Create your survey

Create your survey

Create your survey

How to create online course student survey about office hours helpfulness

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

·

Aug 21, 2025

Create your survey

This article will guide you on how to create an Online Course Student survey about Office Hours Helpfulness. With Specific, you can build this kind of survey in seconds, letting you focus on collecting insights, not manual question writing.

Steps to create a survey for Online Course Students about Office Hours Helpfulness

If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific.

  1. Tell what survey you want.

  2. Done.

You honestly don’t even need to read further—AI will craft your survey with expert knowledge, even asking respondents smart follow-up questions to uncover real insights. With powerful AI survey tools available, composing effective and conversational surveys for students has never been easier.

Why feedback on office hours really matters

Office hours are one of those underused resources that can make or break the online course experience. If you’re not running student surveys on this, you’re missing out on:

  • Understanding if students actually benefit from the sessions

  • Identifying pain points or timing issues that lower attendance

  • Gathering actionable ideas to make office hours more relevant

  • Spotting those “aha!” moments that transform student engagement

It’s not just about asking for feedback. In the realm of online education, student feedback surveys are pivotal for enhancing course quality and satisfaction. According to a study by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, meaningful input from students is essential for improving courses [1]. So, if you’re not gathering these insights, you’re missing chances to elevate your course and directly address students’ needs.

And here’s a practical angle: survey data can uncover what’s confusing or too fast-paced, reveal motivation blockers, or even show if students feel seen and heard. All of these are impossible to surface without targeted, honest feedback. That’s why running surveys on online course student recognition and helpfulness of office hours is non-negotiable for anyone serious about improvement.

What makes a good survey on office hours helpfulness

The best surveys get two things right: high quantity of responses and high quality of feedback. To achieve this, we need:

  • Clear, unbiased questions that don’t lead or confuse the respondent

  • A conversational tone that keeps students relaxed and honest

  • Mobile-friendly design as over 50% of surveys are completed on mobile devices [3], so your survey should feel great on any screen

Clear questions really matter: Concise survey questions can increase response accuracy by 25% [2]. A major win when you’re looking for real insight, not just quick checkboxes.

Here’s a quick snapshot of practices:

Bad practices

Good practices

Double-barreled “Was office hours useful and easy to attend?”

Single focus “How helpful did you find the last office hours session?”

Jargon-filled language

Simple, everyday words

Boring, cold tone

Conversational, encouraging tone

No followup or clarification

Follow-up questions to clarify or expand

The ultimate measure: you want lots of students responding and you want their answers to actually reveal something. If you can achieve that mix, you’re on the right track.

Question types with examples for Online Course Student surveys about office hours helpfulness

Let’s break down essential question types and see what works best in a student survey about office hour helpfulness. (If you want even more inspiration, here are best survey questions for online course students about office hours helpfulness and tips.)

Open-ended questions let students express themselves freely and can reveal unexpected insights. They’re invaluable if you want detailed feedback, anecdotes, or to pick up on things you haven’t considered.

  • What did you find most helpful about the last office hours session?

  • How could office hours be improved to better support you?

Single-select multiple-choice questions improve completion rates and allow quick scanning for trends. They’re best when you want comparable data at a glance or track changes over time.

How helpful do you find office hours?

  • Extremely helpful

  • Somewhat helpful

  • Neutral

  • Not helpful

NPS (Net Promoter Score) question offers a simple, universal metric of satisfaction and opens the door for segmented follow-up—especially good for benchmarking or quick comparisons. You can instantly generate an NPS survey for this use case.

On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend attending office hours in this course to a friend?

Followup questions to uncover "the why" are critical—they prompt students to expand on ratings or ambiguous answers. Ask them when you get a short answer or if you want richer context. Example:

  • Can you tell me more about what made the session not helpful for you?

  • What’s one thing that would make office hours more useful next time?

Want to dig even deeper? Check out more survey question examples and tips for online course students about office hours helpfulness.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey feels more like messaging with a real person than filling out a dull form. Questions show up one at a time, the AI adapts based on previous answers, and each interaction is fluid. For students used to chat apps, this format feels familiar, making them much more likely to respond thoughtfully—especially on a phone, considering that over half of all surveys are completed on mobile now [3].

Compare this to traditional surveys, where you’re stuck with static forms and minimal engagement. With an AI survey generator, the experience changes completely:

Manual surveys

AI-generated surveys

Static, same for everyone

Dynamic, adapts to answers

Disengaged, form fatigue

Conversational, chat-like flow

Hard to follow up

Instant AI follow-ups for clarity

Manual analysis

Automated, AI-powered summaries

Why use AI for Online Course Student surveys? AI-generated surveys, especially conversational formats, drive higher engagement and quality. AI can instantly generate a survey or tweak questions using chat (learn about the AI survey editor), probe deeper in real time, and summarize responses for actionable insights—no survey-builder fatigue, no manual analysis headaches. Explore our guide to analyzing responses for more.

Specific delivers the best conversational survey experience out there—smooth for both students and survey creators, inviting real feedback instead of checkbox noise.

The power of follow-up questions

With automated follow-up questions, you get two superpowers: big productivity gains and richer, less ambiguous answers. When you let AI ask smart followups on the spot in your Online Course Student surveys, it’s like having an expert moderator in every conversation. The alternative? You’re stuck with vague responses and no way to dig deeper. Here’s what it can look like:

  • Student: “Sometimes office hours are hard to attend.”

  • AI follow-up: “What makes them difficult to attend? Is it the timing, format, or something else?”

How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 followups usually deliver enough depth—set up your survey to move on once you hear what you need. (With Specific, this is quick to adjust or automate.)

This makes it a conversational survey: each response is met with curiosity, not a dead end, turning the survey into a real conversation.

Survey response analysis is easy— even with lots of open text. AI can instantly group, summarize, and interpret results for you. If you want to see how to do this, check out our step-by-step guide to analyzing responses or explore the AI survey response analysis tool.

With automated followups, anyone can experiment right now—try generating a survey and see the conversational difference for yourself.

See this office hours helpfulness survey example now

Want to gather honest, actionable feedback from online course students instantly? Get deeper insights, dynamic follow-ups, and an engaging survey experience—all with Specific’s AI survey platform. Create your own survey and see how easy deep feedback can be.

Create your survey

Try it out. It's fun!

Sources

  1. University of Wisconsin–Madison. Best Practices and Sample Questions for Course Evaluation Surveys

  2. MoldStud. Top Online Courses for Creating Surveys to Boost User Engagement

  3. Digital Learning Edge. Creating Effective Online Surveys

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.