Here are some of the best questions for a Community College Student survey about tutoring and academic support, plus tips for crafting strong survey questions. If you want to build your own survey in seconds, Specific can help.
Best open-ended questions for community college student surveys about tutoring and academic support
If you want to get richer feedback and honest student perspectives, open-ended questions are the way to go. They allow you to capture the real voice of students, highlight experiences you never anticipated, and uncover issues traditional multiple-choice just can’t. Use them when you want depth, context, or new ideas—even for known problems.
What do you think about the tutoring and academic support services available at your college?
Can you share a specific time when tutoring or academic support made a difference for you?
What challenges have you faced in accessing tutoring or academic support?
How could tutoring and academic support at your college be improved?
What motivates or discourages you from using academic support services?
In what ways have tutoring services helped—or failed to help—you persist with your studies?
If you haven’t used tutoring or academic support, what are your main reasons?
How do you usually find out about academic support services at your college?
What additional resources or support would help you succeed academically?
How does the quality of support affect your confidence in your academic work?
Open-ended questions work especially well in areas where only 13% of learners engage with academic support services, despite widespread availability and need for these resources [3].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for community college student surveys about tutoring and academic support
Single-select multiple-choice questions are invaluable when you need to quantify experiences or collect structured feedback—especially for large student groups. They’re also perfect when you want to reduce friction for busy students, giving them a fast way to engage. Let respondents pick the one answer that best fits, and follow up with probing questions for more detail.
Question: How often have you used tutoring or academic support services at your college this semester?
Never
Once or twice
Monthly
Weekly
Question: What was your main reason for seeking (or not seeking) academic support?
I wanted to improve my grades
I struggled to understand course material
I was referred by an instructor or advisor
I didn’t know services were available
Other
Question: How satisfied are you with your college’s tutoring and academic support options?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Not satisfied
When to followup with "why?" Follow up with "why?" when you want deeper reasoning or to uncover the context behind a choice. For example, if a student selects “Never” to using tutoring services, a followup like “Why haven’t you used tutoring services?” can get to the root cause—maybe it’s lack of awareness, embarrassment, or scheduling barriers. This double layer brings clarity and enables practical improvements.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? "Other" lets students describe reasons you didn’t anticipate—especially important when working with diverse or nontraditional student populations. If they choose "Other," always ask a followup: “Can you tell us more about your reason?” This can uncover unique insights that structured choices often miss.
Should you include an NPS question for community college student surveys about tutoring and academic support?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) distills satisfaction and advocacy into one powerful question: “How likely are you to recommend our tutoring and academic support services to a friend or classmate?” We find it gives a sharp snapshot of overall student sentiment—and it’s easy to benchmark over time. Plus, you can set up targeted followup questions for people who score low, neutral, or high, to dig into their reasoning. If you want to try a ready-made NPS survey for community college students about tutoring and academic support, generate it here.
The power of follow-up questions
We don’t get tired of talking about follow-up questions—they’re a game-changer in survey design. Rather than stopping at a surface-level answer, automated followups with AI allow us to dig deeper, clarify confusion, and capture the “why” in real time. This is especially crucial when, for example, only 39% of continuing students have engaged with tutoring services, despite 68% of colleges offering them—follow-ups help us find the gaps. [1][2]
Student: “I haven’t used the tutoring services.”
AI follow-up: “Is there something that prevented you from accessing tutoring, or were you simply not aware it was available?”
How many followups to ask? We recommend 2-3 followups per main question, which usually uncovers the detail you need without causing survey fatigue. In Specific, you can enable a setting that jumps to the next question once you’ve got the information you need.
This makes it a conversational survey—it feels more like a chat than a form, making participation easier and more natural for students.
AI survey response analysis and unstructured text: Don’t let the idea of lots of text overwhelm you. With AI-powered tools like Specific, analyzing and summarizing free-text responses is instant. Even hundreds of open-ended replies are easy to review—the AI automatically extracts key themes and trends for you. Try generating a survey with automated followups to see the conversational experience in action.
How to compose a prompt for ChatGPT or other GPTs to generate better community college student survey questions
If you want more personalized survey questions, the key lies in how you talk to your AI. Start simple, then add context to get the most relevant outputs:
Ask a base prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Community College Student survey about Tutoring And Academic Support.
Better results come with more context about your situation and what you need from the questions:
We want to understand why our community college students aren’t using available tutoring and academic support services, and get ideas for how to improve them. Could you suggest 10 open-ended questions that are inclusive of students who have never used these services?
Next, ask the AI to group and organize the questions for you:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Zero in on the areas that matter most to you. Pick categories you want to delve into, and prompt the AI again:
Generate 10 questions for categories “Barriers to usage” and “Suggestions for improvement”.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey swaps the stiff one-way forms for dynamic, context-aware dialogue. With an AI survey generator, you simply describe what you want—the AI suggests questions, structures the flow, and injects smart follow-ups based on responses. This creates a personalized, engaging experience both for the person designing and the student responding to the survey.
Let’s break down how this compares to building a survey manually:
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generator |
|---|---|
Write questions by hand with little real-time help | Describe your goals—AI instantly recommends and structures questions |
Static, one-size-fits-all questions | Dynamically adapts with followups to gather richer context |
Analysis is slow and manual, harder with free text | AI-powered insights and summaries from the start |
Why use AI for community college student surveys? AI-powered tools like Specific let you move fast, iterate on your questions with feedback, and adapt automatically based on student responses. When 70% of students now prefer some form of AI-powered support [4], conversational AI surveys are both a natural fit—and the best way to keep research quick, student-friendly, and insightful.
If you’re interested in the process start-to-finish, check out our detailed guide on how to create a survey for community college students about tutoring and academic support.
Specific delivers a best-in-class user experience for these conversational surveys—ensuring students feel heard, and that researchers or administrators get actionable, in-depth feedback.
See this tutoring and academic support survey example now
See how a conversational survey can help you uncover the root causes behind low engagement and get actionable ideas to boost academic support at your college—while making the feedback process seamless and more human.