning. This identifies your strongest advocates and sharpest critics quickly. For online courses, NPS helps you correlate perceived content quality with referral potential—which can directly affect future enrollments. If you want to see this setup, try our NPS survey for online courses.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are game-changers for survey insights. Instead of one-size-fits-all forms, automated followups let your survey respond like a real conversation, clarifying and going deeper right as the feedback comes in. Research shows that adding thoughtful follow-ups boosts the richness and actionability of insights—not only do you hear what students think, you learn why they think it. [3]
Specific uses AI to craft and ask smart follow-up questions in real time. If a student's comment is vague or unclear, the AI knows to clarify, so you get details that actually inform course improvements. This replaces endless back-and-forth email chases, making feedback loops faster, less annoying, and much more conversational.
Student: "Some of the modules were boring."
AI follow-up: "Can you share which modules felt boring to you, and what you think would make them more engaging?"
How many followups to ask? We’ve found that two or three well-chosen follow-up questions are enough to get the full story—just set up your survey to stop when you’ve gotten the info you need, or let students skip ahead if they want. Specific makes this easy to customize.
This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of firing blanks and hoping for details, your survey becomes a two-way chat that feels natural and engaging.
Qualitative analysis is easy with AI: With open-ended responses and lots of context, AI-powered survey analysis like this does the heavy lifting—summarizing patterns, surfacing hot topics, and letting you chat with your data.
Try generating a survey with automated followups just to experience how much better and easier it gets.
How to prompt ChatGPT for great course content survey questions
If you want an AI like ChatGPT to help write your online course student survey, just ask! Here’s a starting point:
First, try a broad prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for online course student survey about course content quality.
To get even better results, give context about your course, audience, and goals (AI always works better with context):
I am an instructor for an online professional development course in project management. Our students have a mix of backgrounds and varying experience with online learning. My goal is to improve the relevance and clarity of all course modules. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a student survey about course content quality.
Next, ask AI to organize its ideas with categories:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Finally, pick the categories that matter most and drill deeper. Example:
Generate 10 questions for the categories "clarity of content" and "practical application".
What is a conversational survey in practice?
A conversational survey doesn’t feel like a test or a form—it’s an interactive chat that adapts naturally to each response, probing until it uncovers what really matters. This format is especially useful with online course students, who may not always articulate their thoughts unless prompted with tailored follow-ups. The difference from manual survey creation is huge; instead of scripting everything line by line, an AI survey generator structures your questions, follow-ups, and analysis automatically, drawing on best practices and domain expertise.
Manual survey building | AI-generated survey |
|---|---|
Lots of time spent scripting, editing, and testing questions | Instant survey creation using expert-backed templates and AI |
One-size-fits-all follow-ups (if any) and limited adaptability | Dynamic, personalized follow-ups that probe for meaningful details |
Rigid format, little room for natural conversation | Conversational, adaptive chat that keeps students engaged |
Manual analysis—slow and error-prone for open feedback | AI-powered instant response analysis, surfacing key insights |
Why use AI for online course student surveys? The right AI survey builder cuts out repetitive work, adds intelligent probing, and analyzes all the text for you. This means you collect richer feedback, spot patterns faster, and focus your energy on acting—not sorting spreadsheets. To see how easy it is, check out our step-by-step guide to creating your own survey for student feedback on course content.
Specific offers the best-in-class experience for conversational surveys—one that’s smooth, intuitive, and actually fun for both students and survey creators. This not only improves response rates, it unlocks feedback you won’t get from rigid forms.
See this course content quality survey example now
Your next survey can deliver richer, more useful feedback in minutes. See how a conversational approach can reveal what your students really need—so you can keep improving your courses fast.