Describe your class and what you need to learn before it starts. Makeform creates an editable pre class survey for experience, goals, confidence, expectations, and practical needs.
Send responses to your connected tools.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a prompt, adapt it, or send it to the builder. The shown structure is an example, not a live AI result.
Audience
Students entering a discussion-based college course
Format
Short readiness survey with scales and open responses
Prompt size
312 chars
Example survey structure
Short readiness survey with scales and open responses
Program and year
Previous exposure to environmental policy
Confidence reading and discussing research
What do you want to understand?
Participation support
Suggested routing tags
New to topic
Some experience
Support requested
Ask what students can already do, not only whether they call themselves beginner or advanced.
Step 1
Ask
background, goals, confidence, and expectations
Step 2
Segment
spot new, experienced, and support-requesting learners
Step 3
Plan
adjust examples, pacing, groups, and materials
Step 4
Teach
begin with the needs students actually reported
Plan before class
A pre class survey reveals what learners know, why they enrolled, and what may affect participation.
Use confidence scales and concrete experience questions to distinguish beginners, returning learners, and those ready for extension work.
Conditional paths can ask experienced students for examples while keeping first-time learners from answering irrelevant questions.
Open responses reveal the tasks and outcomes students care about, giving you relevant examples for the first lesson.
Useful across formats
Adapt one sequence — context, experience, confidence, goals, expectations, and practical needs — to each setting.
Ask about prerequisite concepts, study habits, discussion comfort, and one question students hope the course will answer.
Capture roles, tools, real workplace tasks, current proficiency, and manager or team outcomes without turning intake into an exam.
Confirm devices, materials, project stage, and what participants plan to make so demonstrations match the room.
Measure confidence by skill, understand partner-work preferences, and learn the situations where participants want to apply the material.
Survey workflow
Generate, refine, share, and review the survey before finalizing your first session.
Name the topic, audience, duration, and the choices answers should inform, such as pacing, examples, project groups, or optional review material.
Use concrete behaviors, a balanced confidence scale, optional sensitive fields, and only questions you will use.
Send the public link with a clear purpose and response date. Leave enough time to review patterns and revise materials before class begins.
Review distributions, recurring goals, and access requests; then prepare foundation and stretch examples.
Survey vs introduction email
A short survey makes class-wide patterns visible while preserving individual context.
Field guide
Six compact sections provide useful planning information without becoming a second assignment.
Context
Collect only context that changes instruction, such as role, program, previous coursework, or technology access. Avoid unrelated personal details.
Prior experience
Pair an experience choice with courses taken, tools used, projects completed, or tasks attempted. These concrete signals help set the starting point.
Confidence
A matrix reveals the class range without posing as a formal assessment. Give every core skill the same scale and include a not yet tried option.
Goals
Ask what students want to understand, make, decide, or perform. Combine a required priority with an optional open response.
Expectations
Ask about demonstrations, practice, discussion, feedback, and pace. Say that preferences will inform, not dictate, the class design.
Participation needs
Offer an optional field for access, scheduling, technology, or participation needs. Keep it separate from public introductions and follow up privately.
Related tools
Use the same builder for registration, quick in-class checks, feedback, and student-focused surveys before and after instruction.
Collect enrollment details and course selections before sending the readiness survey.
Open toolAsk students what supported learning and what should change after instruction.
Open toolRun a quick understanding check, vote, or discussion prompt during class.
Open toolCreate a warmer introduction questionnaire for a new cohort or advisory group.
Open toolExplore how students experience the classroom, instruction, and learning environment.
Open toolGather structured end-of-course reactions about content, delivery, and usefulness.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for instructors deciding what to ask, when to send it, and how to use the responses.
It is a short questionnaire sent before instruction. It captures learners' relevant background, confidence, goals, expectations, preferences, and practical needs so the instructor can prepare appropriately.
Ask about experience, confidence with core skills, the learner's main goal, a real application, expectations, and optional participation needs. Add context only when it affects teaching.
Aim for five to seven minutes: mostly choices or scales plus two or three open responses. Remove questions that will not inform teaching, communication, or support.
It may include a brief ungraded readiness check, but confidence and experience questions can be enough. Explain any knowledge questions and do not treat them as a complete ability measure.
Send it after enrollment and early enough to adjust materials. Several days to a week often works; include a clear response date in the invitation.
Review confidence ranges, recurring goals, missing resources, and support requests. Choose a starting point, prepare foundation and stretch examples, and privately follow up where needed.
Yes. Conditional logic can ask experienced learners about projects and beginners about unfamiliar tasks. Relevant paths keep the survey shorter for everyone.
Yes. Makeform is unlimited free for generating, editing, publishing, and collecting responses. The paid tier only removes the Makeform badge.
Teach the students who are actually arriving.
