Two hundred forms, one page, and a paragraph telling you what they add up to.
A course evaluation is easy to run and hard to read, because the useful part is written and there is a lot of it. The charts tell you the shape. The written answers tell you what to change. FreeSurvey groups the written ones so you can see the six things people said, rather than the two hundred times they said them.
A course evaluation asks students what worked and what did not, at the end of a course or a module. It works best anonymous, run before grades are released, and short enough that people answer it in the room.
In the last session, in the room, before anybody leaves. Emailed a week later it gets answered by the students who already loved it and the two who did not.
The questions, in full
Every one of them is on this page before you sign up for anything. The line under each question says what it is for, and what it is deliberately not asking.
The chart that suits the question, and a paragraph under it.
Numbers get the widget built for them. Written answers get grouped into the things people kept saying, with a count on each and every original answer still readable underneath, word for word.
Everything a results page holdsWhat goes wrong with a course survey
- Sending it after grades come out. The results turn into a referendum on the mark.
- Asking students to rate the instructor personally. It collects popularity, and it is the part of course evaluation with the worst evidence behind it.
- Asking about the instructor and nothing about the material. Students have plenty to say about pace, workload and the reading, and it is easier to act on.
- Reading only the average. The written answers are where every actual change comes from.
Do students need an account?
No. They open the link and answer. Nothing is installed and no login is involved, which matters a lot for response rate in a classroom.
Can I reuse the same evaluation each term?
Yes, and you should. Keeping the questions identical is what lets you see whether a change you made actually worked.
How do I read two hundred written answers?
The results page groups them into themes and shows how often each came up, with every original answer still readable underneath exactly as it was written.
Often run alongside this one
Event feedback survey
Event feedback has a short half-life. Ask in the room and you get detail. Ask on Monday and you get a mood. Everything about this survey is built around being answerable on a phone, standing up, in under a minute.
CSAT survey
Customer Satisfaction Score measures one specific interaction rather than the whole relationship. It is the right tool immediately after a purchase, a support ticket or a delivery, and the wrong tool for a quarterly health check.