When you’re in the e-learning business, designing and implementing your courses is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to promote your online courses and make sure you’re retaining as many of your students as possible, it’s important to develop an online course evaluation form to give your students the opportunity to provide valuable feedback. 

Why do I need an online course evaluation?

Without the honest, unfiltered feedback from your students - i.e. your customers - you can’t make the necessary adjustments to your courses, instruction, technology and more. There may be some easy-to-implement opportunities you simply haven’t thought of yet that your customers can make clear to you. 

Remember: it costs 5 times more to win a new customer than keep an existing one, so a well-constructed e-learning course evaluation with the right questions can win you major revenue gains in the long run. 

How can I use a form survey to evaluate an elearning course?

The good news is that the logistics of building a professional-looking, user-friendly, and cost-effective online course evaluation rubric are easier and simpler than ever. Services like SurveyMonkey and Typeform give anyone the ability to develop beautiful online course evaluation templates, even if you’re not a designer or web developer. 

Marketing automation also makes it easy to deliver your elearning course evaluation questions to your target customers at exactly the right moment. Make smart and strategic use of automated emails to give your customers the opportunity to fill out your online course evaluation form just as they’ve finished a course so the experience is still fresh in their minds. Automating emails with a link to your online course evaluation will also save you the headache of manually reaching out to your customers for feedback. 

In order to incentivize capturing more feedback from your customers, you might also consider strategic marketing and messaging strategies. Congratulate them for the great achievement they’ve made by completing that course, or even go so far as to offer future discounts or the chance to win a prize should they be so kind as to offer their feedback on your online course evaluation form.

What kind of e-learning course evaluation questions will provide the info I need?

Deciding what questions to ask can become a difficult balancing act. As a business owner or product manager, you may be eager to hear every little detail your customers have to say on your online course evaluation. But you also don’t want to fatigue your customers. If your online course evaluation has too many questions, you run the risk of seeing higher “drop-off” rates as your customers move through the survey and get tired of all the questions. 

So, when deciding what crucial information you’d like to hear from your customers in your e-learning course evaluation, it may be wise not to exceed 20 - which is why we’ve got suggestions for exactly that many! And remember, if you have 30 or even 40 ideas for e-learning course evaluation questions you’d like to know the answer to, you can always swamp different questions in later to collect the feedback you need over time.

Online course evaluation questions about the teacher and instructor

First off, you better make sure your instructors know what they’re tasked with talking about:

How would you rate your course instructor’s knowledge of the subject?

5 - Total mastery

4 - Very good

3 - Could use some improvement

2 - Unsatisfactory

1 - Unacceptable

Understanding how your customers feel about your e-learning course instructors knowledge is only one small piece of whether or not they benefited from your online course. Sometimes a smart instructor doesn’t translate to a good instructor, so be sure to dig in to the details with more questions like: 

How would you rate your course instructor’s ability to explain complex topics simply?

5 - Very clear explanations

4 - Pretty good!

3 - Fine but could be better

2 - Not very clear

1 - Not clear at all

As we know, the key to effective instruction is not to be the smartest person in the room. It’s all about the instructor’s ability to take complex topics and break them down into simple, digestible pieces that are easy for students to absorb and understand.

Another important part of effective online learning course instruction is the teacher’s ability to connect and build rapport with their students - a task that can be especially challenging in a digital setting or a one-way instructional video. So what kind of e-learning course evaluation questions can you ask to take a pulse?

How would you rate your course instructor’s ability to engage with the students?

5 - Great!

4 - Very good

3 - So-so

2 - Not very good

1 - Not engaging at all

The ultimate test of instructor quality, however, is whether or not a student would want to return to take a course with the same instructor again. This is an absolute “make-or-break”-style question you should absolutely include in your online course evaluation form.

Would you be eager to take another course with this same instructor?

• Yes
• No

By leaving out a “Maybe” option, you compel your customers to make a concrete decision that gives you the information you need to assess the ability of your instructors to retain your customers.

Open-ended questions are a great way to solicit feedback from your happiest and least happy customers. Your happiest customers may leave unprompted glowing reviews your instructors will be happy to hear and your marketing team will be happy to use as testimonials. Your least happy customers will feel heard at the opportunity to vent and voice their frustrations, and even the meanest comments may contain kernels of truth you can consider for making changes to your e-learning course.

Another thing to remember with open-ended questions is to NOT mark them as required. When building your e-learning course evaluation questions, be sure to mark those questions with open-ended responses as not required so those customers without anything further to say can breeze on to the next question relevant to them.

Do you have any additional feedback you’d like to give re: this instructor?

Open text field

Online course evaluation questions about the course material and content

Of course the only thing more important than the instructor is the elearning course content itself. You need to know if it contained the information most pertinent to the topic, but furthermore you need to make sure the online course content met your customers’ expectations. There could be a problem with the way you are positioning and marketing your course if it’s consistently not meeting your customers’ expectations.

Was the course content what you expected?

5 - Yes, exactly

4 - It mostly met my expectations

3 - There were a few key topics missing

2 - It was different from what I expected

1 - It was not what I expected at all

Get more details from your customers with an online course evaluation form that integrates “if, then” logic into your question structure (an easy feature to use in most online survey builders). For example, if the customer gives a certain response to a particular question, they’re routed to another question that allows you to dig deeper as to why they responded a certain way.

Did the course content cover every relevant topic you expected to learn?

• Yes
• No

If not, what topics were missing?

Open text field

This is a great way to get free advice on ways you and your instructors can improve your course materials.

You’ll also want to hear the good and the bad. Remember, as a general rule, good feedback is helpful not just for positive reinforcement, but also could be used to promote and market a particular course, and negative feedback is good for making your e-learning course content the best it can be.

What was your favorite section of the course?

• Module 1: [Name]
• Module 2: [Name]
• Module 3: [Name]

What was your least favorite section of the course?

• Module 1: [Name]
• Module 2: [Name]
• Module 3: [Name]

Finally you’ll want to use your elearning course evaluation questions to see how effective your students found your online course content. If your students felt they improved significantly thanks to your course, those can become wonderful data points to integrate into your marketing materials.

How would you rate your mastery of the topic before taking this course?

5 - Expert level

4 - Experienced but more to learn

3 - Mid-level

2 - Green but with the foundational knowledge

1 - Not familiar with the topic at all

How would you rate your mastery of the topic after taking this course?

5 - Expert level

4 - Experienced but more to learn

3 - Mid-level

2 - Green but with the foundational knowledge

1 - Not familiar with the topic at all

Imagine the marketing possibilities - what if you could say “85% of our students rate themselves experts after taking this course”?

Online course evaluation questions about the technology and media

Unfortunately you could have the best instructors and course content in the e-learning industry and still fail on the technology front, so it’s essential to make sure your customers are having a seamless experience with the e-learning technology and your customer support team and tools.

How easy was the course to use and navigate?

5 - Very easy

4 - A few hiccups but overall good

3 - I had to reach out to tech support to resolve an issue

2 - Confusing, and tech support couldn’t resolve my issue

1 - Poor

Reaching out to tech support is inevitable, but you want to make sure your tech support team and tools are meeting your customers “where they’re at”. For example, you want to make sure you have a call center team if you learn from your customers on your online course evaluation form that most of them prefer phone support.

Use the “if, then” logic structure again here to glean the details you need.

If you had technical difficulties during the course, how did you contact support for assistance?

• I spoke to a person on the phone
• I spoke to a person using online chat
• I found the answer in your Help Center
• I received an answer via email

Was customer support able to resolve your issue(s)?

• Yes
• No

Hopefully this goes without saying, but you should be using every opportunity - online course evaluation forms included - to check in on the quality of your customer support and how satisfied your customers are with the experience. According to Newvoicemedia, U.S. companies lose more than $62 billion a year due to providing poor service. A study by American Express showed that customers in the United States were willing to spend 17% more on companies they felt provided excellent service - so be sure to include questions like this!

How would you rate your experience with customer support?

5 - Great!

4 - Good

3 - So-so but we resolved the issue in the end

2 - Not great

1 - Poor

Online course evaluation questions for marketing and promotion

Online course evaluation rubrics are perhaps the best and easiest way to procure testimonials and data points for your marketing initiatives, and reach out to and resolve any issues with potentially dissatisfied customers. 

For example, if you want to be able to use statistics in your marketing and promotional materials like, “90% of students rated this course 5 stars!” you could ask a question like:

How would you rate this e-learning experience overall?

5 - Awesome!

4 - Pretty good

3 - So-so

2 - Not good

1 - Poor

Collecting data like this on NPS (net promoter scores) is not just a huge value-add for your marketing team. Leadership and potential investors will love to see net promoter scores that bode healthy revenue growth for the future.

You’ll also want to gauge your chances of retaining a customer who will become a repeat purchaser - the dream for any online e-learning business!

What is the likelihood that you would take another course from [brand name]?

5 - Very likely

4 - Likely

3 - Maybe

2 - Probably not

1 - I will not take another course

Open-ended questions are a great way to capture testimonials and learn who your “raving fans” are. Think beyond how you can use great feedback from these questions - consider how you might actually reach out to these customers with company swag, discounts, even a personal phone call to transform a happy customer into a de facto brand ambassador.

Do you have any additional feedback for us?

Open text field

Of course the simple but most necessary question for your online course evaluation rubric is whether your customer would recommend this course to a friend - i.e., help you win a new customer. So be sure to include this question!

Would you recommend this course to a friend or colleague?

• Yes
• No

The other great opportunity questions like this provide is to win new customers via referrals. If a customer responds with “yes”, for example, use the “if, then” logic function in your online course evaluation form builder to lead them to a second “question”:

Earn a discount on future courses by sharing this referral link with a friend!

You’ll need to work with your marketing operations team to build a system that offers your customers unique referral links, which can take a bit of effort, but once you have that feature built into your online course evaluation form, it can begin to pay off big dividends.