Run course surveys

A course survey is a form you send learners after a course to find out what they thought of it — whether it was relevant, clear, and what they would change. It is separate from course reviews, which are the star ratings learners leave in the library. A survey doesn’t stop a course completing unless you choose to make it part of finishing the course.

Every account has a starter survey form, Course survey, and a Course survey workflow that sends it. Edit the form under Administration → Process → Forms to ask your own questions.

Sending a course survey automatically after a course

Add a Start another workflow step to your post-course process that starts your Course survey workflow. Every learner who finishes a course that process covers is then sent the survey as a task. See Set up a post-course process.

Blocks this workflow? on that step decides whether the course waits for the answers:

Answer	What happens to the course
No - runs independently (the default)	The course completes as normal and the survey is sent alongside it. If the survey is the only thing the process does, the learner never sees Awaiting sign-off
Yes	The course is held under Awaiting sign-off until the learner answers the survey, then completes

Where you put the step matters. At the top level it runs for every completion the process covers. After the sign-off step, in its Signed off answer, only learners who are signed off are surveyed.

To send the survey some days after the course rather than straight away, put a Pause before the step, for example 10 days. A pause never holds the course: it only delays the survey.

A learner who is not signed off and takes the course again is surveyed again. To survey only the first attempt, add a condition to the step.

Sending a course survey a set time after completion

Every account has a ready-made workflow for this, Send the course survey. To use it:

Go to Administration → Process → Launch rules and choose New → Record-date rules.
Anchor the rule to Course completion date, with an offset such as 0 days for the day they finish, 10 days, or 90 days to ask later whether they are using what they learned.
Narrow it to particular Courses and learning paths or Categories if you want, and choose Send the course survey as the workflow.

Each completed attempt then gets the survey about that course once the offset has passed. See Automate launches with launch rules.

Sending a course survey by hand

Open the course and go to Survey results.
Choose Send survey.
Choose the learners.
Choose which survey workflow to use, or leave the default.
Choose Send survey.

Screenshot missingsend-course-survey-drawer

The Send course survey panel opened from a course's Survey results tab, with three learners chosen and the Survey workflow set to Default course survey.

Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/run-course-surveys/send-course-survey-drawer.png

Anonymous and named course surveys

Open the survey form, choose Settings, and switch Answers are anonymous on or off. Learners taking an anonymous survey are told their name is not shown to the course team.

Anonymity is fixed when each survey is sent. Changing the form to named later never reveals answers people gave while it was anonymous. Anonymous answers reach reports and Lenni with no link to the person who gave them.

Reading course survey results

Open the course and go to Survey results. Choice and scale questions show as charts, with every option in the order your form lists it, including any nobody chose. Free-text answers show as a list.

Above the results, search questions and answers, sort by the form’s order, the question or the number of answers, and use Filters to narrow to the date a survey was sent, a site or a department.

Screenshot missingcourse-survey-results

A course's Survey results tab with Surveys sent 3 and Responses 3, a scale question showing every option from Not at all to Completely with counts and percentages, and a free-text question listing three comments.

Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/run-course-surveys/course-survey-results.png

Results only appear once at least three people have answered, and that applies to every filtered view too: if only two people at one site have answered, filtering to that site shows Not enough responses rather than their answers. A question fewer than three people answered stays hidden while the rest shows. Free-text answers are listed alphabetically, never in the order they were given.

Lenni follows the same rule. Ask it about course survey results and it answers per course, only where at least three people responded, and never breaks answers down by person or team.

Results are visible to the course’s owner and to anybody with the View course survey results permission.

Course survey answers in reports and what managers see

Anonymous course surveys never appear in reports against anybody’s name, for anyone. Their results are only on the course’s Survey results tab, with the three-response minimum.

Named course surveys can be reported on like any other form. On a named survey form’s Settings, Managers can see their team’s answers in reports decides whether managers — and anybody else who reports only on their own team or area — see their team’s answers and who has answered. It is on by default. Switch it off to keep a survey’s answers to the course team and organisation-wide reporters. The switch only appears while Answers are anonymous is off, because anonymous surveys never reach managers.

Screenshot missingcourse-survey-form-settings

The form Settings drawer for a course survey form, with "Answers are anonymous" switched off and "Managers can see their team's answers in reports" switched on below it.

Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/run-course-surveys/course-survey-form-settings.png

People who report across the whole organisation always see named survey answers.