The use of an effectively designed participant survey, which is administered at the outset of an online course, can provide information that is useful in the management of the learning environment and in its subsequent redesign. Providing such information can help to clarify the participants’ prior experience, expectations, concerns, and even anxiety. The very act of inquiring about the learner also signals the instructor’s social presence, relational interest, and desire to enter into an authentic dialogue during the learning engagement.

Beginning Course Surveys: Bridges
for Knowing and Bridges for Being
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1000/1895

Effective online distance learning environments require a high degree of social presence, particularly facilitator-learner presence. Often this fails to materialize because the facilitator simply has little awareness of the personal uniqueness and individual authenticity of the learners who are present in the learning environment.
At the beginning of a course, learners are asked to complete a Course Participant Survey (CPS) consisting of two types of questions:
(a) simple statements of fact, such as the amount of prior online experience, technological competence, work and supervisory experience, and the time budget allotted for coursework; and
(b) open-ended questions inviting personal statements and disclosures, such as reasons for course enrollment, anticipated benefits of the course, long-term career and educational goals, feelings and concerns on starting the course, and any additional information considered relevant.
The CPS captures information that can be used to make in-process shifts of emphasis in the delivery of the online course. For example, if all learners have a high level of prior experience with some of the topics that are to be examined in the course, that experience can be used as an additional and valuable learning resource in the course. The CPS thus has a very simple pragmatic purpose in providing before-class information.
However, in this facilitator’s experience, the greatest strength of the CPS is that it initiates a facilitator-learner bridge and the personal information disclosed ensures that subsequent online engagement reflects the unique qualities, concerns, and expectations of the learner. The CPS communicates the facilitator’s interest in learners and desire to work with them in ways that reflect a genuine concern for the individual and for his/her personhood. The time and effort pressures of online instruction rarely make it possible to customize the course. However, the CPS provides the facilitator with the opportunity to better match teaching and learning in ways that lead to a more effective academic outcomes and improved learner satisfaction.
The CPS is so simple and so powerful that it is suggested that facilitators consider it if they are concerned with improving the level of social presence and learning effectiveness in their online learning environments.