Here are some of the best questions for a community college student survey about course scheduling and availability, plus tips on how to create them. With Specific, you can build your survey in seconds—no manual setup or guesswork needed.
Best open-ended questions for community college student course scheduling surveys
Open-ended questions give us genuine, unfiltered insights into student experiences and frustrations. They're ideal when we want to discover the “why” behind challenges, surface hidden pain points, or collect suggestions that go beyond a checklist. Given that about **one-third of community college students report dissatisfaction with course registration** due to scheduling and availability barriers, we can’t afford to miss their uncensored feedback. [1]
What difficulties have you faced when trying to register for required courses?
Can you describe a recent experience where a class you needed was full or unavailable?
How does your current course schedule fit with your work, family, or other commitments?
What scheduling changes would help you progress faster toward your degree?
Have you had to delay graduation or drop classes due to scheduling problems? Tell us more.
If you prefer online classes, why do they work better (or worse) for your situation?
Are there certain times of day or days of the week that work best for your classes? Please elaborate.
What do you think would make the course registration process more user-friendly?
How do you usually find out about course changes, cancellations, or added sections?
What’s one thing you wish the college understood about your scheduling needs?
These open questions let students explain what’s really blocking their progress—whether it’s a rigid timetable, lack of flexible options, or a registration system that just isn’t working for them.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for scheduling and availability surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when we want to quantify issues or start a conversation around clear preferences. Sometimes, it’s just easier for a student to choose an option instead of composing a long answer—especially if they’re in a hurry or tired of filling out forms. Multiple-choice questions get the ball rolling and make follow-up questions more effective. For example, since **76% of community college students prefer fully online classes**, this format can help us measure how widespread that sentiment is within our own campus. [2]
Question: Which time slot is most challenging for you to attend classes?
Morning (before 10am)
Late morning (10am–12pm)
Afternoon (12pm–5pm)
Evening (after 5pm)
Question: How do you prefer to take your courses?
Fully in-person
Fully online
Hybrid (mix of both)
Other
Question: Have you ever had to change your graduation plans because of course availability?
Yes
No
When to followup with "why?" If a student answers that they had to adjust graduation plans, or strongly prefer a certain schedule, ask “why?”—it uncovers hidden barriers or deeper motivations. For instance, “Why did you need to switch your graduation date?” might reveal specific classes that are always booked or never offered at the right time.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Use "Other" when you know students’ experiences might not fit neatly in predefined boxes. Follow-ups can then dig into unexpected issues or preferences you hadn’t anticipated. This helps us stay open to surprises.
Using NPS for student satisfaction with course scheduling
NPS—Net Promoter Score—is a simple but powerful way to measure how likely students are to recommend the school's registration and scheduling process to friends. While it's most common in business settings, it fits here because course scheduling is a make-or-break experience for many students. Schools that have implemented **user-friendly scheduling systems have seen 5–7% jumps in student persistence**—so keeping an eye on satisfaction matters. [3] If you want to try an NPS survey with no hassle, you can generate an NPS survey just for this audience and topic.
The power of follow-up questions
Want to get the most out of every response? The real breakthroughs come from smart follow-ups. Instead of guessing what students mean by “the schedule was bad,” our AI-driven follow-up feature—read more about it here—digs deeper, in real time. This isn’t just about saving time, though it definitely does (no more email ping-pong to clarify answers). It’s about making the conversation feel human and natural—something we’ve built deeply into Specific’s DNA.
Community college student: “It didn’t fit my work schedule.”
AI follow-up: “What would have made it easier for you to balance classes with your job?”
How many followups to ask? We find that two or three thoughtful follow-ups are usually enough—just enough to gather real context, without exhausting students. Specific lets you control this so you can automatically stop when you’ve got what you need.
This makes it a conversational survey—real, back-and-forth dialog instead of one-sided data entry. Students feel heard, not interrogated.
AI survey analysis, response summaries, category tagging—all possible even with open-ended and follow-up questions—are easy thanks to new AI tools (see this guide on analyzing community college student survey results). AI makes sense of rich, unstructured feedback without hours of reading.
Automated follow-ups aren’t just a neat feature—they’re a new, better way to survey. Try generating a survey now and see how much richer your insights become.
How to use GPT prompts to generate great questions
If you want even more inspiration or custom-tailored questions, GPT-based AI tools are fantastic at brainstorming. Start simple—here’s an example prompt to kick things off:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for community college student survey about course scheduling and availability.
For better results, give AI more context about who you are, what your students are like, and what problems you’re trying to solve:
I am an academic advisor at a mid-sized community college. Our students are mostly working adults and parents, and we’ve had complaints about limited course availability during evenings and weekends. Suggest 10 open-ended and multiple-choice questions that can uncover pain points related to course scheduling and lead to actionable improvements.
Once you have a question list, go a step further:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, zoom in on the key issues you care about:
Generate 10 questions for categories “online course demand” and “reasons for registration delays.” (Use your real categories for best results!)
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey is just what it sounds like—a survey that feels like a chat, not a test. Instead of one-way, static forms, we harness AI to interact and adapt in real time. Specific’s AI survey generator makes this possible in seconds: you just describe your needs, and the generator creates a smart survey, complete with dynamic follow-ups and a natural flow. No more clunky form builders.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated (Conversational) Survey |
|---|---|
Typeless, rigid, single-round forms | Adaptive questions and live follow-ups |
Hours spent designing and editing | Survey ready in moments using AI |
Hard to probe deeper or clarify answers | AI clarifies, probes, and gathers context automatically |
Manual response analysis | Instant AI-driven summaries and insights |
Why use AI for community college student surveys? AI-powered, conversational surveys like Specific’s don’t just save time—they raise data quality, surface nuanced insights, and engage busy students who might skip a static form. With tech advances, AI can now interpret open-ended student answers in real time and make sense of trends across hundreds of responses. [5]
This is why Specific is recognized for best-in-class user experience in conversational surveys. It makes the process smooth and human—for both students and researchers. If you want a quick guide, check our article on how to create a community college scheduling survey.
See this course scheduling and availability survey example now
Ready to uncover your students’ true needs? See what a conversational course scheduling survey looks like—you’ll collect deeper insights, save time, and engage more students than with any old form. Start your survey creation now to experience the difference!