There are times you might want to survey or poll the students. There are also the cases where the institution or others are surveying or polling. For example, student perception surveys come to mind.
Lots can be written about survey design, how to phrase a question, what scales to use. We are not going to repeat all of that. You will not learn how to write a high quality survey or poll in a few hours. Not possible. However, we will share with you some common issues and points to think about; when you are creating one, filling one in, using the results from one.
Most important, do the questions lead to something actionable? The analysis should result in something actionable; does it? Is the question and answer set specific enough to do this? And, actionable by whome? The instructor, department, faculty, institution?
Often the questions might be beyond the average student. For example, answering about understanding and reflections about the process requires a certain level of self-awareness of what is meant by understanding and being very aware of the process, and not just turning up, going through the motions. There is also a maturity and expectation setting from other situations. Consider the following. Some students think learning is having something to memorize and recite. They confuse cognitive skill development with facts and recipes. They also confuse effort with quality and results. The current generation requires and expects significant different types of interactions than pre-millennials. If you do not answer their question, you are rude. If you do not give them the answer, you are not doing your job. All of these and more issues can be hidden or under the radar when asking about perceptions about what has happened and how they feel about it.
The timing of the instrument is critical as is the implicit implication possibly imbedded in a question. Responses can be biased by recent events, but the survey may be asking about things yet to come, not yet realized. For example, in some cases, the students should not be aware of the teaching methods till the end of the term during a debrief. If constructive failure is used and deep learning is used with deliberate practice, there are some things you want the student to know during the process and other things that should be shared during the debrief. The quality of the course and what is actually 'learned' might not be apparent to the student until after the final project or assessment is done, or even later when the learning is actually revealed in a subsequent course or after graduation. The context of the question is important.
Kahneman et al. (2021) provides a great summary of possible biases and issues when decisions are being made. Surveys, especially perception surveys, need to be crafted and used keeping these biases and possible sources of error in mind.
There is something called the Net Promoter Score that is used in business to pick up customer loyalty. This can adapted and used a perception survey if one goal is to find out how much the students valued the course. Did they value it enough to recommend the course to others, or would they take it again?