Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about online assessment, plus tips for crafting effective, insightful surveys. If you want to build a conversational survey in seconds, you can generate one with Specific—it’s fast and tailored to your needs.
Best open-ended questions for teacher survey about online assessment
Open-ended questions let teachers share their experiences and insights in their own words. They're ideal when you want depth—real thoughts, specific stories, or suggestions. Sometimes they get lower response rates than multiple-choice formats, but they’re invaluable for surfacing the “unknown unknowns,” and AI-powered surveys can boost response depth dramatically. [1] [2]
What are the biggest challenges you face when assessing students online?
How has online assessment changed the way you evaluate student learning?
Which online assessment tools or platforms have worked well for you, and why?
What types of feedback do students seem to find most valuable in online assessments?
How do you address issues like academic honesty and plagiarism during online assessments?
Can you describe a time when an online assessment went particularly well—or badly? What did you learn from it?
What features would you like to see in online assessment platforms to support your teaching?
How do you ensure fairness and accessibility for all students during online assessments?
In what ways could your institution better support you with online assessment?
What advice would you give to a colleague new to online assessment?
It’s worth noting that, according to Pew Research Center, open-ended questions in surveys have an average nonresponse rate of around 18%, compared to 1–2% for closed-ended options. Still, the richness and specificity of data you get from open-ends pays off, especially when AI tools help interpret and organize it at speed. [1]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher survey about online assessment
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you need to quantify responses or simplify choices. They're easy for teachers to answer and provide digestible data for analysis. Sometimes, starting with a simple choice makes it easier to later follow up for more context (using an open-ended or "why" question, if you want to understand the reason behind a pick).
Here’s how you might use these in practice:
Question: Which online assessment format do you use most frequently?
Quizzes
Written assignments
Discussion posts
Live oral exams
Question: On average, how easy do you find it to assess student understanding online compared to in-person?
Much easier
Somewhat easier
About the same
Somewhat harder
Much harder
Question: What is your biggest concern with online assessments?
Academic integrity
Student engagement
Technical difficulties
Quality of feedback
Other
When to follow up with “why?” Always add a “why” follow-up when you want color behind an answer—for example, if a teacher picks “Much harder” for assessing online, follow up with “What makes it harder for you to assess students online?” That’s where you get the actionable insights.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use “Other” when you suspect there may be perspectives or challenges you haven’t anticipated. Teachers choosing “Other” should immediately get a prompt to explain—these responses often surface needs or problems that standard choices don’t capture, fueling product, process, or policy improvements.
Research shows that integrating conversational AI and automated follow-ups can markedly improve the informativeness and relevance of responses, as found in a large-scale field study. [2]
Using NPS to measure teachers’ satisfaction with online assessment
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven, standardized question that asks, “How likely are you to recommend [online assessment] to a colleague?” on a 0–10 scale. It works for teacher surveys because it’s simple, quantifiable, and hints at both satisfaction and advocacy. You can then follow up with “Why did you give that score?” for context. This is a great way to benchmark perceptions and spot big swings over time.
Want a shortcut? You can instantly generate a tailored NPS survey for teachers about online assessment with Specific, including customizable follow-ups that dig deeper for each group—detractors, passives, and promoters.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where most survey magic happens—especially in a conversational survey. If you don’t clarify, probe, or ask for detail, you miss context and actionable depth. That’s why at Specific, we build AI-powered surveys that automatically ask smart follow-ups based on each teacher’s unique reply, in real time.
This automated follow-up feature saves you a huge amount of back-and-forth (no more chasing answers by email later), and respondents feel genuinely heard, not just processed.
Teacher: “Sometimes online assessments don’t capture all student abilities.”
AI follow-up: “Could you share an example of a student ability that was particularly hard to evaluate online?”
If you skip this step, responses like “It’s sometimes hard to grade online” stay vague and aren’t actionable. With a conversational approach, teachers actually open up, providing richer stories.
How many followups to ask? In our experience, 2–3 targeted follow-ups per topic are ideal. You want just enough detail to understand a challenge or bright spot, but it’s important to allow a respondent to skip further digging once you hit a natural stopping point. Specific lets you fine-tune this balance so feedback feels natural (not like an interrogation).
This makes it a conversational survey—the AI keeps the experience organic, adapting based on previous replies.
AI-powered response analysis is a huge leap forward: with text-heavy replies and followups, you can analyze all the responses using AI, easily surfacing trends even in unstructured feedback. There’s no need to burden your team with manual coding of responses—for large teacher cohorts, that’s a game-changer.
Try generating an AI-powered survey and experience how conversational follow-ups can transform what you learn.
Prompt templates: Using ChatGPT or other GPTs to design great questions
You don’t have to be an expert to write strong survey questions—just use clear prompts! Here’s one that works well for teachers and online assessment:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about online assessment.
AI always delivers better results if you give it more context about your audience, their challenges, or your objectives. For example:
You're a university administrator aiming to improve digital assessment systems. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a survey targeting teachers with diverse levels of experience, to surface practical challenges and ideas for support.
Once you have an initial list, ask the AI to organize for you:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, decide which categories matter most to you—for example “Feedback Systems,” “Academic Integrity,” or “Technology Usability”—and go deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories Feedback Systems and Technology Usability.
With these approaches, you can build a thoughtful, structured survey in minutes—or let Specific’s survey builder do it for you using these tailored prompts.
What is a conversational survey? Manual vs. AI survey builder
A conversational survey is exactly what it sounds like: instead of filling out static forms, respondents engage in a natural dialogue. An AI-powered survey builder makes this easy, probing for deeper context, clarifying vague answers, and adjusting dynamically. This isn’t just a gimmick—it genuinely improves both response quality and engagement, as recent field studies and our own experience show. [2] [5]
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Write all questions yourself | Describe your goals to AI, generate full survey instantly |
Static, scripted follow-up (if any) | Dynamic, real-time context-aware probing |
Mostly impersonal and linear | Feels like a real conversation with an expert |
Manual analysis needed | Built-in AI analytics and summarization |
Why use AI for teacher surveys? With an AI survey builder, you can deliver adaptive, engaging experiences at scale. Teachers get a voice, and you get actionable, nuanced feedback. AI survey examples repeatedly show that conversational interviews elicit more relevant, specific, and actionable data than static forms. [2] [5] Plus, survey analysis and editing—like with Specific’s AI survey editor—is radically simplified.
When you’re ready to get started, check out our guide on how to create a teacher survey about online assessment, or use the AI survey maker for any topic. Specific delivers the best user experience for conversational surveys, both for survey creators and for respondents.
See this online assessment survey example now
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