Online courses can be a great way to share your skills and knowledge, boost your income, and connect with a community of like-minded people.
One of the most important elements of any online course is receiving feedback and evaluations from actual students -this offers valuable data and insight that can drive your business forward, and improve things for your students.
The questions included in your online course evaluation are therefore very important, and we have put together all you need to know to choose the right questions and help your online course go from strength to strength.
Why Does A Course Evaluation Matter?
A well-designed course evaluation will give you invaluable information about how your students feel about your course, what they liked best, and what could be improved.
This helps you to make changes to your course, or even create new ones, based on real student feedback.
There are several advantages to course evaluation, and these include:
- Learn new skills
- Explore your passion
- Take classes on the go.
"1 year in and still going, their content and courses are great"
It Provides Feedback From Students
The biggest advantage of course evaluation is to receive honest, relevant feedback from students who have actually taken your course – and this data is extremely useful.
It gives you an idea of whether your course content was effective, and if there were any areas where it could be improved.
You can use this information to adapt your teaching style and ensure that your future courses are more successful.
It Helps To Improve Your Teaching Skills
Course evaluations also provide you with valuable insights into how your students learn.
If you notice that some students struggle with certain aspects of your course, then you may want to consider changing your approach to teaching those topics.
For example, if you find that many of your students struggle with understanding concepts, then perhaps you should spend more time explaining them clearly.
Or maybe you could offer extra support by providing additional resources, such as videos, images, or examples.
It Can Help To Boost Student Engagement
Course evaluations can also help you to identify which parts of your course are engaging your students.
If you see that students enjoy particular activities, then you might want to keep doing them and include them in future versions of your courses!
However, if you notice that your students aren’t enjoying something, then you can change it up, or try out different approaches.
How Do I Choose The Right Course Evaluation Questions?
Choosing the right course evaluation questions is one of the first steps toward creating a successful online course.
There are two main types of questions – open-ended and multiple-choice. Open-ended questions allow students to write their own answers, while multiple-choice questions ask students to select the correct answer from a list.
Open Ended Questions
These questions are ideal for giving students the opportunity to express themselves, and for helping you to gather detailed feedback.
They are also great for identifying specific skills that students lack so that you can focus on improving those areas. Here are just a few examples of open-ended questions:
- What did you like most about the course?
- What would you improve?
- Which sections of the course were particularly helpful?
Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple-choice questions allow students to share their opinions by selecting their preferred option from a list. These questions are good for gathering general feedback, but they don’t allow you to get much detail.
Here are just a couple of examples of multiple-choice questions:
- Did you understand all the material? (With Yes/No answers)
- Do you think you learned anything new? (With Yes/No answers)
- Which section(s) of the course was the most difficult? (With a selection of sections to choose from)
Once you’ve selected the type of course evaluation questions that you want to use, you need to decide what format you will use.
This includes deciding whether to give each student a copy of the questionnaire, or whether to send it electronically.
In addition, you need to decide whether to make the results anonymous, or whether to collect personal details such as names and email addresses.
The best way to ensure that your course evaluation questions are effective is to test them out before using them in your next course.
You can do this by asking a small group of students to complete an evaluation form after taking part in your course.
Alternatively, you can create a short survey that asks students to rate the effectiveness of your course.
Once you have tested your course evaluation questions, you should consider how you will present the results to your students.
For example, you could display the results graphically, or create charts to help you inform future planning and learning.
Question Categories
In addition to asking your student open-ended and multiple-choice questions, you can also divide the type of questions by category, and we explore this below.
Questions About The Course In General
One of the best places to start with course evaluation questions is with questions about the general, overall course, and the experience of the learner – this will help you to identify any issues that may be affecting the overall success of the course, as well as any big things that need to change.
Here are some examples of questions that might fall into this category:
- How satisfied are you with the quality of teaching?
- Why did you choose this course?
- What is one thing you enjoyed the most?
- How satisfied are you overall with the course?
- How well-prepared were you for the course?
- How useful was the course content?
- How useful was your instructor?
- How useful was this course compared to other courses you have taken?
- How likely are you to recommend this course to others?
- What did you want from the course, and was it there?
- If you could change one thing, what would it be?
Questions About Specific Topics
Another good place to begin with course evaluation questions is to ask about topics covered during the course.
This allows you to see if there are any gaps in the knowledge that learners gained through the course, and you can then move to close these in newer versions of the course, or even offer supplementary courses to learners to help close these gaps.
For example, you could ask:
- What was the most interesting aspect of this topic?
- Which parts of the topic were most difficult?
- How much time did you spend on this topic?
- Which aspects of the topic were not discussed at all?
- What did you learn about this topic?
- What did you find most helpful about this topic?
- Which areas of the topic did you feel were missing?
- Which aspects of this topic were most confusing?
Questions About Course Content
Another great category to consider is the course content – this is the main body of your course, and feedback on this area can really help you to improve your course design. Here are some examples of questions you could use:
- How would you rate the quality of the visuals used in this course?
- Was it easy or difficult to understand the concepts in the content?
- Did you have to Google anything during the course? Why and give examples
- Did you understand the concepts presented in class?
- Was the information presented clear and easy to follow?
- Were the concepts presented new to you?
- What did you enjoy most about the course?
- What did you dislike about the course?
- Would you like more information on this topic?
- Do you think you learned something new? If so, what?
- Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Questions About Your Instructor
If your course involves active lessons, then another key category of course evaluation questions is to focus on your instructor. Examples include:
- How good was your instructor at explaining concepts?
- How effective was your instructor’s teaching style?
- How well did your instructor prepare you for each lesson?
- How well did you work together with your instructor?
- How well did the instructor communicate with you?
- How well did they answer your questions?
- How well did they respond to your comments?
- How well did your instructor motivate you?
- Did you feel confident about approaching your instructor with questions?
- Learn new skills
- Explore your passion
- Take classes on the go.
"1 year in and still going, their content and courses are great"
Questions About Learning Outcomes
Finally, a very important question to ask is about the efficiency of learning outcomes – this gives you a good indication of whether your learning outcomes are effective, and how they can help your students.
Some good questions include:
- Have you applied anything you have learned in the course? If not, why not?
- What was the most useful thing you learned in the course?
- Do you feel confident about applying what you have learned/ How confident do you feel?
- Did the course help you think differently about a topic?
Final Thoughts
As you can see from the above list, there are many different ways to evaluate your course, and choosing the right questions will have a real impact on your results.
Course evaluations can help you to identify strengths and weaknesses in your course, which can be used to make improvements.
They also provide valuable insight into how your students are responding to your course, which can help you to plan future courses.
