What are good custom questions to add to an end-of-course survey? [closed]

Question

The purpose of end-of-course surveys is to have feedback on the course overall.

However, the survey is more of an evaluation of the instructor than the course itself. A successful course depends more on how a student approaches it than how the instructor does. Obviously, most of the time a bad instructor implies a bad course even for students that have a commitment to their studies. Similarly, a student that takes a course without putting in the effort/hours required for a college course and still has a "high-school" mindset, will evaluate the course negatively.

I'm allowed to add questions to the survey and plan to do so in a way that gives students the opportunity to reflect on the responsibility they had to succeed in the course they are evaluating. Hopefully, some of them, will take ownership of their learning and approach college in a different way.

With this in mind, what are good custom questions to add to an end-of-course survey?

Answer 1

"Is the course too hard?", "Which part did you struggle the most?", "How did your prerequisites help you with the course?", "Did the course meet your expectation?", "Should the instructor provide additional help to students? and how?",... They are typical questions in our end-of-course survey. However, I think there is another problem.

(The original post stating that the current end-of-course survey consists of 20 questions directly related to the question "How good is the professor?")

At my university, end-of-course surveys are taken seriously as well. However, I have observed that my fellow students tend to systematically select a higher rating for each question regardless of their opinions, also there are many questions with "No Answer". It is because of the survey design is not good.

1. There are too many questions as well (like 20); however, most of them are multiple-choice questions (rating from 1-10) without much description. Many students will just avoid thinking and select a very high rating or very low one without even reading questions to finish the survey.

2. There are a few optional short answer questions at the end of the survey. However, no one wants to answer these questions after randomly completing the first 20 MCQs.

In my opinion, students do not have an incentive to complete that long, boring survey in an honest manner. The number of questions should be reduced before adding any new question to the survey. Avoid using too many MCQs. Instead of using a scale (e.g. 1-10), we should add detailed description for each option (5 options would probably be the best). Avoid redundancy - do not ask many questions for the same thing. "20" for "How good is the professor/the course?" is clearly too much!

Answer 2

Partial frame change answer.

Starting with the point of view that "A successful course depends more on how a student approaches it than how the instructor does." to write your end of course survey questions is not great. Before you have even heard this year's evaluation of your course, you have concluded that your actions had minimal influence on student outcomes. Therefore there is little to be gained by making changes based on their perception.

But your absolutely right that encouraging them to reflect on their own agency is helpful.

If you come at this in good faith, I think it likely the students will sense that. Seeing you honestly reflecting on what you did well, and what might have been better, gives you more credibility to ask the same of them. Furthermore, I think you should be honest about what you want to do here.

Making a specific suggestion is tough without seeing the other questions, but to make a concrete one;

Some of the responsibility for enabling you to succeed in this course is mine. For you specifically, was there some aspect you would have liked me to take more responsibility for? What assessment rule or guidance did you find most helpful?

Some of the responsibility for enabling you to succeed in this course is yours. In this course, which of your own habits and practices were most useful to you? What do you think you will do differently in the future?