Hundreds of years of teaching and learning have thought us one thing – satisfied students perform better, both in school and in life.
But what’s the easiest and most reliable way to measure the level of happiness of your students? Three words – student satisfaction survey.
Whether you’re looking to find out more about your students’ opinion on the curriculum, your teaching methodology, or the learning environment, conducting a survey is the way to go. To make things easier for you, you can read more about how to create your own survey or use our ready-made student satisfaction survey template (link down below) – the choice is yours.
Before we go any deeper into what makes a good student satisfaction survey and share different types of survey questions to ask, let’s first briefly explore the major factors that influence how satisfied students actually are.
4 Main Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction
Here are the 4 main factors that are likely to influence student satisfaction
Teaching
Obviously, one of the most important factors that affect students directly is the teaching quality factor, which includes curriculum, teaching techniques and methodologies, as well as testing methods.
In your survey, you should ask your students about their opinion on what and how they are taught, and whether that knowledge is being effectively and fairly tested.
Learning environment
Work environment is one of the most important factors that affect employee engagement. The same goes for students – they are more likely to thrive and reach their full potential if the learning environment meets their individual needs.
Learning environment can refer to all those things that surround students within the school facilities. Among other things, it entails interpersonal communication, bullying, discrimination, and other aspects that can affect student satisfaction.
School/university facilities
Adequate facilities are the very foundation of any successful educational institution. Just like a good basketball court can strengthen bonds between students, inadequate learning or other facilities can make them dissatisfied and prevent them from making the most of their education.
By asking your students what they think about the facilities, you can gain insight into what needs to be dealt with most urgently.
Student expectations
Another important factor that affects student satisfaction (and is often neglected) are the very student expectations. Before they enroll at a certain school or university, students will already have formed a certain opinion and built up certain expectations based on the institution’s reputation.
That’s why it’s no wonder that some of the top-notch schools and universities don’t rank so high in terms of student satisfaction – expectations are always much higher with those. You can use a student satisfaction survey to gauge and manage student expectations.
24 Sample Questions to Ask in Your Student Satisfaction Survey
Every question in your survey needs to support your main topic and contribute to the overall survey goal. That being said, avoid asking redundant, irrelevant, or ambiguous questions. For example, asking students if they liked last year’s trip to the observatory is unlikely to improve the quality of food service in the school cafeteria.
To inspire your survey creation, here are the 24 sample questions to use in your student satisfaction survey. Of course, we don’t mean that you should use all of them in one survey. To make sure you ask all the right questions (and the right number of questions so as not to overwhelm the takers), consider using our pre-made student satisfaction survey template.
Questions about the quality of teaching
- How well do the professors/teachers teach at this university/school?
- Are the lecturers proficient enough?
- How effectively is this course/class/subject taught?
- How much value are you getting from the course content overall?
- Which is your favorite course/subject, and why?
- How relevant is the curriculum to your field of study?
- Do you feel job-competent moving forward from this university?
- How would you rate the following aspects of your educational experience:
- Quality of the teaching faculty
- Course availability
- Academic advising
- Access to teaching faculty
- Fellow students’ academic ability
- The academic reputation of the school
- Value of education for the price
Questions about the learning environment
- How helpful is your academic advisor?
- How safe do you feel on campus?
- How satisfied are you with the diversity and quality of the offered extracurricular activities?
- How helpful are the campus staff with administrative and other issues?
- How would you rate the following aspects of student life at the school:
- Sport and recreational facilities
- Clubs and student organizations
- Student diversity
- Campus safety
- Extracurricular activities
- Student safety
- Social life
Questions about facilities
- How well-maintained are the facilities?
- How satisfied are you with the dormitory facilities?
- How pleased are you with the quality of the food served at the school cafeteria?
- How easy it is to get the resources you need from the school/university library?
- How would you rate the following services/facilities at the school:
- Campus
- Class and laboratory facilities
- Library
- Parking
- Public transportation
- Student residences
- Food services
- Sports and fitness facilities
- Career counseling and placement
Other questions
- What is your class year?
- How satisfied are you with the school policies?
- How satisfied are you with the overall experience studying here?
- Which areas could use improvement regarding your experience at this institution?
- How likely are you to continue attending this school/university next school year?
- How likely are you to recommend this educational institution to others?
Student Satisfaction Survey Template
Above, we’ve presented you with some of the most common factors that influence student satisfaction, as well as the sample questions to help you survey each. Still don’t want to bother creating your own survey?
No worries, we have prepared a ready-made student satisfaction survey template for you to use right away. Just log in to your LeadQuizzes account and select it from the list of survey templates or click on the image below to use it immediately after the log-in.
How to Improve the Overall Student Satisfaction
The main purpose of conducting a student satisfaction survey should be to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to different aspects of your educational institution’s operation. Still, that’s not where your job ends.
Obtaining feedback and not doing anything about it is a waste of both time and resources and just creates an illusion that you care about student satisfaction. For the entire process to make sense, you need to really take the feedback into account and act accordingly.
For example, every time you conduct one of these surveys, you should adopt some new policy (or make changes to the existing one) and, equally importantly, notify your students and other staff about it.
This will help them realize the true importance of such surveys and show that they aren’t just dead letter but an opportunity for their voice to be heard. It will make your students much more willing to participate and provide honest responses. Understand the factors affecting student satisfaction by asking the right questions, to the right people, at the right time.
