‘What’s your biggest challenge?’ fits comfortably in a questionnaire. The answer might be ‘time,’ which leaves you with a completed response and almost the same amount of work to do.
If you’re inviting an instructor into a blog feature, the questionnaire needs to help you find the conversation worth having. Start by writing the question the feature could answer for a reader.
For a piece about choosing a first class, that question might be: what does a beginner need to understand before signing up? You now have a way to decide what belongs in the form.
Ask for something you can use
‘What do prospective students ask before their first session?’ can reveal the uncertainty the instructor already spends time addressing. A follow-up asking for a recent example gives them somewhere concrete to begin.
Then ask what they wish those students knew earlier. That answer may point toward a useful explanation: what to bring, how much practice is expected, or whether someone needs prior experience.
Those are possible answers, not boxes to force every instructor into. Give them space to describe the concern that actually comes up in their work.
A question about their current priority can connect the feature to the person you’re interviewing: ‘Is there a class, resource, or part of your work you’d like readers to understand better?’ Keep room for the answer to be something you hadn’t planned to cover.
Each response has a job. One helps identify the reader’s question, another supplies an example, and the priority question tells you where a useful feature might overlap with the instructor’s work.
Make the next step visible
Explain how you’ll use the answers before asking for them. If this is a starting point for an interview, say so, and ask whether the instructor would be open to a few follow-up questions.
Also explain what happens before publication, including any draft review you’re offering. A person should be able to tell whether they’re supplying background, agreeing to be quoted, or expressing interest in a conversation that still needs to happen.
Keep requests for links and biographical details together so the person doesn’t have to scatter the same information across several answers. Leave out anything you can reliably find on the public page you’ve already read, then ask them to confirm the details that will appear.
Before sending the form, try writing a follow-up from an imagined short answer. If ‘time’ still leaves you stuck, the question needs more shape, another required field won’t fix it.
A useful questionnaire ends with a direction for the feature and a clear next step for the person answering. Write the reader’s question first, then ask only what helps you answer it.