Learner feedback: from 3 surveys a month to 39

In a full year, our courses brought in 34 learner surveys. I proposed building the survey into the end of every course, tested it on one course, and feedback went up 13 times while the ratings held steady.

My role

Came up with it, built it, pitched it to my manager

Pilot

One course first, then every course after it

Responses since

832, up from 34 the year before

Tools

Microsoft Forms, embedded in each course

surveys a month before

~3

surveys a month after

39.2

would recommend, up from 85%

95%

The problem

From July 2024 to June 2025, every course we published brought in a combined 34 learner surveys, about three a month. With that few responses, one unhappy learner could swing a course’s score, and we couldn’t tell which course needed work.

The survey wasn’t part of the course itself. My bet was that the fix wasn’t asking harder. It was asking at the right moment: on the last screen, while the course was still in front of the learner.

What I did

1. Proposed it

   I brought the idea to my manager: a short Microsoft Forms survey embedded at the end of each course, still optional, so nobody is forced to answer to finish.

2. Tested it on one course first

   I piloted it on the next course in the queue. With the survey built in, that one course brought in 248 surveys over 370 days, about 20 a month from a single course. That’s roughly seven times what all of our courses had been bringing in together.

3. Built it into every course after that

   The courses after the pilot brought in another 584 surveys at 39.2 a month, 13 times the old rate. That’s 17 times as many surveys as the whole year before the change.

What the numbers show

The average rating barely moved, 4.44 before and 4.41 after, and I think that’s the most important result here. A 4.4 from 34 people could just be the happiest learners speaking up. A 4.4 from 832 people tells you how the training actually lands. The share who would recommend a course went up, from 85% to 95% and above.

Acting on the feedback

More surveys only matter if someone acts on them. In one course, a line was worded in a way that confused people. A learner told us plainly they couldn’t tell what it meant, or whether they were supposed to start offering a service. We went back into the course, rewrote that section with clearer language and explicit next steps, and redeployed it. The feedback after that was positive. At three surveys a month, a problem like that can sit in a course for a long time before anyone hears about it.

What learners told us

The comments were specific enough to design from. Learners said a course gave them the confidence to try something new on their own device, and that they felt ready to handle a process on the job. The part they mentioned most was a quiz built around a real-life scenario. They also liked courses that pointed them straight to the step-by-step guidance in our knowledge base.

One of the how-to videos I made for these courses is now on the credit union’s public passkey help page, where members use it too.

What I learned

Low feedback is usually a design problem, not a learner problem. People will answer if you ask at the right moment and keep it short. The other lesson was to test on one course before changing all of them. The pilot gave us real numbers to make the case with, so rolling it out everywhere was an easy decision.

Figures come from anonymous, optional learner surveys. Course names, comments and content are left out.