Best questions for online course student survey about platform usability

Here are some of the best questions for an online course student survey about platform usability, plus a few insider tips on how to create them. You can generate a conversational survey like this with Specific in seconds—build your own here and see how easy it is.

Best open-ended questions for an online course student survey on platform usability

Open-ended questions invite students to share honest feedback in their own words. This approach is perfect for uncovering what really matters to your audience. You can read between the lines and spot themes that numeric ratings alone would never reveal. Open-ended questions are invaluable when you want to dig beneath the surface and understand “why” people feel the way they do.

Benefits of open-ended questions: They deliver rich, qualitative insights that can highlight user needs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement—with room for surprises. That’s why open text feedback is especially useful in rapidly evolving spaces like e-learning, where platform usability directly impacts student engagement and satisfaction. [1]

1. What features do you find most useful on our learning platform, and why?

2. Can you describe any challenges or frustrations you've experienced while using the platform?

3. What improvements or additions would make your learning experience better?

4. How easy or difficult was it for you to find the course you wanted to take?

5. Is there a particular tool or resource you wish the platform offered?

6. How would you describe the platform’s navigation to someone new?

7. Can you share a time our platform exceeded your expectations?

8. What motivates you most to keep learning on our platform?

9. How well does the platform support communication with instructors or peers?

10. What extra support or guidance could help you make better use of the platform?

For more, dive into how to create surveys for platform usability.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for your survey

Single-select multiple-choice questions are powerful when you want to quantify trends or spark a focused conversation. They work well for quickly measuring broad sentiment, usage patterns, or preferences. They’re especially useful at the beginning of a survey to get a quick read, or after open-ended questions to nudge indecisive respondents toward an answer. Multiple-choice makes it easier for less expressive respondents and helps uncover topics for deeper follow-up—which is where open text comes in.

Question: How would you rate the overall usability of our learning platform?

• Excellent

• Good

• Fair

• Poor

Question: Which device do you most often use to access the platform?

• Desktop

• Laptop

• Tablet

• Smartphone

• Other

Question: How satisfied are you with the platform’s loading speed?

• Very satisfied

• Satisfied

• Neutral

• Dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

When to follow up with “why?” Ask “why?” after a closed-choice response when you want to understand the reasons behind their selection. For instance: if a student marks “Fair” for usability, immediately following up with “Why did you rate it fair?” often uncovers the key pain point. This follow-up can unlock actionable specifics that help you prioritize improvements.

When and why to add the “Other” choice? Include “Other” when you believe your list of options may not cover every possibility. It gives respondents a voice even if their answer is unique or unexpected. A smart followup can then probe for detail—often revealing shifts in tech, accessibility needs, or emerging behaviors you’d otherwise miss.

Should you use an NPS question for platform usability?

NPS (Net Promoter Score) fundamentally asks: “How likely are you to recommend this to a friend or colleague?” For online learning platforms, NPS quickly gauges user loyalty and satisfaction. It’s especially powerful when combined with platform usability feedback—if your NPS is low, root cause analysis can reveal whether poor usability is to blame. Thousands of edtechs track NPS, as it’s a simple but effective metric for benchmarking over time. Try generating a platform NPS survey instantly if you want to measure this with your students.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where real insights happen. With Specific, our AI-driven follow-up feature asks smart, conversational questions based on each student’s initial response. Instead of getting flat, one-sentence answers, you gather a much deeper understanding of the “why” behind every response. These automated followups save major time versus manual email followups and make the survey feel more like a dialogue.

• Student: "The platform is okay."

• AI follow-up: "Could you tell me what works well for you, and what you’d like to see improved?"

How many followups to ask? Generally, 2-3 follow-up questions are enough to get a rich answer without making it tedious. Specific lets you cap the number of followups and skip to the next question once you get what you need. This keeps things focused and conversational.

This makes it a conversational survey: The conversation never feels forced or rigid. Your students engage like they’re chatting with a real interviewer—and the insights are richer for it.

AI survey response analysis: Even with lots of text and nuanced replies, analyzing responses is easy. Specific uses AI to summarize and distill feedback into actionable findings, no matter how complex the dataset.

Automated followups transform the survey experience. If you haven’t yet, try generating your own platform usability survey to experience conversational feedback firsthand.

How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT to generate great survey questions

With AI tools, you can craft effective survey questions just by describing your context and goals. Context makes all the difference: the more you share about your users, your platform, and what you want to learn, the better and more relevant the questions.

Try starting with this prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an online course student survey about platform usability.

You’ll get even better results if you provide AI with context. For example:

You are designing a feedback survey for an online learning platform aiming to boost student engagement. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that explore platform usability from a student’s perspective.

After you have a list, you can ask the AI to structure the questions further:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Then focus on your core interest areas. For example:

Generate 10 questions for categories “navigation”, “content accessibility”, and “interaction with instructors/peers”.

Using prompts like these, you can easily iterate and fine-tune your question set using any AI survey editor, or explore Specific’s AI-driven survey builder.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey feels more like a chat than a cold form. Instead of “just answer and move on,” it draws your respondents into a dynamic, responsive dialogue. This experience naturally increases engagement and completion rates—and surfaces richer details about what’s working and what isn’t. AI survey generators like Specific fundamentally change how surveys work by:

• Creating smart follow-ups in real-time based on each answer

• Summarizing insights and surfacing key themes using AI

• Letting you interact with survey results conversationally (like chatting with ChatGPT, but about your survey data)

Traditional/manual survey creation is time-consuming and static by comparison. Here’s a quick look at how the two approaches stack up:

Why use AI for online course student surveys? AI-driven platforms like Specific let you reach students on their terms, boost completion rates, and get insightful, unbiased feedback. You also save hours on survey creation and response analysis. Get started quickly with this step-by-step guide to creating a student survey, or experiment with the AI survey builder for any topic.

Specific offers best-in-class conversational surveys with an outstanding user experience, making feedback collection easier and far more engaging for everyone involved.

See this platform usability survey example now

Get inspired and experience the smartest feedback collection in action—see an AI-generated platform usability survey for online course students in minutes with Specific’s conversational survey builder.