open ended assignment examples

• Differentiation

Open-ended tasks have more than one right answer, solution or outcome and can be completed in more than one way. They can take the form of statements, questions, tasks, projects or teaching methods. Different learners may use different types of thinking; and there are no predetermined correct outcomes. Open-ended learning activities are provocative and stimulate divergent thinking about a topic. Teachers’ attitudes, assessment criteria and procedures must also encourage students to take different paths and offer creative responses. Unique contributions are welcomed.

Maker and Scheiver [59] identified these advantages of open questions. They:

• Encourage many students to give responses
• Encourage student-to-student interaction patterns
• Elicit more complete and more complex responses
• Allow students to give knowledgeable answers
• Encourage students to question themselves, their classmates, and their teachers
• Stimulate further thought and exploration

Open-ended activities work well in mixed-ability classrooms because they have “low floors” and “high ceilings.” This means they require minimal background knowledge and also have high or no limits on the knowledge and skill participants might use and learn.

This section provides a variety of examples and resources for developing open-ended learning experiences. It begins with samples of different sizes from a social studies unit on Asia. The first set is small questions, the second are larger activities, and the last is a project. Assessment criteria and procedures are provided for each.

Table 1. Open-ended questions and assessment criteria

Table 2. Open-ended activity with assessment criteria

Table 3. Open-ended project with assessment criteria

Prompts for Creating Open-Ended Tasks:

The prompts below are a few examples of starting points for creating open-ended learning experiences of any size in any subject. Each can be completed with information relevant to a particular assignment. Click here for a more extensive collection of prompts.

• How would ________ be different if ________ ?
• If you were a _________, how would you help (an inventor, a person in history or a character in a story or novel)?
• Create a _________ to promote __________.
• Give (some number) of reasons __________ might ___________.
• What makes ___________ (worthwhile, risky, scary, funny….)?

Open-Endedness During Classroom Discussions

Despite a teacher’s best efforts to stimulate open, higher level thinking during teacher-led classroom discussions, students often respond to questions posed by teachers as if there is one right answer. There are alternatives to teacher’s questions. A teacher’s use of specific statements and silence as well as carefully constructed questions from peers are options. Dillon [60] proposed 7 effective alternatives to direct questioning when the purpose of a discussion is to explore ideas and prompt higher level thinking: declarative statement, reflective restatement, declaration of perplexity, invitation to elaborate, class questions, speakers’ questions and deliberate silence. Students can learn to use these techniques too. Descriptions are provided here . More details are provided in Dillon’s article.

Open-Ended Teaching Methods

Problem-based learning and Socratic seminars [61] are two instructional methods that provide students with open-ended learning experiences. Resources for problem-based learning can be found in the “Examples” and collection of resources provided for Inquiry-based learning .

Socratic Seminars are a form of whole class discussion “based on Socrates’ theory that it is more important to enable students to think for themselves than to merely fill their heads with “right” answers” [62] . Prior to the seminar (discussion), students “examine” a text guided by prompts from the teacher. The “text” may be a novel, political cartoon, artwork, poem, etc. During the discussion, the teacher offers a few well-crafted, open-ended questions “that provoke students to think critically, analyze multiple meanings in text, and express ideas with clarity and confidence.” A follow-up activity enables students to synthesize what they’ve learned from their preparation and seminar experiences. Ball and Brewer [63] provide extensive resources in their materials.

• Maker, C. J., & Schiever, S. W. (2010). Curriculum development and teaching strategies for gifted learners (3rd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
• Dillon, J. T. (1979). Alternatives to questioning. The High School Journal, 62(5), 217-222.
• Ball, W. H. And Brewer, P. (2000). Socratic Seminars in the Block. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. See also: Ball, W. H., & Brewer, P. (1996). Socratic seminars. In R. L. Canady & M. D. Rettig (Eds.). Teaching in the Block (pp. 29-54). Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
• http://www.studyguide.org/socratic_seminar.htm

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How I Make Open-Ended Assignments Really Work in My Middle School Classroom

It doesn’t look like school. There’s no standard process. Here’s what we do instead.

It’s first period, so it’s still chilly on the basketball court, but the students are breaking a sweat as they argue about how to finish their project on time. On the nearby soccer field, a light saber battle rages.

I leave the heated discussion to check on the group I’m most concerned about, the five boys I’ve allowed to climb the fence into the woods behind the school. I know they’re on-task and focused, but there are snakes back there in the spring, and it’ll really put a damper on the class period if anybody has to go to the hospital.

My seventh grade Language Arts students are making short films showcasing all the steps of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. They’re using their phones (or school cameras, or my phone) to shoot the screenplays they spent last week storyboarding and drafting.

It doesn’t look like school. There’s no standard process. There’s no standard product. Each of my students will learn different things from this assignment. My directors will hone their leadership skills, while other members might learn how to present their ideas in ways that will appeal to their group mates.

Some kids will give command performances on camera, while others shine during the editing process. They’ll all pick up some literary and film vocabulary—archetypes, camera angles, motifs—and they’ll all work on the so-called “soft skills” deemed most necessary in today’s job market; working out their differences, adapting to unforeseen challenges and so on.

It took me a long time to be able to assign projects this open-ended. There were very few guidelines and limitations on what the students could do, and whenever they ask questions, I tried to err on the side of offering them as much freedom as possible.

And I believe it’s working. They’re learning, they’re engaged, they’re excited. I told them we would film everything in class, but I think every group has decided to meet over the weekend and work on it for homework. Surely that counts for something.

Through this process, I’ve learned that, while open-ended assignments are both frustrating and exhilarating, there are a few things that must be in place before attempting one:

1. Administrative support.

Otherwise, when your kids are walking around the school in masks carrying bags of fake blood and contraband cell phones, it’s going to get awkward.

2.  A solid rubric.

I broke mine down into what the kids needed to accomplish each day of the project, and that really helped. I also gave them time for team meetings each day at the beginning and end of class, and that helped me to check in with them and see what they needed from me.

3. Faith in both the kids and your assignment.

I let my kids choose their own groups, but warned a few kids beforehand (privately) not to work together. This gave me a lot more freedom; I knew no romantic pairs would be wandering off into the woods for a tryst, and I knew that the kids who egg each other on or have frequent conflicts wouldn’t be working together. I also felt confident enough in my assignment to believe that the kids would be consistently engaged and focused, which I think was accurate.

4. Absolutely ruthlessness when it comes to enforcing expectations.

I let the kids know early on that I could and would pull any kid from any group who was off-task or whose behavior was detrimental to the group. I showed them the alternate assignment and had a colleague ready and willing to take a kid for the class period if needed.

Although I did deduct points from two kids’ grades for an illicit game of soccer, I didn’t have to pull anyone from the project. I think the fact that the kids knew I would remove them from the group if I needed to resulted in general good behavior throughout the project.

5. A tolerance for failure.

When you’re guiding kids through a standardized process to a standardized product, it’s easy to see when things go wrong and correct it. I’ve really had to step back and let the kids figure out their own mistakes this time.

When one group spent a whole class period doing take after take of kids rolling down a hill, I bit my tongue and tried not to watch too anxiously, knowing it would put them behind on their filming. It did, and they spent recess time filming and scaled back their project to make up for it. Letting them make and learn from their mistakes is one of the best gifts I can give them, although it isn’t easy for me.

I’m very lucky to have the freedom to assign projects like this to my students. In the past two weeks, I’ve put miles on my FitBit walking around the school checking on various groups. I’ve bought two boxes of hot tea for my throat, thanks to the cold mornings outside and the repeated shouts of, “Make sure you watch for snakes!”

I’ve also gained some valuable experience and I have big plans for how I’ll continue assignments like this one with all my classes. Hopefully. We’ll see how their films turn out when we screen them on Monday. And whether anybody gets snakebit.

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75 Open-Ended Questions Examples

Open-ended questions are inquiries that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” and require elaboration.

These questions encourage respondents to provide more detailed answers, express opinions, and share experiences.

They can be useful in multiple contexts:

• In conversation , it elicits more information about someone and can help break the ice or deepen your relationship with them.
• In education , open-ended questions are used as prompts to encourage people to express themselves, demonstrate their knowledge, or think more deeply about other people.
• In research , they are used to gather detailed responses from research participants who, if not asked open-ended questions, may not give valuable detailed or in-depth responses.

An example of an open-ended question is:

“What did you enjoy most about your recent vacation?”

Open-Ended Questions Examples

Examples of open-ended questions for students.

• What did you find most interesting or surprising about today’s lesson?
• How would you explain this concept to someone who has never encountered it before?
• Can you think of a real-life example of what we are talking about today?
• When doing the task, what did you find most challenging and why?
• How does this topic connect to the topic we were discussing in last week’s lesson?
• When you walk out of this lesson today, what is the most important insight you’ll take with you?
• When you were solving this problem, what strategies did you draw upon? Can you show them to me?
• If you could change one thing about how you did today’s task, what would it be and why?
• How do you feel about the progress you have made in the unit so far, and what areas do you think you need to work on?
• What questions do you still have about this topic that we can address in our next lesson?
• How do you think this subject will be relevant to your life outside of the classroom, such as on the weekends or even in the workplace once you leave school?
• We tried just one way to solve this problem. Can you think of any alternative approaches we could have taken to reach the same results?
• What resources or strategies do you think were most useful when solving this problem?
• What were the challenges you faced when completing this group work task and how would you work to resolve them next time?
• What are some of the possible weaknesses of the theory we’ve been exploring today?
• How has your understanding of this topic evolved throughout the course of this unit?
• What are some real-world applications of what we’ve learned today?
• If you were to design an experiment to test this hypothesis, what would be your approach?
• Can you think of any counterarguments or alternative perspectives on this issue?
• How would you rate your level of engagement with this topic, and what factors have influenced your level of interest?

Examples of Open-Ended Questions for Getting to Know People

• So, can you tell me about the first time you met our mutual friend who introduced us?
• How did you get interested in your favorite hobby?
• How have your tastes in music changed over time?
• Can you explain a memorable memory from your childhood?
• Are there any books, movies, or TV shows that you’ve enjoyed recently that you could recommend? Why would you recommend them to me?
• How do you usually spend your weekends or leisure time?
• Can you tell me about a restaurant experience you had that you really enjoyed and why it was so memorable?
• What’s your fondest memory of your childhood pet?
• What first got you interested in your chosen career?
• If you could learn a new skill or take up a new hobby, what would it be and why?
• What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received from a parent or mentor?
• If you were to pass on one piece of advice to your younger self, what would lit be?
• Tell me about something fun you did in the area recently that you could recommend that I do this weekend on a budget of $100?
• If you could have a think for a second, would you be able to tell me your short-term, medium-term, and long-term personal goals ?
• If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

Examples of Open-Ended Questions for Interviews

• Can you tell me about yourself and your background, and how you came to be in your current position/field?
• How do you approach problem-solving, and what methods have you found to be most effective?
• Can you describe a particularly challenging situation you faced, and how you were able to navigate it?
• What do you consider to be your greatest strengths, and how have these played a role in your career or personal life?
• Can you describe a moment of personal growth or transformation, and what led to this change?
• What are some of your passions and interests outside of work, and how do these inform or influence your professional life?
• Can you tell me about a time when you faced criticism or negative feedback, and how you were able to respond to it?
• What do you think are some of the most important qualities for success in your field, and how have you worked to develop these qualities in yourself?
• Can you describe a moment of failure or setback, and what you learned from this experience?
• Looking to the future, what are some of your goals or aspirations, and how do you plan to work towards achieving them?

Examples of Open-Ended Questions for Customer Research

• What factors influenced your decision to purchase this product or service?
• How would you describe your overall experience with our customer support team?
• What improvements or changes would you suggest to enhance the user experience of our website or app?
• Can you provide an example of a time when our product or service exceeded your expectations?
• What challenges or obstacles did you encounter while using our product or service, and how did you overcome them?
• How has using our product or service impacted your daily life or work?
• What features do you find most valuable in our product or service, and why?
• Can you describe your decision-making process when choosing between competing products or services in the market?
• What additional products or services would you be interested in seeing from our company?
• How do you perceive our brand in comparison to our competitors, and what factors contribute to this perception?
• What sources of information or communication channels did you rely on when researching our product or service?
• How likely are you to recommend our product or service to others, and why?
• Can you describe any barriers or concerns that might prevent potential customers from using our product or service?
• What aspects of our marketing or advertising caught your attention or influenced your decision to engage with our company?
• How do you envision our product or service evolving or expanding in the future to better meet your needs?

Examples of Open-Ended Questions for Preschoolers

• Can you tell me about the picture you drew today?
• What is your favorite thing to do at school, and why do you like it?
• How do you feel when you play with your friends at school?
• What do you think would happen if animals could talk like people?
• Can you describe the story we read today? What was your favorite part?
• If you could be any animal, which one would you choose to be and why?
• What would you like to learn more about, and why does it interest you?
• How do you help your friends when they’re feeling sad or upset?
• Can you tell me about a time when you solved a problem all by yourself?
• What is your favorite game to play, and how do you play it?
• If you could create your own superhero, what powers would they have and why?
• Can you describe a time when you were really brave? What happened?
• What do you think it would be like to live on another planet?
• If you could invent a new toy, what would it look like and what would it do?
• Can you tell me about a dream you had recently? What happened in the dream?

Open-Ended vs Closed-Ended Questions

Benefits of open-ended questions.

Above all, open-ended questions require people to actively think. This engages them in higher-order thinking skills (rather than simply providing restricted answers) and forces them to expound on their thoughts.

The best thing about these questions is that they benefit both the questioner and the answerer:

• Questioner: For the person asking the question, they benefit from hearing a full insight that can deepen their knowledge about their interlocutor.
• Answerer: For the person answering the question, they benefit because the very process of answering the question helps them to sort their thoughts and clarify their insights.

To expound, below are four of the top benefits.

1. Encouraging critical thinking

When we have to give full answers, our minds have to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information. We can’t get away with a simple yes or no.

This is why educators embrace open-ended questioning, and preferably questions that promote higher-order thinking .

Expounding on our thoughts enables us to do things like:

• Thinking more deeply about a subject
• Considering different perspectives
• Identifying logical fallacies in our own conceptions
• Developing coherent and reasoned responses
• Reflecting on our previous actions
• Clarifying our thoughts.

2. Facilitating self-expression

Open-ended questions allow us to express ourselves. Imagine only living life being able to say “yes” or “no” to questions. We’d struggle to get across our own personalities!

Only with fully-expressed sentences and monologues can we share our full thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It allows us to elaborate on nuances, express our hesitations, and explain caveats.

At the end of explaining our thoughts, we often feel like we’ve been more heard and we have had the chance to express our full authentic thoughts.

3. Building stronger relationships

Open-ended questioning creates good relationships. You need to ask open-ended questions if you want to have good conversations, get to know someone, and make friends.

These sorts of questions promote open communication, speed up the getting-to-know-you phase, and allow people to share more about themselves with each other.

This will make you more comfortable with each other and give the person you’re trying to get to know a sense that you’re interested in them and actively listen to what they have to say. When people feel heard and understood, they are more likely to trust and connect with others.

Tip: Avoid Loaded Questions

One mistake people make during unstructured and semi-structured interviews is to ask open-ended questions that have bias embedded in them.

For an example of a loaded question, imagine if you asked a question: “why did the shop lifter claim he didn’t take the television without paying?”

Here, you’ve made a premise that you’re asking the person to consent to (that the man was a shop lifter).

A more neutral wording might be “why did the man claim he didn’t take the television without paying?”

The second question doesn’t require the person to consent to the notion that the man actually did the shop lifting.

This might be very important, for example, in cross-examining witnesses in a police station!

When asking questions, use questions that encourage people to provide full-sentence responses, at a minimum. Use questions like “how” and “why” rather than questions that can be answered with a brief point. This will allow people the opportunity to provide more detailed responses that give them a chance to demonstrate their full understanding and nuanced thoughts about the topic. This helps students think more deeply and people in everyday conversation to feel like you’re actually interested in what they have to say.

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Examples and Ideas for Open Assignments

What does open pedagogy look like inside of a course?

In this section, we’ve collected some examples of open assignments and projects at UBC and beyond. Let’s start with the below video in which Janette Bulkan, Assistant Professor for Indigenous Studies in UBC’s Faculty of Forestry, describes how she has been using a wiki to empower her students to create and share conservation resources:

Scenario – Redesigning an Assignment

Let’s consider this scenario: In Dr. Chan’s course on food science, they have been asking students to design posters on specific issues related to the topics in the course. At the end of the course, there is a poster presentation session in which students have an opportunity to display their posters in the lobby of the faculty building. Dr. Chan has noticed that while the students put effort into the posters, very few students come to pick up their posters after the session and she ends up recycling them at the end of the term. They would like to redesign the assignment so that the students’ work and efforts do not go to waste.

• What steps or strategies could Dr. Chan implement to make sure their students’ work has meaning and is valuable beyond course?

Open Pedagogy at UBC

There are many specific examples of open pedagogy at UBC, such as:

Latin American Studies students creating and sharing video-based learning objects for their classes

In Jon Beasley-Murray’s Introduction to Latin American Studies course , students are creating videos about specific course topics as well as writing weekly personal reflections on their blogs .

Engineering students creating an open online textbook

Agnes d’Entremount’s engineering students are using the UBC Wiki to write an open textbook that will contain literature reviews and course topics. The open textbook will be set up on a UBC wiki, and will be available for future students to use and build on it. 

Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice students creating, publishing, and sharing zines

This project by Jessi Taylor and Erin Fields saw students in a GRJS course work together to collectively create their own zines around self-chosen topics that will allow students to bring the community into the classroom. The students’ zines were incorporated into an open ‘Zine Faire’ day and put on display in Koerner Library.

Forestry students creating open conservation case studies

Students in several different forestry courses taught by Janette Bulkan and Fernanda Tomaselli are creating open education resources that can be used worldwide. The resources are created on the UBC Wiki and published on the UBC Open Case Studies site , which brings together faculty and students from different disciplines to write, edit, and learn with case studies that are free and open–they are publicly available free of cost, and they are licensed to allow others to revise and reuse them.

Courses across UBC having students analyze, edit, and improve Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the worlds most used open resources but it contains gaps and biases. However, any one can contribute to it and students in UBC courses in history , Latin American studies , biology , food sciences , literature , soil sciences , ecology , and more have been assigned to analysis, create or edit Wikipedia articles . For more information, see Tina Loo’s or Jon Beasley-Murray’s essays on why they used Wikipedia in the classroom.

Physics students creating course learning resources

In Simon Bates’s Physics 101 course, students created original learning objects about a concept or topic in the readings which they found challenging. Students were encouraged to be creative and pick a topic that interested them and share their resources on a course blog . In order to create a collaborative learning community, students were asked to apply a Creative Commons license to their objects, so others could access and learn from their resources.

Classics students creating an open textbook/reader

Siobhán McElduff’s students are creating an OER reader on socially stigmatized groups in ancient Rome as part of their course assignments. The reader will contain out of copyright and original translations of ancient texts, along with student-scholar created introductions, glossaries, images and other explanatory material.

Law students publicly analyzing issues and blogging

In Jon Festinger’s law courses, students are invited to publicly analyze and reflect on issues related to their course as part of their participation marks.

Other examples beyond UBC

• Students writing multiple-choice questions : During each of the 10 weeks when there was no scheduled exam, this instructor asked their students to write multiple-choice questions. However, this assignment also served a pragmatic purpose in that the open textbook that they use for this course does not yet have a readymade question bank.
• Students creating open resources : Introduction to the Brain has been created by final year Psychology students including an introductory information pack for high school students and an activity with printable materials.
• Open assignment banks : This site hosts the assignments that participants in the open online digital storytelling course, ds106, complete as part of their work in the course. Rather than specifying assignments, everyone must do, participants can choose from an array of ones included on this site- all of them have been created by course participants.
• Students writing open textbooks : This book was created entirely by students in a Fall 2016 section of a first-year seminar at Plymouth State University. It was organized around a core set of open pedagogical practices. The theme for the course was “Whose Course Is This, Anyway?”  Students created all learning outcomes, assignments, course policies, and grading processes.
• Students creating apps: In a course at TRU called Designing Legal Expert Systems: Apps for Access to Justice, students worked with non-profit ‘client’ organizations to take legal knowledge and rules as a series of decision-making trees and translate that onto an app.

To read about more examples of open pedagogy assignments and projects, you may wish to browse the Open Pedagogy Notebooks’s Example Repository .

Ideas for Students

Students can also take the initiative on open projects. They can turn assignments, essays, and other academic work into an open educational resources. For example, if you are a student, you could:

• Consider applying a  Creative Commons license  to your work which makes it more shareable.
• Make your work easy to download or take apart for remixing.
• Publish your course essays on a blog or wiki or in an open journal.
• If you take photos or create images or other media, especially if you do so in the course of their studies, consider uploading them to a sharing platform like  flickr  that allows you to license them openly.

Publishing and sharing is a key part of scholarship and academic life and there are many options for students to publish their work and there are many options for publishing including creating a UBC site or blog for posting and sharing their work, posting their work to UBC Library’s institutional open access repository,  cIRcle .

Reflection on Open Platforms

UBC supports a number of different educational technologies that can support open pedagogy assignments. Two of the most commonly used are UBC Blogs and the UBC Wiki . Please read the following teaching guides, which include examples of how instructors using these platforms, and reflect upon your own courses:

Could you see yourself incorporating either of these tools into a course assignment? Would it make those assignments “open”? What would you need to do to get started? What questions would you have and what support would you need? What support would your students need?

Last updated on March 23, 2023 @11:19 am

14 Examples of Formative Assessment [+FAQs]

Traditional student assessment typically comes in the form of a test, pop quiz, or more thorough final exam. But as many teachers will tell you, these rarely tell the whole story or accurately determine just how well a student has learned a concept or lesson.

That’s why many teachers are utilizing formative assessments. While formative assessment is not necessarily a new tool, it is becoming increasingly popular amongst K-12 educators across all subject levels. 

Curious? Read on to learn more about types of formative assessment and where you can access additional resources to help you incorporate this new evaluation style into your classroom.

What is Formative Assessment?

Online education glossary EdGlossary defines formative assessment as “a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.” They continue, “formative assessments help teachers identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills they are having difficulty acquiring, or learning standards they have not yet achieved so that adjustments can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support.”

The primary reason educators utilize formative assessment, and its primary goal, is to measure a student’s understanding while instruction is happening. Formative assessments allow teachers to collect lots of information about a student’s comprehension while they’re learning, which in turn allows them to make adjustments and improvements in the moment. And, the results speak for themselves — formative assessment has been proven to be highly effective in raising the level of student attainment, increasing equity of student outcomes, and improving students’ ability to learn, according to a study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 

On the flipside of the assessment coin is summative assessments, which are what we typically use to evaluate student learning. Summative assessments are used after a specific instructional period, such as at the end of a unit, course, semester, or even school year. As learning and formative assessment expert Paul Black puts it, “when the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When a customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.”

14 Examples of Formative Assessment Tools & Strategies

There are many types of formative assessment tools and strategies available to teachers, and it’s even possible to come up with your own. However, here are some of the most popular and useful formative assessments being used today.

• Round Robin Charts

Students break out into small groups and are given a blank chart and writing utensils. In these groups, everyone answers an open-ended question about the current lesson. Beyond the question, students can also add any relevant knowledge they have about the topic to their chart. These charts then rotate from group to group, with each group adding their input. Once everyone has written on every chart, the class regroups and discusses the responses. 

• Strategic Questioning

This formative assessment style is quite flexible and can be used in many different settings. You can ask individuals, groups, or the whole class high-level, open-ended questions that start with “why” or “how.” These questions have a two-fold purpose — to gauge how well students are grasping the lesson at hand and to spark a discussion about the topic. 

• Three-Way Summaries

These written summaries of a lesson or subject ask students to complete three separate write-ups of varying lengths: short (10-15 words), medium (30-50 words), and long (75-100). These different lengths test students’ ability to condense everything they’ve learned into a concise statement, or elaborate with more detail. This will demonstrate to you, the teacher, just how much they have learned, and it will also identify any learning gaps. 

• Think-Pair-Share

Think-pair-share asks students to write down their answers to a question posed by the teacher. When they’re done, they break off into pairs and share their answers and discuss. You can then move around the room, dropping in on discussions and getting an idea of how well students are understanding.

• 3-2-1 Countdown

This formative assessment tool can be written or oral and asks students to respond to three very simple prompts: Name three things you didn’t know before, name two things that surprised you about this topic, and name one you want to start doing with what you’ve learned. The exact questions are flexible and can be tailored to whatever unit or lesson you are teaching.

• Classroom Polls

This is a great participation tool to use mid-lesson. At any point, pose a poll question to students and ask them to respond by raising their hand. If you have the capability, you can also use online polling platforms and let students submit their answers on their Chromebooks, tablets, or other devices.

• Exit/Admission Tickets

Exit and admission tickets are quick written exercises that assess a student’s comprehension of a single day’s lesson. As the name suggests, exit tickets are short written summaries of what students learned in class that day, while admission tickets can be performed as short homework assignments that are handed in as students arrive to class.

• One-Minute Papers

This quick, formative assessment tool is most useful at the end of the day to get a complete picture of the classes’ learning that day. Put one minute on the clock and pose a question to students about the primary subject for the day. Typical questions might be:

• What was the main point?
• What questions do you still have?
• What was the most surprising thing you learned?
• What was the most confusing aspect and why?
• Creative Extension Projects

These types of assessments are likely already part of your evaluation strategy and include projects like posters and collage, skit performances, dioramas, keynote presentations, and more. Formative assessments like these allow students to use more creative parts of their skillset to demonstrate their understanding and comprehension and can be an opportunity for individual or group work.

Dipsticks — named after the quick and easy tool we use to check our car’s oil levels — refer to a number of fast, formative assessment tools. These are most effective immediately after giving students feedback and allowing them to practice said skills. Many of the assessments on this list fall into the dipstick categories, but additional options include writing a letter explaining the concepts covered or drawing a sketch to visually represent the topic. 

• Quiz-Like Games and Polls

A majority of students enjoy games of some kind, and incorporating games that test a student’s recall and subject aptitude are a great way to make formative assessment more fun. These could be Jeopardy-like games that you can tailor around a specific topic, or even an online platform that leverages your own lessons. But no matter what game you choose, these are often a big hit with students.

• Interview-Based Assessments

Interview-based assessments are a great way to get first-hand insight into student comprehension of a subject. You can break out into one-on-one sessions with students, or allow them to conduct interviews in small groups. These should be quick, casual conversations that go over the biggest takeaways from your lesson. If you want to provide structure to student conversations, let them try the TAG feedback method — tell your peer something they did well, ask a thoughtful question, and give a positive suggestion.

• Self Assessment

Allow students to take the rubric you use to perform a self assessment of their knowledge or understanding of a topic. Not only will it allow them to reflect on their own work, but it will also very clearly demonstrate the gaps they need filled in. Self assessments should also allow students to highlight where they feel their strengths are so the feedback isn’t entirely negative.

• Participation Cards

Participation cards are a great tool you can use on-the-fly in the middle of a lesson to get a quick read on the entire classes’ level of understanding. Give each student three participation cards — “I agree,” “I disagree,” and “I don’t know how to respond” — and pose questions that they can then respond to with those cards. This will give you a quick gauge of what concepts need more coverage.

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List of Formative Assessment Resources

There are many, many online formative assessment resources available to teachers. Here are just a few of the most widely-used and highly recommended formative assessment sites available.

• Arizona State Dept of Education

FAQs About Formative Assessment

The following frequently asked questions were sourced from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), a leading education professional organization of more than 100,000 superintendents, principals, teachers, and advocates.  

Is formative assessment something new?

No and yes. The concept of measuring a student’s comprehension during lessons has existed for centuries. However, the concept of formative assessment as we understand it didn’t appear until approximately 40 years ago, and has progressively expanded into what it is today.

What makes something a formative assessment?

ASCD characterized formative assessment as “a way for teachers and students to gather evidence of learning, engage students in assessment, and use data to improve teaching and learning.” Their definition continues, “when you use an assessment instrument— a test, a quiz, an essay, or any other kind of classroom activity—analytically and diagnostically to measure the process of learning and then, in turn, to inform yourself or your students of progress and guide further learning, you are engaging in formative assessment. If you were to use the same instrument for the sole purpose of gathering data to report to a district or state or to determine a final grade, you would be engaging in summative assessment.”

Does formative assessment work in all content areas?

Absolutely, and it works across all grade levels. Nearly any content area — language arts, math, science, humanities, and even the arts or physical education — can utilize formative assessment in a positive way.

How can formative assessment support the curriculum?

Formative assessment supports curricula by providing real-time feedback on students’ knowledge levels and comprehension of the subject at hand. When teachers regularly utilize formative assessment tools, they can find gaps in student learning and customize lessons to fill those gaps. After term is over, teachers can use this feedback to reshape their curricula.

How can formative assessment be used to establish instructional priorities?

Because formative assessment supports curriculum development and updates, it thereby influences instructional priorities. Through student feedback and formative assessment, teachers are able to gather data about which instructional methods are most (and least) successful. This “data-driven” instruction should yield more positive learning outcomes for students.

Can formative assessment close achievement gaps?

Formative assessment is ideal because it identifies gaps in student knowledge while they’re learning. This allows teachers to make adjustments to close these gaps and help students more successfully master a new skill or topic.

How can I help my students understand formative assessment?

Formative assessment should be framed as a supportive learning tool; it’s a very different tactic than summative assessment strategies. To help students understand this new evaluation style, make sure you utilize it from the first day in the classroom. Introduce a small number of strategies and use them repeatedly so students become familiar with them. Eventually, these formative assessments will become second nature to teachers and students.

Before you tackle formative assessment, or any new teaching strategy for that matter, consider taking a continuing education course. At the University of San Diego School of Professional and Continuing Education, we offer over 500 courses for educators that can be completed entirely online, and many at your own pace. So no matter what your interests are, you can surely find a course — or even a certificate — that suits your needs.

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Getting Started with Creative Assignments

Creative teaching and learning can be cultivated in any course context to increase student engagement and motivation, and promote thinking skills that are critical to problem-solving and innovation. This resource features examples of Columbia faculty who teach creatively and have reimagined their course assessments to allow students to demonstrate their learning in creative ways. Drawing on these examples, this resource provides suggestions for creating a classroom environment that supports student engagement in creative activities and assignments.  

On this page:

• The What and Why of Creative Assignments

Examples of Creative Teaching and Learning at Columbia

• How To Get Started

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2022). Getting Started with Creative Assignments. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/creative-assignments/

The What and Why of Creative Assignments  

Creative assignments encourage students to think in innovative ways as they demonstrate their learning. Thinking creatively involves combining or synthesizing information or course materials in new ways and is characterized by “a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk-taking” (AAC&U). It is associated with imagination and originality, and additional characteristics include: being open to new ideas and perspectives, believing alternatives exist, withholding judgment, generating multiple approaches to problems, and trying new ways to generate ideas  (DiYanni, 2015: 41). Creative thinking is considered an important skill alongside critical thinking in tackling contemporary problems. Critical thinking allows students to evaluate the information presented to them while creative thinking is a process that allows students to generate new ideas and innovate.

Creative assignments can be integrated into any course regardless of discipline. Examples include the use of infographic assignments in Nursing (Chicca and Chunta, 2020) and Chemistry (Kothari, Castañeda, and McNeil, 2019); podcasting assignments in Social Work (Hitchcock, Sage & Sage, 2021); digital storytelling assignments in Psychology (Sheafer, 2017) and Sociology (Vaughn and Leon, 2021); and incorporating creative writing in the economics classroom (Davis, 2019) or reflective writing into Calculus assignment ( Gerstle, 2017) just to name a few. In a 2014 study, organic chemistry students who elected to begin their lab reports with a creative narrative were more excited to learn and earned better grades (Henry, Owens, and Tawney, 2015). In a public policy course, students who engaged in additional creative problem-solving exercises that included imaginative scenarios and alternative solution-finding showed greater interest in government reform and attentiveness to civic issues (Wukich and Siciliano, 2014).

The benefits of creative assignments include increased student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction (Snyder et al., 2013: 165); and furthered student learning of course content (Reynolds, Stevens, and West, 2013). These types of assignments promote innovation, academic integrity, student self-awareness/ metacognition (e.g., when students engage in reflection through journal assignments), and can be made authentic as students develop and apply skills to real-world situations.  

When instructors give students open-ended assignments, they provide opportunities for students to think creatively as they work on a deliverable. They “unlock potential” (Ranjan & Gabora and Beghetto in Gregerson et al., 2013) for students to synthesize their knowledge and propose novel solutions. This promotes higher-level thinking as outlined in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy’s “create” cognitive process category: “putting elements together to form a novel coherent whole or make an original product,” this involves generating ideas, planning, and producing something new. 

The examples that follow highlight creative assignments in the Columbia University classroom. The featured Columbia faculty taught creatively – they tried new strategies, purposefully varied classroom activities and assessment modalities, and encouraged their students to take control of what and how they were learning (James & Brookfield, 2014: 66).

Dr. Cruz changed her course assessment by “moving away from high stakes assessments like a final paper or a final exam, to more open-ended and creative models of assessments.”  Students were given the opportunity to synthesize their course learning, with options on topic and format of how to demonstrate their learning and to do so individually or in groups. They explored topics that were meaningful to them and related to the course material. Dr. Cruz noted that “This emphasis on playfulness and creativity led to fantastic final projects including a graphic novel interpretation, a video essay that applied critical theory to multiple texts, and an interactive virtual museum.” Students “took the opportunity to use their creative skills, or the skills they were interested in exploring because some of them had to develop new skills to produce these projects.” (Dr. Cruz; Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning , Season 3, Episode 6). Along with their projects, students submitted an artist’s statement, where they had to explain and justify their choices. 

Dr. Cruz noted that grading creative assignments require advanced planning. In her case, she worked closely with her TAs to develop a rubric that was shared with students in advance for full transparency and emphasized the importance of students connecting ideas to analytical arguments discussed in the class. 

Watch Dr. Cruz’s 2021 Symposium presentation. Listen to Dr. Cruz talk about The Power of Blended Classrooms in Season 3, Episode 6 of the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast. Get a glimpse into Dr. Cruz’s online classroom and her creative teaching and the design of learning experiences that enhanced critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, and community by viewing her Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning submission.

As part of his standard practice, Dr. Yesilevskiy scaffolds assignments – from less complex to more complex – to ensure students integrate the concepts they learn in the class into their projects or new experiments. For example, in Laboratory 1, Dr. Yesilevskiy slowly increases the amount of independence in each experiment over the semester: students are given a full procedure in the first experiment and by course end, students are submitting new experiment proposals to Dr. Yesilevskiy for approval. This is creative thinking in action. Students not only learned how to “replicate existing experiments, but also to formulate and conduct new ones.”

Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy’s 2021 Symposium presentation. 

How Do I Get Started?: Strategies to Support Creative Assignments

The previous section showcases examples of creative assignments in action at Columbia. To help you support such creative assignments in your classroom, this section details three strategies to support creative assignments and creative thinking. Firstly, re-consider the design of your assignments to optimize students’ creative output. Secondly, scaffold creative assignments using low-stakes classroom activities that build creative capacity. Finally, cultivate a classroom environment that supports creative thinking.     

Design Considerations for Creative Assignments 

Thoughtfully designed open-ended assignments and evaluation plans encourage students to demonstrate their learning in authentic ways. When designing creative assignments, consider the following suggestions for structuring and communicating to your students about the assignment. 

Set clear expectations . Students may feel lost in the ambiguity and complexity of an open-ended assignment that requires them to create something new. Communicate the creative outcomes and learning objectives for the assignments (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013), and how students will be expected to draw on their learning in the course. Articulare how much flexibility and choice students have in determining what they work on and how they work on it. Share the criteria or a rubric that will be used to evaluate student deliverables. See the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics Into Your Feedback and Grading Practices . If planning to evaluate creative thinking, consider adapting the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ creative thinking VALUE rubric . 

Structure the project to sustain engagement and promote integrity. Consider how the project might be broken into smaller assignments that build upon each other and culminate in a synthesis project. The example presented above from Dr. Yesilevskiy’s teaching highlights how he scaffolded lab complexity, progressing from structured to student-driven. See the section below “Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments” for sample activities to scaffold this work. 

Create opportunities for ongoing feedback . Provide feedback at all phases of the assignment from idea inception through milestones to completion. Leverage office hours for individual or group conversations and feedback on project proposals, progress, and issues. See the CTL’s resource on Feedback for Learning . Consider creating opportunities for structured peer review for students to give each other feedback on their work. Students benefit from learning about their peers’ projects, and seeing different perspectives and approaches to accomplishing the open-ended assignment. See the CTL’s resource Peer Review: Intentional Design for Any Course Context . 

Share resources to support students in their work. Ensure all students have access to the resources they will need to be successful on the assigned project. Connect students with campus resources that can help them accomplish the project’s objectives. For instance, if students are working on a research project – connect them to the Library instruction modules “ From Books to Bytes: Navigating the Research Ecosystem ,” encourage them to schedule a consultation with a specialist for research support through Columbia Libraries , or seek out writing support. If students will need equipment to complete their project, remind them of campus resources such as makerspaces (e.g., The Makerspace @ Columbia in Room 254 Engineering Terrace/Mudd; Design Center at Barnard College); borrowing equipment (e.g., Instructional Media and Technology Services (IMATS) at Barnard; Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library ). 

Ask students to submit a self-reflection with their project. Encourage students to reflect on their process and the decisions they made in order to complete the project. Provide guiding questions that have students reflect on their learning, make meaning, and engage their metacognitive thinking skills (see the CTL’s resource of Metacognition ). Students can be asked to apply the rubric to their work or to submit a creative statement along with their work that describes their intent and ownership of the project.

Collect feedback from students and iterate. Invite students to give feedback on the assigned creative project, as well as the classroom environment and creative activities used. Tell students how you will use their suggestions to make improvements to activities and assignments, and make adjustments to the classroom environment. See the CTL’s resource on Early and Mid-Semester Student Feedback . 

Low-Stakes Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments

The activities described below are meant to be scaffolded opportunities leading to a larger creative project. They are low-stakes, non-graded activities that make time in the classroom for students to think, brainstorm, and create (Desrochers and Zell, 2012) and prepare them to do the creative thinking needed to complete course assignments. The activities can be adapted for any course context, with or without the use of technology, and can be done individually or collaboratively (see the CTL’s resource on Collaborative Learning to explore digital tools that are available for group work). 

Brainstorming 

Brainstorming is a process that students can engage in to generate as many ideas as possible related to a topic of study or an assignment topic (Sweet et al., 2013: 87). As they engage in this messy and jugement-free work, students explore a range of possibilities. Brainstorming reveals students’ prior knowledge (Ambrose et al., 2010: 29). Brainstorm activities are useful early on to help create a classroom culture rooted in creativity while also serving as a potential icebreaker activity that helps instructors learn more about what prior knowledge and experiences students are bringing to the course or unit of study. This activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. Components may include:

• Prompt students to list off (individually or collaboratively) their ideas on a whiteboard, free write in a Google Doc or some other digital space. 
• Provide formative feedback to assist students to further develop their ideas.
• Invite students to reflect on the brainstorm process, look over their ideas and determine which idea to explore further.

Mind mapping

A mind map, also known as a cognitive or concept map, allows students to visually display their thinking and knowledge organization, through lines connecting concepts, arrows showing relationships, and other visual cues (Sweet et al., 2013: 89; Ambrose et al. 2010: 63). This challenges students to synthesize and be creative as they display words, ideas, tasks or principles (Barkley, 2010: 219-225). A mind mapping activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. This activity can be an extension of a brainstorming session, whereby students take an idea from their brainstormed list and further develop it. 

Components of a mind mapping activity may include:

• Prompt students to create a map of their thinking on a topic, concept, or question. This can be done on paper, on a whiteboard, or with digital mind mapping or whiteboard tools such as Google Drawing.
• Provide formative feedback on the mind maps.
• Invite students to reflect on their mind map, and determine where to go next.

Digital storytelling

Digital storytelling involves integrating multimedia (images, text, video, audio, etc.) and narrative to produce immersive stories that connect with course content. Student-produced stories can promote engagement and learning in a way that is both personal and universal (McLellan, 2007). Digital storytelling contributes to learning through student voice and creativity in constructing meaning (Rossiter and Garcia, 2010). 

Tools such as the CTL-developed Mediathread as well as EdDiscussion support collaborative annotation of media objects. These annotations can be used in writing and discussions, which can involve creating a story. For freeform formats, digital whiteboards allow students to drop in different text and media and make connections between these elements. Such storytelling can be done collaboratively or simply shared during class. Finally, EdBlogs can be used for a blog format, or Google Slides if a presentation format is better suited for the learning objective.

Asking questions to explore new possibilities

Tap into student imagination, stimulate curiosity, and create memorable learning experiences by asking students to pose “What if?” “why” and “how” questions – how might things be done differently; what will a situation look like if it is viewed from a new perspective?; or what could a new approach to solving a problem look like? (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Powerful questions are open-ended ones where the answer is not immediately apparent; such questions encourage students to think about a topic in new ways, and they promote learning as students work to answer them (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Setting aside time for students to ask lots of questions in the classroom and bringing in questions posed on CourseWorks Discussions or EdDiscussion sends the message to students that their questions matter and play a role in learning. 

Cultivate Creative Thinking in the Classroom Environment

Create a classroom environment that encourages experimentation and thinking from new and diverse perspectives. This type of environment encourages students to share their ideas without inhibition and personalize the meaning-making process. “Creative environments facilitate intentional acts of divergent (idea generation, collaboration, and design thinking) and convergent (analysis of ideas, products, and content created) thinking processes.” (Sweet et al., 2013: 20)

Encourage risk-taking and learning from mistakes . Taking risks in the classroom can be anxiety inducing so students will benefit from reassurance that their creativity and all ideas are welcome. When students bring up unexpected ideas, rather than redirecting or dismissing, seize it as an opportunity for a conversation in which students can share, challenge, and affirm ideas (Beghetto, 2013). Let students know that they can make mistakes, “think outside of the box” without penalty (Desrochers and Zell, 2012), and embrace failure seeing it as a learning opportunity.

Model creative thinking . Model curiosity and how to ask powerful questions, and encourage students to be curious about everything (Synder et al., 2013, DiYanni, 2015). Give students a glimpse into your own creative thinking process – how you would approach an open-ended question, problem, or assignment? Turn your own mistakes into teachable moments. By modeling creative thinking, you are giving students permission to engage in this type of thinking.

Build a community that supports the creative classroom environment. Have students get to know and interact with each other so that they become comfortable asking questions and taking risks in front of and with their peers. See the CTL’s resource on Community Building in the Classroom . This is especially important if you are planning to have students collaborate on creative activities and assignments and/or engage in peer review of each other’s work. 

Plan for play. Play is integral to learning (Cavanagh, 2021; Eyler, 2018; Tatter, 2019). Play cultivates a low stress, high trust, inclusive environment, as students build relationships with each. This allows students to feel more comfortable in the classroom and motivates them to tackle more difficult content (Forbes, 2021). Set aside time for play (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013; Sinfield, Burns, & Abegglen, 2018). Design for play with purpose grounded in learning goals. Create a structured play session during which students experiment with a new topic, idea, or tool and connect it to curricular content or their learning experience. Play can be facilitated through educational games such as puzzles, video games, trivia competitions, scavenger hunts or role-playing activities in which students actively apply knowledge and skills as they act out their role (Eyler, 2018; Barkley, 2010). For an example of role-playing games explore Reacting to the Past , an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games developed by Mark Carnes at Barnard College. 

The CTL is here to help!

CTL consultants are happy to support instructors as they design activities and assignments that promote creative thinking. Email [email protected] to schedule a consultation.

Ambrose et al. (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Barkley, E. F., Major, C. H., and Cross, K. P. (2014). Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty . 

Barkley, E. F. (2010) Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty.

Beghetto, R. (2013). Expect the Unexpected: Teaching for Creativity in the Micromoments. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Cavanagh, S. R. (2021). How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should . The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 9, 2021.

Chicca, J. and Chunta, K, (2020). Engaging Students with Visual Stories: Using Infographics in Nursing Education . Teaching and Learning in Nursing. 15(1), 32-36.

Davis, M. E. (2019). Poetry and economics: Creativity, engagement and learning in the economics classroom. International Review of Economics Education. Volume 30. 

Desrochers, C. G. and Zell, D. (2012). Gave projects, tests, or assignments that required original or creative thinking! POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction. 

DiYanni, R. (2015). Critical and creative thinking : A brief guide for teachers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. 

Eyler, J. R. (2018). How Humans Learn. The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. West Virginia University Press. 

Forbes, L. K. (2021). The Process of Play in Learning in Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study. Journal of Teaching and Learning. Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 57-73. 

Gerstle, K. (2017). Incorporating Meaningful Reflection into Calculus Assignments. PRIMUS. Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. 29(1), 71-81.

Gregerson, M. B., Snyder, H. T., and Kaufman, J. C. (2013). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Henry, M., Owens, E. A., and Tawney, J. G. (2015). Creative Report Writing in Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory Inspires Non Majors. Journal of Chemical Education , 92, 90-95.

Hitchcock, L. I., Sage, T., Lynch, M. and Sage, M. (2021). Podcasting as a Pedagogical Tool for Experiential Learning in Social Work Education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work . 41(2). 172-191.

James, A., & Brookfield, S. D. (2014). Engaging imagination : Helping students become creative and reflective thinkers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Jackson, N. (2008). Tackling the Wicked Problem of Creativity in Higher Education.

Jackson, N. (2006). Creativity in higher education. SCEPTrE Scholarly Paper , 3 , 1-25.

Kleiman, P. (2008). Towards transformation: conceptions of creativity in higher education.

Kothari, D., Hall, A. O., Castañeda, C. A., and McNeil, A. J. (2019). Connecting Organic Chemistry Concepts with Real-World Context by Creating Infographics. Journal of Chemistry Education. 96(11), 2524-2527. 

McLellan, H. (2007). Digital Storytelling in Higher Education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 19, 65-79. 

Ranjan, A., & Gabora, L. (2013). Creative Ideas for Actualizing Student Potential. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Rossiter, M. and Garcia, P. A. (2010). Digital Storytelling: A New Player on the Narrative Field. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. No. 126, Summer 2010. 

Sheafer, V. (2017). Using digital storytelling to teach psychology: A preliminary investigation. Psychology Learning & Teaching. 16(1), 133-143. 

Sinfield, S., Burns, B., & Abegglen, S. (2018). Exploration: Becoming Playful – The Power of a Ludic Module. In A. James and C. Nerantzi (Eds.). The Power of Play in Higher Education . Palgrave Macmillan.

Reynolds, C., Stevens, D. D., and West, E. (2013). “I’m in a Professional School! Why Are You Making Me Do This?” A Cross-Disciplinary Study of the Use of Creative Classroom Projects on Student Learning. College Teaching. 61: 51-59.

Sweet, C., Carpenter, R., Blythe, H., and Apostel, S. (2013). Teaching Applied Creative Thinking: A New Pedagogy  for the 21st Century. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press Inc. 

Tatter, G. (2019). Playing to Learn: How a pedagogy of play can enliven the classroom, for students of all ages . Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Vaughn, M. P. and Leon, D. (2021). The Personal Is Political Art: Using Digital Storytelling to Teaching Sociology of Sexualities. Teaching Sociology. 49(3), 245-255. 

Wukich, C. and Siciliano, M. D. (2014). Problem Solving and Creativity in Public Policy Courses: Promoting Interest and Civic Engagement. Journal of Political Science Education . 10, 352-368.

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Open-Ended Questions for Students: How to Craft Them (20+ Examples)

As an educator, your main responsibility is to instill critical thinking skills in your students.

No student becomes successful in their career simply because they memorized and used facts in their jobs. Success comes from the ability to think deeply about the subject matter and interpret it in ways that let them apply it to real-world situations.

It’s hard for students to go beyond their textbooks unless you ask open-ended questions that allow them to engage in such thought processes.

To help you facilitate such discussions in the classroom, we’ll explore a list of open-ended question examples for students. In addition, we’ll also look at ways to craft thoughtful questions and analyze responses with ease.

Open-ended vs. closed-ended questions

The key difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions is that the former has no predefined answer. It encourages the individual to think about the question in their own way and respond accordingly.

As typical university assessments use close-ended questions with specific answers, students tend to think from a one-dimensional perspective. For example, yes/no types of questions .

While the method is sound to test their grasp of a topic’s theoretical roots, more lively discussions are needed to develop other skills.

Also, as open-ended questions require more cognitive effort , it results in a pool of answers that offer more insights compared with simple yes/no questions. This leads to more fruitful discussions in the classroom as students actively participate and put their questions and points of view forward.

Open-ended question examples for students in different subjects

Usually, open-ended questions start with a “what,” “who,” “which,” “why,” or “how.” They force the student to articulate their thoughts in a structured manner and go beyond single-word answers.

If you’re stuck trying to spin up questions for your next lecture, here are a few examples of open-ended questions to get you started:

Arts and Literature

• How does the cultural context of a novel influence its themes and characters?
• How do gender dynamics shape the narratives in classical literature versus contemporary works?
• How has digital media changed traditional forms of art and literature?
• In what ways does the [book you discussed] reflect the societal issues of its time?
• How does the “anti-hero” concept in literature challenge traditional notions of heroism?
• How do the narrative techniques in [specific book] affect your story interpretation?
• How do genetic mutations contribute to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria?
• Why do you think your environment plays a significant role in your mental health?
• What are the ethical implications of [new medical intervention] in humans?
• Which renewable energy technologies will prove to be sustainable 20 years down the line?
• What do you think about the correlation between psychology and neurobiology?
• How can we improve the method we discussed today to detect earthquakes?
• Which types of rovers do you think are best for a planet like Venus?

Mathematics

• How can mathematical models be used to predict financial markets?
• How can differential equations be applied to model and solve real-world problems in engineering?
• What role does probability theory play in everyday decision-making and risk assessment?
• How does game theory apply to economics?
• What are the mathematical foundations of AI?

Social Studies

• How has social media influenced political discourse and public opinion?
• How do historical events shape current foreign policy decisions in [country]?
• What are the ethical considerations for governments using surveillance technology?
• How do migration patterns affect urban development and demographic shifts?
• How has the concept of work changed with technological advances and the global economy?

Tips to ask open-ended questions and analyze responses

Here are a few tips for integrating this format of questioning within the classroom:

1. Integrate open-ended questions into discussions and homework

Typically, open-ended questions are limited to post-lecture discussions. But it’s essential to include them wherever you can—especially for homework assignments.

It gives learners time to think and even further research the topic to build on their understanding. This lets them develop an argument for their viewpoint, explore different perspectives, and clarify the concept.

For instance, ask them to write a short essay of 250 words or more on the lecture’s topic. As it requires them to articulate their thoughts and identify gaps in their knowledge, it’ll force them to take on further reading.

In the classroom, ask them similar questions and keep following up with statements like “Why do you think that?” or “How would that work?” to help them develop their arguments.

2. Craft questions that encourage the development of critical-thinking skills

Design a questionnaire of open-ended questions for the end of each lecture to stimulate critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This will push students to go beyond mere facts and “islands of knowledge” to make connections between seemingly disconnected issues.

Here are a few templates that can help encourage elaboration:

• “What is the impact of…”
• “How would you solve…”
• “Why do you think…”
• “Which factors do you think influence…”
• “What challenges do you foresee in…”
• “What potential solutions would work for…”

Students learn to question the status quo and assess the credibility of sources. This format also helps them get a well-rounded perspective on complex issues.

3. Make sure the question design is simple and effective

A well-crafted question is clear and straightforward. Also, it avoids overly complex language or any form of ambiguity.

The goal is to avoid confusion and keep students on the same topic. One way to do that is to prevent the use of double-barreled or leading questions.

NOT: “What do you think about renewable energy, and how will it impact our environment?”

BUT: “What do you think about renewable energy?”

When you connect the question to real-world scenarios or dilemmas, it’ll make the discussion relatable and engaging . This gives students the much-needed context required to offer meaningful answers.

4. Use technology to create an interactive classroom environment

These days, there are many types of tools available for creating engaging discussions, such as:

• Polling software
• Presentation software
• Digital whiteboards
• Discussion boards

For instance, Poll Everywhere lets you create open-ended questions or surveys that you can use within a remote or in-person session. Students can add their responses anonymously or with their names, and you can discuss the answers in real time.

Alternatively, students can also send in their questions, and you can pick the most common or interesting ones for discussion.

5. Give students a time limit to respond thoughtfully

When you set a time limit, students are compelled to think on their feet. However, it also encourages focused reflection and prioritization of ideas. This prevents overthinking or drifting off-topic, resulting in better answers.

Time constraints also give a sense of what making decisions in the real world is like, especially under pressure. This will ultimately prepare students to handle situations confidently outside the classroom.

6. Create a safe and inclusive environment to encourage responses

When you ask open-ended questions, ensure the classroom environment is safe. You can do that by allowing the students to anonymize their answers, mainly when dealing with sensitive topics.

Tools such as Poll Everywhere let you anonymize responses and moderate live discussions to create a healthy learning environment. Poll Everywhere has a feature that can automatically filter any profanity and censor abusive words. Also, students who have difficulty speaking up in class and sharing their ideas might be more likely to participate now.

When you’re asking follow-up questions, don’t use a judgmental tone. For instance, instead of saying, “Why?” use “Why do you think so?” or something similar. This fosters trust and openness in the classroom.

7. Develop a criteria for assessment of student responses

Create a rubric for assessment to ensure consistency while grading. For example, assign a weighted grade to a student mentioning a specific keyword or concept.

This grading system needs to align with the learning objectives of the course. If students miss out on specific concepts, for example, it shows that they don’t thoroughly understand the topic.

Also, communicate the criteria for grading before or after the assessment so students know what was expected in the assignment.

8. Provide real-time feedback on student responses

When students offer their responses, give them feedback. This is particularly useful in a discussion setting as other students also get to form their opinions.

Feedback should be constructive, focusing on the strengths of the response and offering specific suggestions for enhancement. It builds confidence and motivates students to engage more deeply with the material.

Feedback also provides valuable information by highlighting areas for improvement for both the student and the lecturer. The students know what went wrong with their answers, and the lecturer knows what needs to be improved or focused on in the next lecture.

Engage in lively discussions using Poll Everywhere

Using open-ended questions results in a more interactive and reflective learning environment. But a key part of that is how you implement this learning method in the classroom.

This is where digital tools can play a massive role. For instance, instead of asking open-ended questions in class directly, use a tool such as Poll Everywhere to ask them. Students can all send in their responses without needing to raise their hands and speak to the entire class. Additionally, educators can also moderate responses and grade them in one space, making it an effective tool for learning.

Poll Everywhere allows students to get real-time feedback, participate anonymously, and participate in an inclusive learning environment. This teaches them to think critically while experiencing an interactive mode of learning.

If you’re an educator looking to deploy open-ended questions, schedule a demo with Poll Everywhere today.

Related articles

Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

Open-Ended Assignments: Tips Towards Narrowing Your Research

When a professor assigns a research paper with no specific prompt, it sometimes can be hard to know exactly what kind of work is expected. Assignments like these may provide a suggested page count and an injunction to stay within the bounds of the course theme, but little else. In this case, the possibilities for paper topics seem infinite. Once you get past this hurdle and settle on a general idea you would like to explore, you still may feel compelled to answer some big questions; questions that might cover a long time frame, seek to identify general trends with a large sample size, or tackle broad theoretical questions. So much of the academic material we are exposed to seems to deal with these “big questions”: survey lectures, assigned readings with titles of sweeping breadth, and the prospect of the senior thesis.

The impulse you may have to ask big questions is natural, then— and it’s a good impulse, too! It is a great way to jumpstart your research, beginning the process of narrowing down by going from infinite potential topics to many potential topics. But, with a looming due date (unfortunately) limiting your research time, keeping your question broad can become overwhelming, and hinder your ability to meaningfully answer it.

During my experience this summer working on an independent research project as an intern with the Office of Undergraduate Research’s ReMatch+ program, I came to learn the importance of narrowing your question early in the research process. Though through the wonderful advice of my ReMatch+ graduate student mentor , my research was pretty specific by midsummer (focusing on the language of “othering” in New York City press reports of a June 1848 Paris workers’ rebellion), it took me several weeks to get to there— necessary time in retrospect, but time I would have rather been developing my topic rather than figuring out what it was. I definitely could have benefited from some guidance at the beginning of my work. So, with that in mind, I hope the tips below will help you narrow your research questions early on, so you don’t have to learn the hard way like I did.

Identify Personal Interest: Even for a required assignment, personal interest should drive your research. In-depth study is more enjoyable if you actually like the materials you are working with, and being personally invested can help keep your motivation up. So, identifying personal interest is the first step towards a specific question. Ask yourself: Which part of a course engaged you most? What readings jumped out at you? Are there interests of yours outside the course that you can integrate into your paper? Hopefully, the answers to these questions will begin narrowing down your potential topics. For further help on identifying personal interest, check our fellow PCUR Ellie Breitfeld’s post here .

Choose Background Reading Wisely: Once you have figured out what you are personally interested in, I would recommend looking at a few relevant survey books (books that cover topics in a broad sense, easily findable with keyword searches on the library website ) and reading their introductions and conclusions. Both can be helpful summaries of the book, showing you if it is relevant to your work. They also often have synopses of each chapter, so you can see which may be worth reading. Reading specific chapters is a great start— don’t feel like you need to read every book cover to cover!

Endnotes Are Your Friend: Say you have read some specific chapters, and maybe some journal articles, and you now have a more concrete, narrow question in mind. Where to go for original research? Check out the endnotes to the chapters/articles/books you have read. They can give you a sense of which primary sources you may want to consult, and also a one-stop shopping list of even more specific secondary literature that can help you frame your argument within existing scholarship.

Let Your Question Follow the Sources: If you stick to your initial “big” questions through your source work, you may become frustrated if your sources don’t quite line up with the framework of your question. Be flexible, and adjust your question to available information.

Trust in the Richness of Primary Sources: A single primary source can furnish a surprising amount of info to analyze: when I began my summer intending to study a period from 1848 to 1871, I never expected I would be close-reading newspapers from a single month in 1848! But these sources from the summer of 1848 were so complex, they were worthy of focused study. And, as I learned, don’t be afraid to close-read. Sources yield far more information if you interrogate them beyond the superficial. Close-reading a small number of sources— and the specific questions it brings up— may be more fruitful in a short time frame than chasing hundreds of sources to answer a broader question.

These tips are by no means a suggestion to cut corners, or to totally jettison your “big questions”. In fact, a narrow research focus can be an anchor to a larger, extrapolated argument, and, with due dates ahead, ensure your work is doable and satisfying!

— Alec Israeli, Humanities Correspondent

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Open-Ended Questions

In this article, I give examples of open-ended questions, explain what makes them so powerful, and offer some tips on how to use these questions to bolster children’s learning.

Open-Ended Questions in Action

Ms. Nunn’s class is about to read a new story, and the children have opened their books to the first page. To spark their curiosity about the story, she asks a series of open-ended questions (shown here in italics) that draw out their thoughts, knowledge, and feelings.

“Before we start,” Ms. Nunn says, “take a look at just this page. What interesting words do you see? ” After a few quiet moments, hands go up.

“Castle!” shouts Raymond. “Castles are cool! I have a model castle.”

“I can tell that’s an important word for you, Raymond. What clues does this word give you as to what the story might be about? ”

“Knights? Usually castles have kings and knights.”

“Maybe it’s a fairy tale,” Keira adds.

“Hmm. Interesting,” Ms. Nunn muses. “What makes you think it might be a fairy tale?”

After the children have shared some thoughts on the nature of fairy tales, Ms. Nunn brings them back to her original question. “ What are some other interesting words on this page? ” she asks.

“Milkmaid,” offers Arnie. “What’s a milkmaid?”

“ Hmm, what might a milkmaid be? Any guesses? ”

“My grammy tells me a story about a milkmaid. It’s a girl and she works hard and she’s poor.”

“Oh, those might be some clues,” says the teacher. “ What other clues could help us understand this word? ”

The conversation continues with the children deeply engaged. Fifteen minutes later, the group has discussed context clues, compound words, historical jobs, fairy tales versus historical fiction, gender roles, and more. The students have been prompted to think, share their knowledge, analyze information, and connect ideas. Their interest in the story has grown, and their teacher has learned a great deal about what they know. Much of this richness derived from Ms. Nunn’s use of open-ended questions.

What Makes Open-Ended Questions So Powerful?

Children’s learning naturally loops through a cycle of wonder, exploration, discovery, reflection, and more wonder, leading them on to increasingly complex knowledge and sophisticated thinking. The power of open-ended questions comes from the way these questions tap into that natural cycle, inviting children to pursue their own curiosity about how the world works.

Open-ended questions show children that their teachers trust them to have good ideas, think for themselves, and contribute in valuable ways. The resulting sense of autonomy, belonging, and competence leads to engagement and deep investment in classroom activities.

Tips for Crafting Open-Ended Questions

Learning any new language habit takes reflection, time, and much practice. The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn offers comprehensive guidelines on how to frame open-ended questions and make them a regular part of your classroom vocabulary. Here you’ll find just a taste of these guidelines.

Genuinely open up your curiosity about students’ thinking.

For open-ended questions to be effective, it’s critical that we ask them with real curiosity about children’s thinking. Once I asked some fourth graders, “How might you use the colored pencils to show what you know about butterflies?”

“You could draw a butterfly and show the different parts,” one child said. Others suggested, “You could make a map of Monarch butterflies’ migration paths,” and “You could make a chart showing the butterfly’s life cycle.” Then another student offered, “You could write a story about a butterfly’s life and use different colors for different times in its life.”

Truly surprised by this last suggestion, I realized that if I hadn’t felt and conveyed genuine curiosity in all reasoned and relevant answers, that child probably wouldn’t have done the creative thinking that led to such a great idea. Because of it, students’ learning was stretched and our butterfly projects were richer.

Children can tell when their teachers are genuinely interested in their ideas. If we’re truly interested, over time children learn to trust that we really do want to know what and how they think. When they know this, they’re more willing to reason and reflect, they gain more practice in thinking for themselves, and they gradually become more skillful, creative thinkers.

Clarify the boundaries.

Suppose when I asked, “How might you use the colored pencils to show what you know about butterflies?” a child had answered, “You could pretend that the colored pencils are butterflies and make a play about them.” Making such a play would have met the goals of this lesson, and in terms of the question I asked, this response is just as valid as the others. But because of the potential chaos and safety issues, having students “fly” colored pencils around the room was more than I wanted to deal with.

Fortunately, no student really gave such an answer. But the way to prevent such a response would have been first to clarify to myself the boundaries of what I wanted the children to think about, and then articulate these boundaries to the children. The resulting wording might have been “How could you use these colored pencils to draw or write something that shows what you know about butterflies?” This is still an open-ended question; it just has boundaries based on what I might see as appropriate options for a particular group of students.

Use words that encourage cooperation, not competition.

Sometimes an open-ended question leads to competition to see who can give the best answer. Although well-managed competition has a place in certain school arenas, teachers usually use open-ended questions when the goal is for students to collaborate, to learn from and with each other, not to compete.

To keep discussions from turning into competitions, phrase your questions carefully. Competition often arises from questions beginning with “who” or “whose” (“Who knows a good way to use clay?”); using words such as “better,” “best,” or “most” (“How can we make this graph the most beautiful?”); or somehow elevating some students above others (“Kerry, what strategies for writing neatly can you show the class?”). These natural-seeming ways of talking assume some answers will be better than others, which encourages competition.

A simple rephrasing helps. Instead of “Who can tell me a good way to use the clay?” try “What are some good ways we could use the clay?” Replace “How can we make this graph the most beautiful?” with “What are some different ways to make this graph beautiful?”

Watch out for pseudo open-ended questions.

These sound open-ended but have behind them the teacher’s desire for a certain answer. I once had a student who loved magenta. Everything she colored, painted, or modeled in clay prominently featured magenta. Perhaps because I’m not crazy about magenta, or because I wanted her to buck the “girls are pink, boys are blue” stereotype, one day, seeing another magenta-infused drawing, I asked, “What do you think would happen if you used a different color?” Only when she replied, “I think I wouldn’t like it as much” did I realize I had wanted her to say, “I think it would look better.” It took me a moment to resist the urge to explain my thinking and to become genuinely curious about hers. “Hmm. Why do you say that?” I managed to ask.

“This color stands out,” she replied. “You can see it from far away, not like pink or yellow.”

“Not like pink,” I repeated to myself. I was so wrong, thinking this student was going for “girly” pink when she was going for standing out. Her explanation gave me real insight into her thinking.

Fortunately, in this instance, I caught myself after the student said “I think I wouldn’t like it as much.” But what if a teacher doesn’t catch herself? When we fish for specific answers, children soon realize we’re not really asking for their thoughts, knowledge, or perceptions, but for them to articulate our own. Many then stop thinking and become less engaged. Or they respond by guessing wildly at the answer the teacher wants. Except for the child who guesses correctly, the children—and their teacher—will likely feel discouraged after such an interaction. Not much will have been learned, or taught. All would have turned out differently if the question had been truly open-ended and the teacher’s intention truly to hear what the children thought.

Leading the Way to True Learning

Open-ended questions power academic and social learning. Such questions encourage children’s natural curiosity, challenging them to think for themselves, and inviting them to share their view of the world. The result: engaged learners who are motivated to learn and whose responses enlighten their classmates and their teacher.

Paula Denton started teaching in 1985 and became a Responsive Classroom workshop presenter and consultant in 1990. Paula is the author of Learning Through Academic Choice and co-author of The First Six Weeks of School .

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Low-Stakes Writing Assignments

As a learning tool, writing can help students achieve a number of learning goals. Critical thinking is often supported with writing assignments, as writing converts students from passive to active learners by encouraging them to take concepts learned in class and confront problems, gather and analyze data, prepare hypotheses, and formulate arguments. Writing can also help students practice knowledge translation, and as students work to make concepts clear and accessible to others, they often come to understand those concepts better themselves. In addition, through writing, students can explore, refine, and reflect on how they think and feel about course concepts and issues, and make abstract course concepts more meaningful by connecting them to their own experience. Finally, writing is an excellent tool for retaining course concepts: when asked to write about concepts discussed in class or described in course readings, students retain the concepts better.

So what’s the difference between high-stakes and low-stakes writing? And why might an instructor choose to include low-stakes writing activities in their courses?

The benefits of low-stakes writing

High-stakes writing involves formal, structured writing where a formal grade is assigned, such as an essay or report. This grade is usually worth a large portion of a student’s overall mark. High-stakes writing encourages students to explore ideas outside of the course and to learn outside of class, helps teachers to see if students can integrate course material with other sources, and improves students’ formal writing skills. However, high-stakes writing can create stress for students who are concerned over how much it counts towards their final grade, as well as for faculty members and teaching assistants who have to grade the assignments. In addition, high-stakes writing assignments are often unfeasible for larger classes because of the amount of marking.

Low-stakes writing assignments and activities, on the other hand, involve informal writing and grading. Low-stakes writing encourages student involvement in course ideas, helps students keep up with readings and put content in their own words, helps instructors to see whether or not students are understanding the material as a course progresses, and prepares students for high-stakes assignments. Low-stakes writing also creates less stress for students and instructors, because it usually counts for a small portion (if any) of the total grade and tends to be quicker to mark than essays, lab reports, and writing portfolios. 

Assessing low-stakes writing

Low-stakes writing assignments do not have to be labour intensive for instructors. To manage the time involved in marking or giving feedback on these assignments, consider the following strategies:

• Do not collect the low-stakes writing activity, but give a small participation mark for its completion in class.
• Collect the low-stakes writing activity and provide brief feedback.
• Collect the low-stakes writing activity and give a small participation mark.
• Collect five low-stakes writing activities at the end of the semester for marking.
• ✔+ Your insights are strong and you developed a compelling argument and/or the information is correct and detailed.
• ✔   You highlighted important issues but your argument could be more persuasive and/or some information is incorrect or there is not enough detail.
• ✔-  You summarized the articles but did not answer the assigned question and/or all or most of the information is incorrect.

Low-stakes writing activities

Before implementing any of the activities below, consider your students and your course teaching objectives. Just because a writing assignment idea looks like a fun or worthwhile activity does not mean that it will help you reach your teaching goals. You might also find related CTE teaching tips on writing helpful as you plan to integrate writing into your course:  Responding to Writing Assignments: Managing the Paper Load  and  Writing as a Learning Tool .

Abstract writing

Purpose:  To focus thoughts and summarize ideas; to reinforce course readings; to develop critical thinking skills

Procedure:  Remove any identifying marks from a paper (e.g., title, author’s name, abstract, journal reference, reference list) and have students read the paper and write an abstract.

Example:  Read the following journal article and write an abstract for it, summarizing the main points of the author(s) in your own words. Remember to identify the main thesis, the data collecting procedure, the findings, and the conclusions in your abstract.

One-sentence summaries

Purpose:  To reinforce class concepts; to gauge students’ comprehension of the lecture; to involve students in summarizing material; to highlight defining features of a concept

Procedure:  At the end of class, identify a particular concept discussed in class and have students summarize it in one sentence. Alternatively, do not give them a particular concept; simply ask them to summarize the lecture in one sentence, picking the most salient points. Tell students that a one-sentence summary should answer the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why).

Example:  Write a one-sentence summary (using the 5 Ws) about Fink’s Model of Active Learning, which we discussed in class today.

Purpose:  To retain and explain concepts; to summarize key concepts

Procedure:  After discussing a concept or event, have students write newspaper-style headlines summarizing it. This activity may be particularly appropriate in a discussion on research, controversial issues, or historical developments.

Example:  Write a headline that summarizes our class on high-stakes versus low-stakes writing.

Finish the list

Purpose:  To explore ideas; to personalize ideas

Procedure:  Students are asked to briefly respond to a prompt by writing 2-3 answers in bullet point format.

Example:  Based on your knowledge of the field, fill in the following bullet points.

In a first-year course in my discipline, the most common core concepts include:

Directed paraphrasing

Purpose:  To personalize ideas; to explain concepts; to develop critical thinking

Procedure:  Students are asked to write about a particular concept taught in class in their own words. A variation of this would be to have students paraphrase as if they were explaining concepts to a particular audience (e.g., an industry leader; an elected government official, etc.).

Example:  In your own words, write what the difference is between high-stakes and low-stakes writing as if you were explaining it to a first-year undergraduate student.

Application cards

Purpose:  To develop critical thinking; to explain and apply concepts; to retain concepts

Procedure:  Distribute 3x5 cards to your students. Have them write a real-world application for a theory, principle or procedure they have learned about in class on the card and either submit them to you or share them with one another. The small card is optional – using lined paper is fine too — but the card indicates to the students that they should be concise.

Example:  A colleague in your field is interested in learning more about using writing as an effective learning tool. Explain to this colleague how to run a writing exercise that you plan to use in your classroom.

Explain a concept

Purpose:  To explain concepts; to retain concepts

Procedure:  Have students explain a concept recently introduced by the reading or lecture. You can change the audience to someone who would be more or less familiar with the field, depending on your goals for student articulation of knowledge.

Example:  Explain “Newtonian fluid” to a peer who was absent, or in a letter to your parents.

Online discussion groups

Purpose:  To personalize ideas; to focus thoughts; to explore ideas

Procedure:  Divide the class into small groups of 4-6 students. Set up an online discussion board and have each group discuss course issues online. Each group then selects a member to summarize its discussion. The summaries are posted to the main class list, where you and the entire class can read them. You will want to monitor the group discussion, especially toward the beginning of term. See the CTE teaching tip,  Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors .

Example : On the course discussion board, discuss with your group experiences you have had with high- and low-stakes writing assignments, and together identify the pros and cons about each. Have one member of your group post the pros and cons to the course email list.

Personal response exercise

Purpose:  To retain concepts; to personalize ideas; to explore concepts

Procedure:  Students write about concepts taught in class through sharing personal opinions/ experiences that relate in some way to those concepts.

Example:  Write about the most memorable or interesting experience you have had in an Engineering course.

Purpose:  To personalize ideas; to retain concepts; to explore concepts

Procedure:  Students write in a journal on a regular basis about particular concepts learned in class. The writing can be open-ended (write about a certain aspect of a course for a certain length of time) or guided (students respond to content-specific questions developed by you).

Example:  Identify and discuss your ideas on three significant concepts that stood out to you from this week’s readings.

Email the author

Purpose:  To clarify concepts; to retain concepts; to explore concepts; to personalize ideas

Procedure:  Tell students to draft a short email asking the author for clarification or further information on a concept in the article or essay. This will encourage students to think critically about which aspects of the article or essay confuse them, and will personalize the material. You can encourage students to actually send the email – they may actually receive a reply!

Example:  Choose an article from this week’s readings and draft an email to the author with a brief, specific question.

Memory matrix

Purpose:  To retain concepts; to personalize ideas; to explain concepts.

Procedure:  Students complete a two-dimensional diagram for which the instructor has provided labels. Having information laid out visually can help students to prepare for a test or see how different concepts fit together.

Example:  Based on the readings for today, fill in the following matrix:

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.

CTE teaching tips

• Responding to Writing Assignments: Managing the Paper Load
• Writing as a Learning Tool
• Promoting and Assessing Critical Thinking
• Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors

Other resources

• Angelo, T. A. and Cross, P. K. (1993).  Classroom assessment techniques (2nd ed.) . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
• Anson, C. (2015). Crossing thresholds: What’s to know about writing across the curriculum.  Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies.  Eds. Adler-Kassner, V. and Wardle, E. 203-219. Utah State University Press.
• Bean, J. (2001).  Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
• Dyment, J., and O’Connell, T. (2010). The quality of reflection in student journals: A review of limiting and enabling factors.  Innovative Higher Education, 35 (4), 233-244.
• Enns, C., Cho, M., & Karimidorabati, S. (2014). Using writing as a learning tool in engineering courses.  Teaching Innovation Projects, 4 (2).
• Herteis, E. M. and Wright, W. A., Eds. (1992).  Learning through writing: A compendium of assignments and techniques.  Halifax: Office of Instructional Development and Learning.
• Hudd, S. S., Smart, R. A., and Delohery, A. W. (2011). My understanding has grown, my perspective has switched: Linking informal writing to learning goals.  Teaching Sociology ,  39 (2), 179-189.
• Reynolds, J. A., Thaiss, C., Katkin, W., & Thompson, R. J. (2012). Writing-to-learn in undergraduate science education: A community-based, conceptually driven approach.  CBE - Life Sciences Education ,  11 (1), 17-25.
• Sorcinelli, M. D. and Elbow, P., Eds. (1997).  Writing to learn: Strategies for assigning and responding to writing across the disciplines.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

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Open-Ended Problems

• Student Generated Media
• Role-Playing-Activities

An Open-Ended problem is an activity designed to learn course content within the framework of a realistic problem. These are particularly well suited for courses whose main thrust is to help students develop the capacity for critical thinking and analysis. While Open-Ended problems are primarily preformed in groups, it is not to be confused with group work. The structure of the problem set and the indented outcomes are unique to this method.

Open-Ended problems challenge students by forcing them to identify what they know in relation to a problem, allowing the group to then focus on the aspects of the problem they do not understand. The group then decides which issues to consider in order of importance this is then delegated. Finally the groups integrate new knowledge in the context of the problem, making connections between previous and newly acquired knowledge; this process is repeated until the problem is satisfied.

Math Needs a Makeover

In this video professor Dan Meyer, illustrates an example of decoupling the formulaic method of traditional math education with real world examples. To achieve this, he provides his students with a video of a fish tank, slowly (very slowly) filling up with water. The students inevitably ask themselves, “how long will it take to fill?” That question triggers a though process connected to real world experience allowing non-traditional students the ability to participate at the same level as the students who excel at formulaic mathematics. One question leads to another, and by answering these in order of self-perceived importance the student empowers his or her self toward initiating the initiating question.

Congressional Internships

From: The Practice of Problem Based Learning

You have applied for several writing-intensive internships through the University of Rhode Island’s Office of Experiential Education, and you have been offered a position in the Rhode Island office of Congressman James Langevin. Because House of Representative terms are only two years, you assume you will be writing campaign materials. You have also been told that you will be working on a team with three or four other writing interns.

Questions for Team Discussion

• Who is James Langevin? What do members of your team already know about him?
• How long has he been in Congress? Who does he represent?
• What issues seem to concern him most?
• What constituent groups and platform have gotten him elected and reelected?
• What has he done during his time in Congress?
• What do different interest groups think of him so far?
• What more do you need to learn about him?
• Where can you go to learn more about him?

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Open-Ended Questions: 28 Examples of How to Ask Properly

The power of open-ended questions lies in the insights they unlock.

Mastering open-ended questions is key, as they unlock more than just brief replies. They invite deeper thoughts, opening doors to honest conversations. The skill of openness and support is crucial for team leaders who want to cultivate a similar culture among their employees and customers. Unlike yes-or-no questions, open-ended ones pave the way for people to express themselves fully.

They are not just about getting answers, but about understanding perspectives, making them a valuable tool in the workplace, schools, and beyond. Through these questions, we dig deeper, encouraging a culture where thoughts are shared openly and ideas flourish.

What is an open-ended question?

Open-ended questions kick off with words like “Why?”, “How?”, and “What?”. Unlike the yes-or-no kind, they invite a fuller response. It’s not about getting quick answers, but about making the respondent think more deeply about their answers.

These questions ask people to pause, reflect, and delve into their thoughts before responding. It’s more than just getting an answer—it’s about understanding deeper feelings or ideas. In a way, open-ended questions are bridges to meaningful conversations, leading to a richer exchange of ideas and insights.

Comparison: Open-ended vs closed-ended questions

Open-ended and closed-ended questions serve as the two sides of the inquiry coin, each with its unique advantages.

Open-ended questions:

• Kickstart with “How”, “Why”, and “What”
• No set answers, sparking more thought
• Encourage detailed responses, explaining the ‘why’ or ‘how’

Closed-ended questions:

• Often have a “Yes” or “No” response
• Feature predetermined answers (e.g., Options A, B, C)
• Aim for specific, clear-cut responses, making them quick to answer

Together, they balance a conversation. Open-ended questions open up discussions, while close-ended questions keep them on track.

Benefits of asking open-ended questions

• Deeper understanding : They dig deeper, unveiling more than just surface-level information.
• Enhanced communication : Open-ended questions foster a two-way dialogue, making conversations more engaging.
• Building trust: When people feel heard, it builds trust and a strong rapport.
• Encourages critical thinking: These questions nudge towards reflection, enhancing critical thinking skills.
• Uncovering insights : They can bring out hidden insights that might stay buried otherwise.
• Problem-solving: By identifying core issues, they pave the way for effective problem-solving.
• Personal growth : Promoting self-reflection, open-ended questions contribute to personal growth and awareness.

As you can see, open-ended questions pave the way for in-depth responses. Unlike a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they encourage individuals to share more. This leads to richer engagements, giving a peek into others’ perspectives. It’s more than just collecting data; it’s about understanding the context behind it. Through open-ended questions, discussions become more engaging and informative. It’s a step towards fostering a culture of open communication and meaningful interactions.

28 examples of open-ended questions

Questions for team meetings:

• What steps could enhance our meeting’s effectiveness?
• How does our meeting structure support or hinder our goals?
• What topics should be prioritized in our next meeting?
• How can we make our meetings more engaging and productive?
• What was the most impactful part of today’s meeting?
• If you could change one thing about our meetings, what would it be?
• How do our meetings compare to those in other departments?

For company surveys:

• What aspects of our culture contribute to your job satisfaction?
• How could we modify our workspace to boost productivity?
• What are your thoughts on our current communication channels?
• How would a flexible work schedule impact your work-life balance?
• What training or resources would further your career development here?
• How do our company values align with your personal values?
• What suggestions do you have for improving team collaboration?

Ideas for brainstorming sessions:

• What alternative solutions could address this challenge?
• How might we streamline our brainstorming process?
• What barriers are hindering creative thinking in our sessions?
• How do you feel about the diversity of ideas presented?
• What methods could we employ to encourage more innovative thinking?
• How can we better document and follow up on ideas generated?
• What factors should be considered when evaluating potential solutions?

For classroom discussions:

• What teaching methods engage you the most?
• If you could redesign our classroom, what changes would you make?
• How does peer interaction enhance your learning experience?
• What topics or subjects would you like to explore in more depth?
• How could technology be integrated to enhance learning?
• What challenges do you face in achieving your academic goals?
• How could the school support you better in overcoming academic hurdles?

How to craft effective open-ended questions

Crafting effective open-ended questions is an art. It begins with choosing the right starters like “How”, “What”, and “Why”.

• Example: How did you come up with this idea?
• Example: What were the main challenges faced?
• Example: Why do you think this approach works best?

Using these starters makes it easier to receive thoughtful answers that lead to deeper thinking and understanding.

Beyond starters, here are more tips:

• Be clear: Ensure clarity to avoid confusion.
• Avoid leading: Don’t direct towards a specific answer.
• Keep it simple: Steer clear of complex language.
• Encourage thought: Frame questions to prompt reflection.
• Be open: Prepare for unexpected answers.
• Practice active listening: Show genuine interest.
• Follow-Up: Delve deeper with additional questions.

Characteristics of good open-ended questions:

• Interest: Be genuinely interested in the responses.
• Clarity: Keep your question clear and straightforward.
• Neutral tone: Avoid leading or biased words.
• Emotive verbs: Use verbs that evoke thoughts or emotions, like ‘think’, ‘feel’, or ‘believe’.
• Non-accusatory: Frame your question to avoid sounding accusatory, which can hinder honest responses.

For instance, instead of asking “Why did you choose this method?”, try “What led you to choose this method?”. It feels less accusatory and more open to insightful responses.

When to Use Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions are invaluable tools for diving into meaningful conversations, whether in live discussions or self-paced surveys. Acting like keys, they unlock the reasoning behind people’s thoughts and feelings. For example, incorporating open-ended questions into your Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys can offer insights into why customers assigned a specific score.

These questions are particularly effective for sparking deeper thinking and discussions. Imagine you’re in a team meeting and you ask, “What can we do to better deliver our projects?” The room is likely to fill with useful suggestions. Similarly, in customer service emails , posing a question like “How can we improve your experience?” can provide insights that go beyond the scope of pre-crafted templates.

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In educational settings, questions like “How can we make learning this easier for you?” can encourage thoughtful answers. This not only enhances the learning environment but also fosters a culture of open communication. By asking such questions, you’re doing more than just seeking answers; you’re inviting deeper thought and engagement.

The real magic of open-ended questions lies in their ability to transform basic interactions into opportunities for greater understanding and learning. Whether you’re conducting a survey, such as an Employee Net Promoter Score , or simply having a team discussion, these questions add context and depth. They turn simple exchanges into meaningful conversations, helping you reach the ultimate goal—whether you’re talking to team members or customers.

Bonus: 8 of our favorite open-ended questions for customer feedback

Embarking on the open-ended questions journey? While Nicereply specializes in collecting easy-to-digest feedback through stars, smiley faces, or thumbs up/down, we see the value in the detailed insights open-ended questions can provide. Here’s a list of our favorite open-ended questions to enhance your customer satisfaction insights:

• How could we improve your experience with our customer service?
• What did you appreciate most about your interaction with our team?
• Were there any aspects of our service that fell short of your expectations?
• What additional services or features would you like us to offer?
• How would you describe your overall satisfaction with our service?
• What suggestions do you have for our support team to serve you better?
• What were the key factors that influenced your satisfaction with our service?
• How does our customer service compare to others you have experienced?

Though Nicereply’s focus is on clear-cut feedback, engaging with open-ended questions on a separate note can offer a richer understanding of your customer’s experience.

1: How could we improve your experience with our customer service?

Asking for feedback shows you’re keen on making your service better. It helps understand what customers think, find out what’s missing, and aim for the best. This question really shows that a company cares about improving.

2: What did you appreciate most about your interaction with our team?

Finding out what customers like helps grow those good parts. It’s a way to cheer on what’s going well and make sure these good habits keep going strong.

3: Were there any aspects of our service that fell short of your expectations?

Knowing what let customers down is the first step to fixing it. This question can bring out hidden issues, making it easier to sort them out. It also shows customers that their happiness is important and their worries are heard, which can really boost the bond between the customer and the company, a crucial factor in building customer loyalty .

4: What additional services or features would you like us to offer?

Uncovering customer desires helps in tailoring services to meet their needs. It’s a proactive step toward innovation based on customer-driven insights.

5: How would you describe your overall satisfaction with our service?

This question opens up a space for many different reactions and stories. It captures a general feeling that can be explored more for deeper understanding.

6: What suggestions do you have for our support team to serve you better?

This question invites customers to share ideas on improving our service. It’s a positive way to get useful feedback. It also shows a commitment to getting better and valuing what customers have to say, which can build trust and good relations.

7: What were the key factors that influenced your satisfaction with our service?

Looking into the details of satisfaction helps to understand what makes good service for customers. It’s a logical way to break down customer satisfaction.

8: How does our customer service compare to others you have experienced?

A comparative question provides a reality check and a broader industry perspective. It’s a way to understand your competitive standing from a customer-centric viewpoint.

It also may provide insights into areas where competitors excel, offering a benchmark for improvement, or areas where your service shines, which can be leveraged in marketing and brand positioning.

Conclusion: Open-ended questions in a nutshell

Open-ended questions are conversation starters, allowing for a richer exchange of ideas. They help individuals express themselves more fully, paving the way for a deeper understanding.

In business, particularly in customer support, these questions are crucial. They help unearth the customer’s perspective, providing key insights for improving service. For support professionals, every open-ended question is an opportunity to better understand customer needs and enhance the dialogue. Through these questions, a culture of open communication and continuous learning is fostered, which is essential for delivering exceptional customer service.

How did you like this blog?

Roland is the go-to guy for content marketing at Nicereply. With over a decade of experience in the field, he took the reins of the SEO department in April 2023. His mission? To spread the word about customer experience far and wide. Outside of the digital world, Roland enjoys quality time with his wife and two daughters. And if he's in the mood, you might catch him lifting weights at the gym—but don't hold your breath!

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• Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar

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• Sustainability
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D-lab: waste, designing and assessing the open-ended final project.

In this section, Kate Mytty describes how the final project in EC.716 D-Lab: Waste reflected the overall goals of MIT’s D-Lab and shares an example of student work. She also describes how the project was assessed and shares tips for providing students with productive feedback.

Designing the Final Project to Align with D-Lab Goals

"We designed the project, which focused on an open-ended waste-related topic, to be action-oriented, hands-on, and practical."

Our course on waste is offered by MIT’s D-Lab . D-Lab is a learning space devoted to promoting development through discovery, design, and dissemination. Much of the work in D-Lab focuses on design at the grassroots level, and inclusive community engagement is highly valued. The scientists involved in D-Lab are tinkerers—they’re interested in hands-on, practical projects that will meet the needs and constraints of the communities they’re designed to support. D-Lab is often one of the main places on campus where MIT students have the opportunity to do hands-on work in real-world settings.

Our understanding of D-Lab, and its goals, shaped how we designed the EC.716 D-Lab: Waste final project (PDF) . In particular, we designed the project, which focused on an open-ended waste-related topic, to be action-oriented, hands-on, and practical. Students were challenged to develop projects that would involve stakeholder engagement. Students were also required to incorporate research, design elements, evaluation, and an implementation plan into their projects. Students had the option of conceptualizing the project from several different perspectives (artistic, technological, civic engagement, etc.), and were encouraged to select the approach that aligned best with their interests.

An Example of Student Work

One team of students chose to work closely with MIT’s Environment, Health & Safety Office (EHS) to tackle the issue of lab waste on campus. They learned that most lab waste is categorized as biohazards waste, regardless of what happens in the lab. This is because researchers in the labs and, of course, EHS, want to err on the side of safety.

Through interviews with EHS Biosafety stakeholders, the team learned that different labs fill their bins at different rates. This means that EHS dispatches a collection team at the same frequency regardless of how much waste is in a bin. Because MIT pays a fee for each bin that is disposed, regardless of how much trash is in the bin, EHS stakeholders wanted to explore options for creating a smarter, more systematic lab waste collection system.

To address the needs of EHS, the student team built a “multi-sensory bio-waste box” (PDF) prototype. The prototype provides EHS with specific data about each waste bin that informs EHS about when to dispatch the disposal service to collect the waste bin. We’re hoping that a future group will continue to work with EHS to further develop the project.

Assessing the Project

We evaluated the projects based on the degree to which students engaged stakeholders, the feasibility of their implementation plan, the strength of their arguments, and the thoroughness of their research and design processes. Because students came to the class with different interests, we intentionally did not evaluate students on the specific objectives of their projects. We did, however, make sure students had a strong sense of what they wanted to accomplish through their action-oriented projects.

We accomplished this mainly through check-in sessions with individual teams throughout the semester. During the first check-in, students shared with us brief project statements, which we reviewed with them. During the second check-in session, they shared detailed outlines of their project plans. The third check-in allowed us to review their work-in-progress.

Providing Productive Feedback

I’ve found that one way to provide students with productive feedback on their projects is to give specific examples and references that illustrate the changes I think would improve their work. I might say to a student, for example, “Your project on recycling gives the reader a good sense of what scientists in the field have said about your topic, but your project could benefit from more on-the-ground research. Consider going to five local stores to see how they approach recycling in their businesses.” Sometimes I also provide an example of how other students have approached similar challenges or questions in their projects. Overall, I’ve found that being as specific as possible is helpful.

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32 Open-Ended Questions for Reading Comprehension

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Author:  TeamTom Education , Tags:  Question Stems , Questioning Strategies

( words) minutes to read 

Improving reading comprehension is the goal of reading instruction, and open-ended questions can help! Reading comprehension can be a challenge to achieve because it’s such a complex set of skills. There are many reading comprehension strategies for readers to employ across many genres at different reading levels .

Close-ended questions could require a simple yes or no. They could be multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank. However, open-ended questions require students to either reexamine text evidence or extend their own thinking.

Reexamine and Extend – those are powerful thinking skills!

So let’s look at a quick list of open-ended questions that you can use in your classroom.

Open-Ended Questions to ask Before Reading the Text

• Looking at the cover, what do you predict this book might be about?
• What detail on the cover supports that prediction ?
• What do you think will happen in the plot?
• What ideas do you think will be present in this text?
• Can you please describe what you think the illustration on the front cover is trying to tell us?
• Why do you think the author used this title?
• Why do you think the author used this type of font (style of letters) on the cover?
• What do you already know from reading the title?
• What connections can you make after reading the blurb?
• How do you think this story will end?
• What is a problem that you think could occur in this story?
• What questions could you ask before reading this text?

Discover Our Award-Winning Comprehension Resources

Drawing conclusions, key ideas & details, summarizing, and so many more!

Open-Ended Questions to Ask During the Reading

• What time of day do you think it is in this story?
• Why do you think it is that time of day?
• What connections can you make to this setting?
• What would you do if you went to this place?
• Do you think you would enjoy being here?
• Why do you think the author started the story/text this way?
• How are you adjusting your predictions after reading this (page, section, chapter)?
• What sentences parked your imagination?
• How do you think the character is feeling? What evidence supports your thinking?
• What could happen to make this character feel a different way?
• Which details were the most interesting to you?
• What questions do you have now?
• How did the setting change?
• How does the setting impact the plot for these characters?

After the Text

• What do you think the author hoped you would think after reading the text?
• What do you think about the story/text?
• Can you summarize the text in just two or three sentences?
• What was your favorite part?
• Was the plot/text different than you thought it would be?
• What would you change in this text if you could write it?

Use these questions in your class, in guided reading , in literacy centers, or during your daily reading comprehension warm-up routine .

How to Use Reading Response Questions for any Book

Here are some ways that a teacher can use reading response questions to any book:

As a warm-up activity: Reading response questions can be used as a warm-up activity to get students thinking about the book before they start reading. This can help to engage students and to focus their attention on the text.

As a way to check for comprehension: Reading response questions can be used as a way to check for comprehension after students have read a section of the book. This can help teachers to identify any areas where students may need additional support.

As a way to spark discussion: Reading response questions can be used to spark discussion about the book. This can help students to share their thoughts and ideas about the text, and to build their understanding of the book.

As a way to promote writing: Reading response questions can be used to promote writing by asking students to write about their thoughts and ideas about the book. This can help students to develop their writing skills and to express their understanding of the text.

As a way to assess student learning: Reading response questions can be used to assess student learning by asking students to answer questions about the book. This can help teachers to track student progress and to identify areas where students need additional support.

About the Author

TeamTom Education is dedicated to creating engaging teaching resources and strategies that make learning awesome!

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Open-ended questions vs. close-ended questions: examples and how to survey users

Unless you’re a mind reader, the only way to find out what your users are thinking is to ask them. That's what surveys are for. 

But the way you ask a question often determines the kind of answer you get—and one of the first decisions you have to make is: are you going to ask an open-ended or a closed-ended question?

Last updated

Reading time.

Understanding the difference between open-ended and close-ended questions helps you ask better, more targeted questions, so you can get actionable answers. The question examples we cover in this article look at open- and closed-ended questions in the context of a website survey, but the principle applies across any type of survey you may want to run. 

Start from the top or skip ahead to 

What’s the difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions?

4 tips on how to craft your survey questions for a maximum response rate

5 critical open-ended questions to ask customers

When to ask open-ended questions vs. closed-ended questions

Open-ended vs. close-ended questions: what’s the difference?

Open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and instead require the respondent to elaborate on their points.

Open-ended questions help you see things from a customer’s perspective as you get feedback in their own words instead of stock answers. You can analyze open-ended questions using spreadsheets , view qualitative research and data analysis trends, and even spot elements that stand out with word cloud visualizations.

Closed-ended questions are questions that can only be answered by selecting from a limited number of options, usually multiple-choice questions with a single-word answer (‘yes’ or ‘no’) or a rating scale (e.g. from strongly agree to strongly disagree).

Closed-ended questions give limited insight, but can easily be analyzed for quantitative data . For example, one of the most popular closed questions in market research is the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) survey, which asks people “How likely are you to recommend this product/service on a scale from 0 to 10?” and uses numerical answers to calculate overall score trends. Check out our NPS survey template to see this closed-ended question in action.

Let’s take a look at the examples of open-ended questions vs. closed-ended questions above.

All the closed questions in the left column can be responded to with a one-word answer that gives you the general sentiment of each user and a few useful data points about their satisfaction, which help you look at trends and percentages. For example, did the proportion of people who declared themselves happy with your website change in the last three, six, or 12 months?

The open-ended questions in the right column let customers provide detailed responses with additional information so you understand the context behind a problem or learn more about your unique selling points . If you’re after qualitative data like this, the easy way to convert closed-ended into open-ended questions is to consider the range of possible responses and re-word your questions to allow for a free-form answer.

💡 Pro tip : when surveying people on your website with Hotjar Surveys , our Survey Logic feature lets you ask follow-up questions that help you find out the what and the why behind your users’ actions. 

For more inspiration, here are 20+ real examples of open- and closed-ended questions you can ask on your website, along with a bunch of free pre-built survey templates and 50+ more survey questions to help you craft a better questionnaire for your users. 

Or, take advantage of Hotjar’s AI for Surveys , which generates insightful survey questions based on your research goal in seconds and prepares an automated summary report with key takeaways and suggested next steps once results are in.

Use Hotjar to build your survey and get the customer insights you need to grow your business.

How to ask survey questions for maximum responses

It’s often easy to lead your customers to the answer you want, so make sure you’re following these guidelines:

1. Embrace negative feedback

Some customers may find it hard to leave negative feedback if your questions are worded poorly.

For example, “We hope there wasn’t anything bad about your experience with us, but if so, please let us know” is better phrased neutrally as “Let us know if there was anything you’d like us to do differently.” It might sting a little to hear negative comments, but it’s your biggest opportunity to really empathize with customers and fuel your UX improvements moving forward.

2. Don’t lead your customers

“You bought 300 apples over the past year. What's your favorite fruit?” is an example of a leading question . You just planted the idea of an apple in your customers' mind. Valuable survey questions are open and objective—let people answer them in their own words, from their own perspective, and you’ll get more meaningful answers.

3. Avoid asking ‘and why?’

Tacking “and why?” on at the end of a question will only give you simple answers. And, no, adding “and why?” will not turn closed-ended questions into open-ended ones!

Asking “What did you purchase today, and why?” will give you an answer like “3 pairs of socks for a gift” (and that’s if you’re lucky), whereas wording the question as “Why did you choose to make a purchase today?” allows for an open answer like, “I saw your special offer and bought socks for my niece.”

4. Keep your survey simple

Not many folks love filling in a survey that’s 50 questions long and takes an hour to complete. For the most effective data collection (and decent response rates), you need to keep the respondents’ attention span in mind. Here’s how:

Keep question length short : good questions are one-sentence long and worded as concisely as possible

Limit the number of questions : take your list of planned questions and be ruthless when narrowing them down. Keep the questions you know will lead to direct insight and ditch the rest.

Show survey progress : a simple progress bar, or an indication of how many questions are left, motivates users to finish your survey

5 of our favorite open-ended questions to ask customers

Now that you know how to ask good open-ended questions , it’s time to start putting the knowledge into practice.

To survey your website users, use Hotjar's feedback tools to run on-page surveys, collect answers, and visualize results. You can create surveys that run on your entire site, or choose to display them on specific pages (URLs).

Different types of Hotjar surveys

As for what to ask—if you're just getting started, the five open-ended questions below are ideal for any website, whether ecommerce or software-as-a-service:

1. How can we make this page better?

If you missed the expectations set by a customer, you may have over-promised or under-delivered. Ask users where you missed the mark today, and you’ll know how to properly set, and meet, expectations in the future. An open platform for your customers to tell you their pain points is far more valuable for increasing customer satisfaction than guessing what improvements you should make. Issues could range from technical bugs to lack of product range.

2. Where exactly did you first hear about us?

An open “How did you find out about us?” question leaves users to answer freely, without leading them to a stock response, and gives you valuable information that might be harder to track with traditional analytics tools.

We have a traffic attribution survey template ready and waiting for you to get started.

3. What is stopping you from [action] today?

A “What is stopping you?” question can be shown on exit pages ; the open-form answers will help you identify the barriers to conversion that stop people from taking action.

Questions like this can also be triggered in a post-purchase survey on a thank you or order confirmation page. This type of survey only focuses on confirmed customers: after asking what almost stopped them, you can address any potential obstacles they highlight and fix them for the rest of your site visitors.

4. What are your main concerns or questions about [product/service]?

Finding out the concerns and objections of potential customers on your website helps you address them in future versions of the page they’re on and the products they’ll use. It sounds simple, but you’ll be surprised by how candid and helpful your users will be when answering this one.

Do you want to gather feedback on your product specifically? Learn what to improve and understand what users really think with our product feedback survey template and this expert advice on which product questions to ask when your product isn't selling.

5. What persuaded you to [take action] today?

Learning what made a customer click ‘buy now’ or ‘sign up’ helps you identify your levers. Maybe it’s low prices, fast shipping, or excellent customer service—whatever the reason, finding out what draws customers in and convinces them to stay helps you emphasize these benefits to other users and, ultimately, increase conversions.

Ask the right questions at the right time to get the insights you need

Whether you’re part of a marketing, product, sales, or user research team, asking the right questions through customer interviews or on-site surveys helps you collect feedback to create better user experiences and increase conversions and sales.

The type of question you choose depends on what you’re trying to achieve:

Ask a closed-ended question when you want answers that can be plotted on a graph and used to show trends and percentages. For example, answers to the closed-ended question “Do you trust the information on [website]?” helps you understand the proportion of people who find your website trustworthy versus those who do not.

Ask an open-ended question when you want in-depth answers to better understand your customers and their needs , get more context behind their actions, and investigate the reasons behind their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your product. For example, the open-ended question “If you could change anything on this page, what would it be?” allows your customers to express, in their own words, what they think you should be working on next.

Not only is the kind of question you ask important—but the moment you ask it is equally relevant. Hotjar Surveys , our online survey tool , has a user-friendly survey builder that lets you effortlessly craft a survey and embed it anywhere on your web page to ask the right questions at the right time and place.

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23 Open-Ended Play Ideas

An Infinite Number of Open-Ended Play Ideas

If you are wondering what open-ended play is, put simply, it means that children are allowed the time and space to play with resources, following their own creative ideas and interests. 

In open-ended play, there is generally no pressure or expectation of an end result or product. 

Sometimes, this is described as a process versus outcome. It is all about children having the time and the space to explore a process as they play and learn, rather than having to work towards producing something. 

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Think of the work and journey of a great artist. When they are learning about their craft, they take the time to make many, varying sketches, they learn how to blend colors to find the best possible shades, they look at their subject from different angles and perspectives, and they try out different brush strokes and techniques. They may look at other great artists for inspiration but in the early years of study they are working on the process, learning without pressure to produce a finished masterpiece. This is a good metaphor for open-ended play. 

A Teacher or Guide is Important for Open-Ended Play  

A good teacher or facilitator is key to this process. A key adult who knows how to provide the right materials, when to step back and let the children practice, when to intervene with new ideas or prompts and when to let the children find out for themselves through a process of trial and error.

This is exactly what our young children need. Time and space to actively play, follow their imaginations and be as creative and experimental as they can possibly be. However, this should not be thought of as a free-for-all. Children still need adults around to set up an enabling environment where there are enough of the right resources to allow skills to develop. Adults should be able to step in when help is required and to step back when children are engaged and learning on their own.

There is well-documented evidence that recently, employers are dissatisfied with recent school graduates who have been taught so rigidly, they are unable to use any initiative, think creatively or use common sense. This is largely because we haven’t allowed those children the opportunities to take part in open-ended activities where they can explore and experiment with new ideas, developing confidence to have a go at anything.

If you want to learn more, check out more information on  open-ended play at home . 

To develop our children fully, to make sure they grow and learn with confidence, creativity, wonder and problem-solving skills, you can start to use this approach easily by following the ideas below.

Some Open-Ended Play Ideas

All of the following ideas can be adapted to suit different spaces, both indoors and outdoors. Use your own creativity to adapt the ideas and resources and you will soon be seeing your children blossom with creativity and inquiry and enthusiasm.

Builder’s yard play

What you need:

• A large amount of good quality wooden blocks 
• A large space.
• Containers to store the blocks.

A good quality set of blocks is one of the most open-ended resources you can provide. If you invest in a good amount of 3D blocks like the sets available from community playthings, for example, you will have a resource that lasts for years. Polished wooden blocks can be expensive but they are well worth the investment. Here are some of my favorite block sets:

Melissa & Doug’s Solid Wood Blocks  

Haba Basic Set of Building Blocks  

Haba Extra Large Blocks  

However, if you can’t afford to buy a set of ready-made blocks, there are lots more inexpensive ways of adding resources to your builder’s yard:

• Firstly, collect as many boxes as you can (cardboard boxes – put all those Amazon boxes to use, gift boxes, or anything else.  Find as many shapes and sizes as possible!)
• Then add tubes.  Things like: pringle containers, foil interior cardboard tubes, the interior tube of masking tape and or wrapping paper, and large carpet tubes.  Again, try to collect as many different sizes as possible.
• If you are using cardboard building materials rather than wooden blocks, you will need to add joining materials to your area such as masking tape, string, or other tape

Many children still love block play when they have long passed kindergarten. This is the space where our future architects, town planners, mathematicians and surveyors can all develop their thinking skills!

There are an abundance of mathematical skills inherent in block play, for example:

• 2D shape and 3D shape recognition, 
• Sorting and matching
• Non-standard and standard measures

Prompts for builder open-ended play

If you want to, you can add prompts or “provocations” to lead the children’s play in a particular direction, such as pictures of interesting buildings like churches, skyscrapers, mosques, or palaces. But remember – these are prompts. If the children come to the builder’s yard with their own plan to build something else, always go with their interests first. 

In this area, you will see children measuring one block against another and matching blocks to find the right shapes. They will inevitably make mistakes and buildings will come tumbling down, but this is all part of the learning process. If the play seems to have come to a dead end, you can suggest ideas, and help children to think of new ideas, but be careful not to lead the play. There is so much to learn in the process of building without the pressure of producing a finished model. And if they do create a fabulous model – what a bonus!

Artist area 

Young children have the most amazing imaginations when they are given the time and space to use them. I don’t believe we ever grow out of being creative. We might not have used the creative part of our brains for a while, it but it is still buried within us, waiting for the right opportunity. Open-ended opportunities for art never fail to amaze me with what the children are capable of thinking up and producing. 

What you will need:

• Paintbrushes : thin, thick, paste brush, scrubbing brush, nail brush
• Papers : various sizes, different colored paper, different textured papers (card, foil, tissue, sugar)
• Paint : ready mix or powder paint, black, white, and primary colors.
• Tubs of Water for mixing 
• Easel  and a table with a flat surface.
• Aprons 

This is the area that traditionally, we most love to see a finished product so you may have to remind yourself about the benefits of open-ended play a few times. We may also sometimes feel pressure from parents to have a finished picture to take home at the end of the session, but if we are truly provided open-ended play opportunities, that may not always be possible. Try to explain to your parents that the children are in the process of learning and it is better for them to try out ideas, experiment, and be truly creative than to paint a template. I like to display the quote below to remind me why we use an open-ended approach.

If you cut it, draw it, or make it for me, 

the only thing I learn is that you can do it better than me.

Most children like to make random marks when they first begin painting and then quickly move on to covering the whole of the paper. They may also want to paint their own hands. This is a stage of development and is all part of the learning process. It’s messy, of course, but children often have a physical need to do it so go with it… let them experiment. 

Allow children to make their own choices about paper, paint, and brushes. This builds confidence. Let them experiment and explore. If something isn’t working too well, or a child is getting frustrated you can intervene and make suggestions, but otherwise, try to let the child play and create themselves. 

Prompts for Art Open-Ended Play

You may want to add photographs or pictures for inspiration. For example, you could add pictures of rainbows or sunsets, or maybe something the children are interested in, but if they choose to paint their own creations, if you are following an open-ended approach, that is enough.

Writers Corner

This is the area where children develop their mark-making and writing skills. You may find that this area isn’t as popular as other areas of play, especially with younger boys, but that is fine. Continue to provide the materials and let the children experiment and explore with the writing process. They can also take the writing materials to other areas if they need to.

• Pot of  pencils  
• Pot of  pens
• Pot of  crayons  
• Scotch tape
• An  alphabet freeze / letter wheel / alphabet strips.
• Post-it notes
• Note pads / diaries / lists

Depending on which stage your children are at, this area can need replenishing regularly and it can get costly as some children may make lots of random marks and scribbles at first. If you find you are getting through a lot of paper, use recycled envelopes and paper wherever possible. Ask around for donations of junk mail or old cards and recycle them by adding them to your area. A writer’s corner should be all about exploration and experimentation. Allow the children to write and draw in any way they choose without restrictions. 

Prompts for Writing Open-Ended Play

Invitations, real letters, cards, shopping lists, recipes, old typewriters, or keyboards.

If you have children who don’t choose this area, it is sometimes worth placing an adult in the area to model real writing. Not all children see this skill in practice anymore as parents tend to use their phones for everything. They may never have seen an adult use a pen to write a letter or draw a picture. Once you have shown them what the process of writing actually looks like, step back and let them explore the process for themselves.

Small world

This is the area for all budding storytellers, writers, and future creatives like advertisers and animators. Children should be able to literary build their own world in this area.

You will need:

• A good floor space
• A low table 
• Several boxes
• Large pieces of colored fabric
• Baskets or boxes containing:
• Toy figures (fantasy and real life)
• Toy animals (farm, zoo, pet, fantasy)
• Props (toy trees, a few cars, fences, pebbles, childproof mirrors
• A selection of 3D wooden blocks

Set up the area by placing a few boxes on the low table and on the floor and then covering them loosely with fabric to create mountains and lowlands as a backdrop for a world. 

Some children may choose this area to retell a favorite story, others may create their own world from scratch. Children generally play out whatever they need to so if they are repeating a story, it will be because they need to. Repetition is important for young children to consolidate new ideas. Try not to steer the play in the direction you think it should go. Let the children lead the story. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t always follow the traditional conventions of a story. Some children may need to tell a story about something that is happening in their life at the moment. Try and tune in, and play alongside without your own ideas dominating the play if you can. This is a lot more difficult in practice than it sounds. We are all conditioned to tell stories with certain conventions and have expectations about beginnings, middle, and ends, but if you let the children be truly creative, they will come up with some amazing ideas of their own. I promise. 

Prompts for “Small World” Open-Ended Play

• Add some favorite story books to the areas.
• Add a few drops of essential oil like lavender for a sensory play experience.
• Add soothing background music.
• Add finger puppets 

By providing plenty of interesting resources and allowing the children to make choices, they will be inventing and creating in no time.

Music and movement

All young children need to move and be physical every day. It is a crucial part of their development and essential for their wellbeing. 

Providing a music and movement area will develop skills of creativity, flexibility, agility, working together, listening skills, pattern and rhythm skills and that’s just for starters! Think future dancers, singers, athletes, and even songwriters. 

• A good space
• Percussion instruments  
• Ribbon sticks  
• Some mats  
• Floaty scarves
• Beanbags  
• A music source (I-pod / tape recorder)

It’s amazing how creative young children can be with their bodies. They don’t have the same inhibitions as us and can really let themselves be free. Try to find a good amount of space where the noise isn’t too distracting to other children nearby. If you can, this area can work really well outdoors. Then, just let the children play, dance, sing, stretch, roll, crawl, tap and beat… whatever they need to do. 

Prompts for Music Open-ended Play

• Pictures of dancers from around the world.
• Photographs of ballet dancers, pole vaulters, pop singers, masked dancers, gymnasts, trapeze artists.
• Add a stage made from a few pallets.

Let the play develop naturally. You may need to model using the percussion instruments if the children haven’t come across them before, but once they know how to use them, step back and let them have fun. 

Closing Words on Ideas on Open-Ended Play  

Lots of young children don’t like to be confined to one area so it’s important that they are allowed to choose where they play. If they are in the transportation stage, you may well see them carrying resources from one area to another. Don’t try to stop them unless it is going to cause a major problem. If they have an idea they are working on, they may need to use an item from another area. For example, a child engrossed in world building in the small world area may want a few more blocks from the builder’s yard for their house, or a child engrossed in the builder’s yard may want to get some paper and a pen from the writing area to make some notes or plans and that is fine. We want to develop children who have the confidence to transfer skills to different areas – and that is what employers are asking for too!

Open-ended play is about providing the time, space, and resources so that deep-level learning can take place. We need to allow children those opportunities. A well-organized environment with clear labels and containers will help children know where the resources belong. If this is in place, then they can help to tidy up. 

Overall, open-ended learning should be fun. If children are following their own interests, they will always be more motivated to learn.

Keeping it fun is the way to go!