Question Co-Creation
Designing the listening questions you'll ask students.
Setting up a listening session
A listening session is the set of questions students respond to. Create one and it stays open until you close it, so students can record whenever it suits your schedule.
Our templates are built by our team and grounded in published student-voice research. A full conversation usually runs 20-40 minutes, depending on the age group and how many questions you include.
Using the wizard
From your dashboard, click Start listening session. Five steps:
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1. Session details | Name the session and add an optional description. The name is what you'll look for later in the Listening Portal, so make it something you'll recognize in six months. |
| 2. Participant info | Optional. Up to three quick multiple-choice questions students answer about themselves before the conversation starts. See below. |
| 3. Questions | Pick a topic and a grade band, or start from scratch. Edit, reorder, and replace anything. A live preview shows each question exactly as students will see it. |
| 4. Review | Polaris reads your question set and flags anything leading, double-barreled, or hard to answer out loud, with a suggested rewrite you can accept or ignore. |
| 5. Confirm | A last look at the whole set, then Create Session. You land on the session's page, ready for students to join. |
There's no date to set. A session goes live the moment you create it and stays open until you close it, so students can record across a period, a day, or a week without you scheduling anything.
Choosing a topic
Step 3 opens with seven topics. Pick one and choose the grade band (3-5, 6-8, or 9-12) — the questions re-pitch for the age group while you watch, so a 4th grader and an 11th grader get the same underlying question in language that fits.
| Topic | What you learn |
|---|---|
| Climate & Culture | Whether the school feels welcoming, fair, and safe day to day. |
| Belonging & Relationships | Whether students feel known by adults and connected to peers. |
| Portrait of a Graduate | The skills and habits students think school is (and isn't) building. |
| Restorative Practices | How fairly conflict and discipline get handled. |
| Equity & Access | Who gets support and a real voice, and who gets left out. |
| Learning & Engagement | What helps students learn, and what turns them off. |
| Wellbeing | How students are managing stress, workload, and support. |
The 3-5 sets assume an adult runs the conversation rather than a peer host, since younger students generally need more scaffolding to keep a group conversation going.
Building questions from scratch
Choose Start from scratch instead of a topic and you get a blank set to write yourself. You can also start from a topic and rewrite everything in it — the template is a starting point, not a contract.
A good listening session usually has four to six questions: enough to surface a few different threads, few enough to leave room for follow-ups inside a 20-40 minute conversation.
If you get stuck on wording, Suggest questions drafts a few options based on your session name and description. They're suggestions; edit them.
Question types
Most questions are open-ended prompts students talk through. Three other types are available when a plain prompt isn't the right instrument:
- Scale (1-5) for a quick temperature check with labels you write for each end. Good as an opener before the conversation goes deep.
- Image when you want students reacting to something visual — a photo of a space in the building, two options they're choosing between.
- Video for a YouTube clip of 60 seconds or less that you want honest reactions to.
Use these sparingly. The value of an empathy interview is in what students say to each other, and every non-open question is a minute not spent talking.
Participant info questions
Step 2 is optional, and worth understanding before you skip it. These are quick multiple-choice questions students answer privately on their own device before the conversation starts — grade level, building, how they'd describe themselves as a student, how long they've been in the district. Up to three per session.
They exist so you can see which parts of your community you actually heard from, and so a report can say "9th graders raised this and seniors didn't" instead of just "students raised this."
Students can skip any of them, or all of them. Answers carry over between sessions, so a student who told you their grade in the fall gets asked to confirm rather than re-enter it.
Deliberately absent: none of the templates ask for race, gender, disability, income, or immigration status. A student's own read on how school is going for them is useful and fair to ask. "What you are" isn't, and your SIS already has it.
Questions you write are saved to your organization, so the next session can reuse them without retyping. Your Organization → Participant Overview shows the answers aggregated across every session.
Designing questions that bring about great conversations
Open-ended
Questions that invite a story or a reflection rather than a yes/no.
Good questions
- When you think about who you want to be in 5 or 10 years, what comes to mind?
- What, to you, would be your ideal learning experience?
Could be improved
- Do you like your teachers?
- Is school going well this year?
Concrete
Anchored to a specific moment or experience the student can recall.
Good questions
- Name a time when you made a meaningful choice at school. What was that choice?
- What is one action, no matter how small, that our school should take to support your learning?
Could be improved
- How do you feel about school?
- How would you rate the school environment?
Clear & concise
One idea per question, short enough to grasp on the first read.
Good questions
- What is one word you'd use to describe school? Why?
- Where do you get to make choices during the school day?
Could be improved
- How often does your teacher give you clear feedback and help you feel like you belong?
- How well does this teacher explain concepts, grade fairly, and respond to students?
Non-leading
Phrased without hinting at the answer you'd like to hear back.
Good questions
- What do you hope teachers take away from this conversation?
- What other thoughts, ideas, or reflections do you have about school?
Could be improved
- Don't you think our school is supportive?
- Why do you love our new schedule?