Tips for Adding Effective Custom Questions to Course Evaluations

Instructors have the ability to add up to twelve questions (6 rating-type questions and 6 open-ended questions) to their online course evaluations in the week before the evaluations open to students. These custom questions will appear on the course evaluations in addition to the default department-selected questions and the campus-wide questions. Instructors may be wondering what questions to add to their course evaluations and how to best craft those questions.

When thinking about what questions to ask, remember:

• Custom questions are confidential. Responses to these questions are only shared with the instructor.
• You don't have to ask anything. Adding custom questions is optional, so take a look at the default questions that are  already included on the evaluations to see if they're sufficient for your needs.
• Consider areas the standard questions don't cover.
• Return to your course learning goals.
• Focus on student experience, not rating the instructor.
  • By putting the focus on the student and their experience instead of the instructor you can help reduce bias.
• Open-ended questions are good at getting specific details and feedback about things you didn't know to ask about, but the response rate will be lower and the answers may be difficult to interpret.
• Rating questions are easier to analyze and more likely to get a response, but the responses have less depth and can lack context about things that may be helpful to improve upon.
• Ask questions where the answer may change how you do something in your course.

 

When writing questions there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Be clearer than you think you need to be
• Avoid leading questions
• Avoid asking more than one question at once
• Make sure the question scale is appropriate for the question
  
  • Rating questions use a 1 (not at all) to 7 (very) scale

 

More Information

How to add custom questions to course evaluations

Add questions at course-evaluations.berkeley.edu.