Here are some of the best questions for an online course student survey about discussion forum usability and tips on how to create them. You can use Specific to rapidly build effective, conversational surveys tailored for your audience.
Best open-ended questions for online course student survey about discussion forum usability
Open-ended questions give students a chance to fully express their opinions, leading to richer and more authentic feedback than closed-ended formats. They're best when you want to understand the "why" behind their forum behaviors or challenges—not just capture a simple yes or no. This kind of depth helps us spot patterns in engagement, satisfaction, and improvement areas. Plus, with Specific’s conversational approach, it feels just like a chat instead of a dry survey.
Forums are a powerful tool for student engagement. It’s well established that deeper participation leads to better academic performance; for example, students who post fewer than 500 words per discussion are ten times more likely to drop out than more active participants. [1]
Here are ten open-ended questions that surface real insights:
What aspects of the discussion forum do you find most helpful for your learning?
Can you describe any challenges you've faced when using the discussion forum?
How do you usually decide when to participate in forum discussions?
Tell us about a time when a discussion forum post really enhanced your understanding of course material.
If you could change one thing about the forum, what would it be and why?
How clearly do you find the instructions or prompts provided for forum activities?
What motivation (or lack thereof) do you feel to join forum conversations?
How do you feel about the balance between instructor posts and student posts in the forum?
In what ways could the discussion forum experience be more engaging for you?
What feedback do you have about the forum’s usability on your device or browser?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for online course student survey about discussion forum usability
Single-select multiple-choice questions are ideal when you want to quickly quantify opinions, spot trends, or lower the cognitive burden for your respondents. They’re also helpful conversation starters—sometimes students need a shortlist to prompt their thinking, and you can always follow up for deeper context using an open-ended question or AI-driven probe.
Question: How easy is it for you to navigate the discussion forum on the course platform?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Somewhat difficult
Very difficult
Question: How often do you participate in the discussion forum each week?
Every session
A few times per week
Once a week
Rarely
Never
Question: What is your main reason for participating (or not) in forum discussions?
To clarify course material
To fulfill a requirement
For social interaction
I'm not interested
Other
When to followup with "why?" Always consider a "why" follow-up when you want to dig deeper into the motivations or barriers behind a choice. For instance, if a student selects "I'm not interested," asking "Can you share why the discussion forum doesn't appeal to you?" invites honest perspectives that might point to improvement areas or misaligned course incentives.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Offering "Other" acknowledges experiences outside your predefined categories. Adding a follow-up here ("Please specify") lets you discover unexpected reasons or unmet needs. These insights are often missed with rigid survey formats and can inspire effective forum changes or new features.
Including NPS questions in the usability survey
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures whether students would recommend the discussion forum (and, indirectly, the course) to a peer. Using NPS in student surveys makes sense because it quantifies overall satisfaction and provides a clear benchmark over time. For discussion forum usability, it reveals if the forum is becoming a standout feature—or a hidden frustration. You can instantly generate an NPS survey on this topic using Specific.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are a game-changer for getting context and clarity. With Specific’s automatic AI follow-up questions, every conversation adapts in real time. The AI can probe for details, clear up ambiguity, and surface actionable insights on the fly—just as a skilled researcher would in an interview. This turns otherwise flat “form” responses into real understanding.
Imagine not asking follow-ups:
Student: "The forum is okay, but sometimes I get lost."
AI follow-up: "Could you describe a time you felt lost in the forum? Was it about finding threads, or understanding the discussion flow?"
Without that extra probe, we’d miss whether the problem is design, instructions, or community norms—so our improvements would be just guesses.
How many followups to ask? Generally, two to three follow-ups are enough to capture essentials without overwhelming students. It’s smart to enable “switch to next question” logic once your goal is satisfied. Specific lets you finely control this balance for conversational depth with respondent comfort.
This makes it a conversational survey—not a boring checklist. The experience feels more like a dialogue, where everyone’s input is valued and explored.
AI-driven analysis makes it simple to handle open-text answers. Even if you have long paragraphs or tangents, tools like Specific’s survey response analysis turn those into usable insights (and you can even chat with AI about your collected responses).
These smart follow-up questions are a new standard—try generating an AI survey with Specific to see just how interactive your feedback collection can be.
How to write a GPT prompt for this kind of survey
If you want AI (like ChatGPT) to help you generate strong survey questions for forum usability, start with a clear and direct prompt. For example:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for online course student survey about discussion forum usability.
But you’ll get far better results by giving more context about your course, your students’ backgrounds, and your intended goal. For example:
I run a 12-week online course for adult learners. Engagement drops during the second month, especially in the discussion forums. Suggest open-ended questions to uncover what issues students face with the discussion forum usability and participation.
Once you’ve got a draft, try another prompt:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Next, identify your most important topic categories, then prompt again:
Generate 10 questions for categories "motivations for participation," "barriers to usage," and "clarity of navigation."
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses AI (like Specific) to interact with respondents as if in a real dialogue—asking, clarifying, following up—rather than just handing out a static form. This approach increases response quality, engagement, and completion rates, particularly among busy or distracted students. There’s a world of difference between a static checklist and an interactive exchange!
Manual Survey | AI-Generated Survey (Conversational) |
|---|---|
Static, one-size-fits-all | Adapts questions in real time |
No smart probing | Intelligent follow-ups for deeper insight |
Hard to analyze open text | Responses summarized and categorized by AI |
Impersonal, form-filling experience | Feels like a natural conversation |
Why use AI for online course student surveys? The evidence is clear: students participate more—and more authentically—when the survey feels personalized, not generic. AI survey examples built with Specific regularly achieve higher completion rates and richer responses. Plus, Specific’s conversational approach even engages students who rarely post to forums, surfacing barriers you wouldn’t catch with standard forms.
If you’re curious how easy it is to get started, check out our quick-start guide on how to create a survey for online course students using Specific. You’ll be amazed at how fast you can go from idea to insightful results.
Specific is built for smooth, frictionless feedback—and sets a new bar for conversational surveys in online courses.
See this discussion forum usability survey example now
If you want sharper, more actionable feedback from your online course students, see how a conversational AI survey illuminates what drives (or blocks) your forum engagement—while making the whole process effortless.