Here are some of the best questions for an online course student survey about student engagement, plus tips on how to create them. With Specific, you can easily generate AI-driven surveys in seconds and start collecting better, richer feedback right away.
Best open-ended questions to ask about student engagement
Open-ended questions go deeper than checkboxes—they invite real answers and help you understand what truly motivates, frustrates, or excites students. I find they work best when you want to capture genuine thoughts or surface issues you might not have anticipated. The value is in the detail, and in online education, details matter. Especially since research shows that courses with active online communities have 30-40% higher completion rates, fostering an environment where students can express themselves clearly leads to real improvements. [2]
What motivates you to participate actively in this online course?
Can you describe a time when you felt particularly engaged during a lesson or activity?
What types of activities help you stay focused and involved?
What, if anything, makes it hard for you to stay engaged with course materials?
How do you prefer to interact with other students and instructors in the course?
What changes would help you feel more connected to the online course community?
How do you usually organize your study time for this course?
What’s one thing you wish was different about your online learning experience?
How has feedback from instructors influenced your engagement with the course?
Is there anything else you want us to know about your experience or engagement?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for engagement surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions are especially useful when you need to quantify how students feel or focus on common engagement patterns. If you want to keep things quick for your respondents—or start a conversation with an easy win—these questions help. It’s much less intimidating to pick from some options than to write out a paragraph. After these, you can dive deeper with follow-up questions for those seeking more insight.
Question: How often do you participate in online discussions or forums for this course?
Every week
A few times a month
Rarely
Never
Other
Question: Which aspect of the course do you find most engaging?
Interactive assignments
Live video sessions
Recorded lectures
Peer discussions
Other
Question: On average, how much time do you spend engaging with course materials each week?
Less than 1 hour
1–2 hours
2–4 hours
More than 4 hours
When to follow up with "why?" When students give closed answers, always consider asking why. If someone selects "Rarely" for participation, follow up: "Can you share what makes it difficult for you to join discussions?" This not only clarifies their answer but gives you actionable insights for improving engagement.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? “Other” lets students share experiences outside your expectations, surfacing feedback you may never have anticipated. Often, follow-up questions like “What did you mean by Other?” reveal hidden needs or ideas that can make a big impact.
NPS and engagement surveys—should you use NPS here?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks students how likely they are to recommend your course to others, which is a powerful measure of overall satisfaction and engagement. It’s especially valuable in online learning since it compresses complex feelings into a single, benchmarkable score. Plus, with tools like Specific’s automated survey builder for NPS, you can instantly create an NPS survey tailored to online course students. NPS not only gives you a number to track over time but—with smart follow-ups—helps you dig deeper into what’s driving each score. If engagement is a core priority, NPS belongs in your toolkit.
The power of follow-up questions
We believe great student engagement surveys don’t stop at the first answer. Instead, every response is an opportunity for deeper insight. If you want richer context, automatic follow-up questions make all the difference. Specific’s AI asks real-time, personalized follow-ups based on the student’s previous responses—just like an expert researcher. That means you capture nuances you’d never get from a static survey, and it happens automatically, without a tedious back-and-forth over email.
Student: I don’t participate much in the forums.
AI follow-up: Can you share what makes it challenging for you to join the online discussions?
How many follow-ups to ask? In our experience, you usually need just 2–3 well-crafted follow-up questions to clarify and expand on initial replies. It’s wise to set a limit—but with Specific, you can let the AI intelligently end the exchange when it’s gathered what you need.
This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of a cold form, follow-ups make the process flow like a natural conversation—students feel heard, resulting in more honest and useful feedback.
AI survey response analysis: Even if you collect lots of open, unstructured replies, it’s a breeze to analyze and summarize them using AI. Read more in our guide to AI-powered survey analysis. It’s a game-changer for busy teams.
Try generating a survey and experience how follow-up questions give you deeper, richer student insights—without extra workload.
Crafting prompts to get great survey questions from AI
If you want to brainstorm questions for a student engagement survey quickly, it helps to start with a prompt that’s clear and focused. Here’s one to begin with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Online Course Student survey about Student Engagement.
But, you’ll get even better results if you add context. Describe your course, your goals, and who your students are.
I’m designing a survey for an online coding bootcamp. The students are aged 21-40, mostly working professionals. My main goal is to understand how we can make classes more interactive and increase engagement rates. Suggest 10 open-ended questions I could ask.
Once you have a draft list of questions, categorize them for clarity:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
From here, if you want to dig in more, ask:
Generate 10 questions for the categories “live session engagement” and “peer interaction”.
With this approach, AI helps you quickly iterate and organize your survey before you launch.
What is a conversational survey?
Traditional surveys often feel rigid—a list of boxes or dropdown menus. Conversational surveys, like those built with Specific, turn every response into a dialogue. The AI follows up based on context, making it feel like a real interview. Not only is this experience more comfortable for students, but it also results in much deeper insights for instructors and course designers.
Manual Surveys | AI-generated (Conversational) Surveys |
|---|---|
Static forms | Dynamic, adaptive chat experience |
One chance to answer | Follow-up probes for clarity and detail |
Manual analysis | Instant AI summaries and insights |
Time-consuming setup | Survey created in seconds with AI |
Why use AI for online course student surveys? AI-generated conversational surveys boost participation and help surface more nuanced feedback. Since students interact as they would in a tutoring chat, comfort and quality rise. And when you use an AI survey generator, you can move from idea to live survey in minutes, without stress. The AI survey example experiences on Specific mean you see immediate value—no more guessing if your survey is good enough.
In fact, the step-by-step guide to creating surveys for student engagement is a great place to get started if you want even more context or inspiration. Our platform delivers a best-in-class conversational experience for both survey creators and students, making feedback effortless and useful.
See this student engagement survey example now
Take the guesswork out of your next student engagement survey. See how conversational surveys unlock deeper insights in less time—experience the difference for your students and your team.