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Course evaluation questions for the end of term

Twenty five questions is right for a full term unit and nine for a short course. Three can never be cut: whether the assessment criteria were clear before the work was due, whether the workload matched what the outline promised, and one open question naming the single thing to change. Those three are the ones a coordinator can act on before the next intake.

An end of course evaluation has to separate what was taught from who taught it and from how it was assessed, because those three are fixed by three different people. These questions keep them in separate blocks and leave only two open answers.

The questions

About your enrolment

  1. Which class or session were you in?DropdownRequired

    It splits the results by session without asking for a name.

  2. How many of the sessions did you attend?Single choice

    Attendance changes every answer below and is rarely recorded alongside the evaluation.

  3. Why did you take this course?Single choice

    Required for my qualification, chosen as an elective, sent by my employer, personal interest.

  4. Did you have the background the course assumed?Single choice

    The prerequisite question. A cohort answering no explains a low content score entirely.

The content

  1. The course covered what the outline said it wouldRating gridRequired

    Row one of a five point agreement grid.

  2. The topics were in a sensible orderRating gridRequired

    Row two. Sequencing complaints are specific and cheap to fix.

  3. The examples were relevant to the work I will doRating gridRequired

    Row three.

  4. There was enough depth on the parts that matteredRating gridRequired

    Row four.

  5. How useful were the course materials?Rating gridRequired

    A second grid, rated poor to excellent with a did not use column, one row per resource.

  6. Which resource did you use most?Single choice

    A single choice across the same list. It is the acquisitions question for next term.

The delivery

  1. The teaching explained difficult ideas clearlyRating gridRequired

    Row one of the delivery grid.

  2. Questions were answered wellRating gridRequired

    Row two.

  3. The sessions started and finished on timeRating gridRequired

    Row three. Unglamorous, and it drives more complaints than content ever does.

  4. There was enough chance to practise or discussRating gridRequired

    Row four.

  5. How would you rate the teaching overall?Single choice

    A five point scale as labelled radio options. One rating, not a personality assessment.

  6. How well did the online or recorded material work?Single choice

    Include a did not use option so the average is not diluted.

Assessment and workload

  1. The assessment criteria were clear before the work was dueRating gridRequired

    Row one of the assessment grid, and the single most actionable row in the survey.

  2. The assessments tested what the course taughtRating gridRequired

    Row two.

  3. Feedback arrived in time to be useful for the next pieceRating gridRequired

    Row three. Timeliness, not quality, is usually the failure.

  4. The marking felt consistentRating gridRequired

    Row four. It matters most where several markers share a cohort.

  5. How many hours a week did the course take outside class?Single choiceRequired

    Bands, not a number field. Compare the median against the published expectation.

  6. The workload matched what the outline describedRating gridRequired

    A fifth row on the assessment grid, and the one that changes an accreditation document.

What to change

  1. What was the most useful part of the course?Long text

    The thing not to touch next term.

  2. What one thing should change before the next intake?Long textRequired

    One thing. A general comments box produces essays that nobody sorts.

  3. Would you recommend this course to someone in your position?Single choice

    Yes, maybe, no. The count of noes is the alarm and the maybes are the improvement budget.

Which questions to make required

The four grids are required because a partly completed grid cannot be averaged, and the grids are the instrument. The class or session dropdown is required because a result nobody can attribute to a session cannot be compared across a cohort. The workload hours band is required because it is the only question in the survey with an external reference point, namely the published expectation in the course outline. One open question is required, the one asking for a single change, and the rest stays optional so a student with three minutes still files a usable response.

The form built from these questions

A static copy of the finished form, from its own example page.

19

Which class were you in? *

This splits the results by session without asking your name.

↵Enter

How to change this for a different kind of course

A one day workshop. Four grids is three too many for six hours of teaching. Keep the delivery grid, add a single question about whether the day matched its description, and keep both open questions. Drop the workload band entirely, since a one day course has no outside hours to measure, and replace the assessment block with one question about whether the attendee left able to do something they could not do that morning. A course with several teachers. Split the delivery grid into one grid per teacher or per component, and never combine them into a single teaching score. The common failure is a course where the lectures are excellent and the tutorials are not, which a merged grid reports as adequate and nobody investigates. Keep the teacher names out of the open questions by saying so above the field. A work based or apprenticeship course. Add a block about the workplace side: whether the supervisor knew what the course required, whether there was time released to study, and whether the on the job tasks lined up with the classroom ones. Those three questions usually explain a poor completion rate better than anything about the teaching does, and they are addressed to the employer rather than the trainer.

Questions people ask

When should a course evaluation be sent?

In the last session, before grades are released, with the promise stated up front that teaching staff see averages only and only after marking is finished. Sent after results, the evaluation measures the grade rather than the course, and the response rate collapses to whoever is still reading that inbox.

How many questions should an end of course evaluation have?

Twenty five is the ceiling for a full term unit, and most of them should be grid rows that take a single tap each. A nine screen version covers a short course perfectly well. Length is less important than making every question attach to something a coordinator can actually change.

Should students rate the teacher by name?

Rate the teaching rather than the teacher, and split grids by component where several people teach. A named rating turns an improvement instrument into a popularity measure, and published research on student evaluations consistently finds those measures carry biases unrelated to teaching quality.

How is it anonymous if it asks which class you were in?

Because a class is a crowd. Four sessions with a dozen or more students each is a wide enough segment to hide in, and nothing else is collected: no name, no email, no student number. The coordinator can compare Tuesday with Saturday without ever knowing who wrote what.

What do you do with the workload answer?

Compare the median against the hours the course outline promised. A course advertised as four hours a week whose median answer is eight has a design problem, not a student problem, and that gap is the single most useful number an evaluation produces for an accreditation review.

How do you raise a low response rate?

Run it in class time rather than by email, keep it under five minutes, and publish what changed because of the last round on the first screen. Students answer surveys that visibly changed something and ignore the ones that did not, which is the same rule that governs every other survey.

Should the evaluation ask about facilities?

Only if the course depends on them, such as a lab or a studio. Otherwise the facilities answers belong in a wider student satisfaction survey, where the people who run the buildings will actually see them. Keep the course evaluation about the course so its results reach the person teaching it.

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Other question banks

Student satisfaction survey questions, grouped by service

A single satisfaction score for a college cannot be acted on by anybody, because no one person owns teaching, the library, enrolment and the counselling service. These questions split the institution into the teams that run it and rate each one separately.

Online learning survey questions about platform and pace

An online course fails in two quite different places, the platform and the pace, and a single satisfaction score cannot tell you which one happened. These questions separate them and then ask the completion question most surveys carefully avoid.

Workshop feedback questions across eight screens

A two hour workshop earns a two minute survey, and anything longer will be abandoned by the people whose opinion you most wanted. These questions cover whether the session matched its listing, how it was paced, what was useful and what to run next.

On writing the questions themselves, read How to write survey questions. For everything the builder can do, see the form maker. Step by step: Create a conversational form with AI, then View, export and manage your responses.

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Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .