Here are some of the best questions for a student survey about instructor effectiveness, and also tips on how to create them. If you want to quickly build your own survey or try different question styles, you can generate a survey in seconds with Specific.
Best open-ended questions for student survey about instructor effectiveness
Open-ended questions dig deeper into individual experiences, delivering candid, nuanced feedback you just can’t get with simple ratings. They excel when you want context—why did students feel the way they did? What would actually make their learning experience better? This qualitative detail is essential, especially since data shows student perceptions strongly link to measurable learning gains—students taught by top-rated instructors saw almost five additional months of math progress compared to those taught by bottom quartile teachers. [1]
In what ways did the instructor help you understand course material more clearly?
What was the most effective teaching strategy the instructor used this term?
Is there anything the instructor could have done differently to support your learning?
Describe a specific moment when the instructor positively impacted your experience.
How did the instructor respond to student questions or confusion?
What did you find challenging about the instructor’s teaching style, if anything?
Can you share an example of helpful feedback the instructor provided?
Were there any teaching methods that didn’t work well for you? Please explain.
What suggestions do you have for improving the instructor’s engagement with the class?
How did the instructor make complex topics easier to grasp during lessons?
Open-ended survey questions invite stories and specifics—which lead to actionable improvements.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for student survey about instructor effectiveness
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want quick, quantifiable feedback or to jumpstart a conversation. Sometimes, students aren’t sure where to start, and having clear options can cut cognitive load. You get an easy-to-read overview, and can follow up for extra clarity. Here are three strong examples:
Question: How would you rate the instructor’s ability to explain complex concepts?
Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Question: How available was the instructor for questions or support outside class?
Very available
Somewhat available
Rarely available
Not available at all
Question: Which of the following best describes the instructor’s engagement style?
Highly interactive
Moderately interactive
Mostly lecture-based
Other
When to followup with "why?" Follow up with a “why?” when a quantitative answer needs more context. For example, if a student chooses “Fair” for explanation clarity, ask “Why did you feel the explanations were only fair?” You’ll turn generic ratings into meaningful feedback you can act on.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use “Other” when your fixed choices might not cover every experience—especially in new or diverse courses. A follow-up lets you explore unexpected insights and discover issues or wins you never anticipated.
NPS question: Should you use it for instructor effectiveness?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks students: “How likely are you to recommend this instructor to a friend?” on a 0–10 scale. It’s widely used because it distills overall sentiment into a single metric, easily tracked over time. In the instructor context, it tells you if students are actually willing to endorse their teacher—the ultimate sign of satisfaction and trust. Given its proven effectiveness for high-level sentiment tracking, NPS is a smart addition to student surveys. Try generating a complete NPS survey for students if you’re curious about how it works in this context.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where conversational surveys shine. Instead of stopping at a surface-level answer, you can unlock depth—whether you’re clarifying ambiguity or getting actionable detail. Specific’s automated followup feature means the survey adapts in real time, based on what each student actually says, just like talking to an expert interviewer. This isn’t just convenient—it’s how you capture real, contextual insight. For education teams who often need to email respondents for more information, automated followups mean far less back-and-forth and a much richer dataset.
Student: The instructor was okay, I guess.
AI follow-up: You mentioned the instructor was "okay." Can you share more about what worked and what could have been better?
How many followups to ask? We recommend 2-3 follow-ups max, but the key is being flexible—stop once you’ve gathered the insight you need. Specific lets you set a limit or enable dynamic skip logic so students aren’t bogged down if everything is already clear.
This makes it a conversational survey: the back-and-forth creates a sense of dialogue, not interrogation, so students engage more thoughtfully and answer with depth.
AI makes qualitative analysis easy: With automated tools like AI-powered survey response analysis, it’s now simple to analyze open-text answers—AI sorts, clusters, and summarizes themes, saving you hours of manual review.
Automated followup questions represent a huge advantage over traditional surveys. If you haven’t experienced this yet, try generating a conversational student survey and see how easy—and rich—the feedback can be.
How to prompt ChatGPT (or GPT-4) to suggest strong questions
If you want to use ChatGPT or another advanced AI, you’ll get better questions with the right prompts. Start simple, then add more detail:
Start with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for student survey about instructor effectiveness.
If you want higher quality, give context—describe the audience, your goal, and what you want to learn. For example:
We’re running an end-of-term feedback survey for undergraduate students to understand what helps or hinders their learning. Suggest 10 open-ended questions about how effective their instructor was, focusing on clarity, engagement, and support.
Next, organize your content. Try asking:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, double down on categories you want to dig deeper into. For example:
Generate 10 questions for categories “instructor communication” and “student engagement.”
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses AI to mimic an organic chat—questions adapt in real time, and smart follow-ups help collect richer, clearer insight. Unlike the old way (static forms with rigid logic), a conversational survey flows like a real discussion, making it more approachable for students and far more actionable for you.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys |
---|---|
Boring, fixed questions | Dynamic, adaptive questions & follow-ups |
High dropout rate | Completion rates up to 80% [2] |
Hard to analyze long-form answers | Automatic clustering, summarization, and insight discovery [3] |
Time-consuming setup | Create surveys by just describing what you want to ask |
Why use AI for student surveys? You collect more complete responses, avoid ambiguity with dynamic probing, and get a higher participation rate because it feels like chat. Sentiment analysis now approaches 95% accuracy—so you can trust that the insights, trends, and suggestions are truly actionable. [3]
With AI survey examples and conversational survey tools like Specific, you create a much more engaging experience—for both the survey designer and the students themselves. Specific’s instant AI survey builder lets anyone start from scratch or use expert prompts, while the AI survey editor means you can update questions just by chatting with the AI. Specific leads in making student survey feedback a smoother, smarter process from start to finish. For a detailed walk-through, check our how-to guide for student instructor effectiveness surveys.
See this instructor effectiveness survey example now
See what a conversational, AI-powered student survey about instructor effectiveness looks like—get richer insight, save analysis time, and empower both learners and educators to grow. Create your own survey instantly and let Specific’s conversational AI do the heavy lifting.