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This guide details how to add a checklist activity to a Moodle space. Checklists allow you to add a list of tasks for students to complete and provide a visual representation of student progress.

In this guide:

• Checklist features
• How to set up a Checklist activity
• Managing the checklist
• Monitoring student progress

• • To view detailed progress for an individual student
  • To view all students' detailed progress

Checklist features:

• Add URLs and dates for completion of tasks.
• Use Activity Completion criteria to automatically tick off resources or activities in the same Moodle space.
• Allow students to be able to add their own private sub-tasks to their checklist.
• Mark tasks as required or optional.
• A progress bar is visible to both teacher and student as well as a more detailed report available to the teacher.

How to set up a Checklist activity

1. In your Moodle space, enable Edit mode .
2. In the section or topic where you want to add the Checklist activity, click Add an activity or resource.
3. Choose Checklist from the list of activities and resources.
4. Give your checklist activity a name.
5. In the description field, provide instructions, if required, for completing the checklist. Select Display description on course page if you want students to see the instructions before clicking on the activity.
6. Decide on the following settings:
   • User can add their own items
     You can choose to allow students to add their own items to the checklist which will appear indented as sub-tasks. These will be private and not added for any other students.
   • Updates by
     This setting determines who can tick items off the checklist. The Student and teacher option requires the student to tick it off but the teacher must confirm its completion.
   • Add due dates to calendar
     Manually added items with due dates are added to the Moodle calendar.
   • Teachers can add comments
     Enable this if you would like teachers to be able to add comments to students' checklist tasks.
     
   • Maximum grade
     The checklist can be a graded activity but if you do not want this, you must set the value to 0.
   • Email when checklist is complete
     Decide whether to enable email notifications on completion of the checklist and if so, whether for the student and/or teacher.
   • Show course modules in checklist
     This setting adds all activities and resources from the current section or whole Moodle space to the checklist. You can exclude some or add more to the list later on.
   • Check-off when modules complete
     This uses activity completion settings to automatically tick off items once the corresponding resource or activity is registered as 'complete'. See guidance on Activity completionLink opens in a new window for more detail.
   • Lock teacher marks
     Choose whether to prevent changes once a teacher has confirmed completion of a task.
7. You may enter settings for Activity CompletionLink opens in a new window, Restrict AccessLink opens in a new window if relevant.
8. Click Save and display.

Managing the checklist

If you chose to show course modules, the checklist will already be populated with all of the resources and activities within either the Moodle section or whole space, in the order that they appear in the space.

To manually add checklist tasks:

1. Go to the Edit Checklist tab.
2. If you want to add a due date to the following task(s), click the Edit dates button.
3. Add the text description for the task into the blank text field at the bottom of the list.
4. Add a URL for more information if required. If this is outside Moodle, we recommend ticking the Open in a new window? box.
5. Untick the Disable box to add a due date if required.
6. Click Add.
7. Once the list of items is complete, you may then organise and edit them:
   • mark items as required or optional by ticking the required box icon to the immediate left of the text: ticked means required, unticked means optional. For manually added items, you can click again to make it a heading. Note that optional items do not contribute to completion of the checklist.
   • you can change the text colour of items by clicking the coloured block to the right of the text. We do not advise this, however, as it might make them difficult to read.
   • click the eye icon to hide/show items.
   • to add a new item, click the green Insert new item after this one button to insert a new one below.

   For manually added items only:

   • use the directional arrows to move items up and down, indent them to indicate they are sub-tasks or unindent.
   • click the settings icon to edit the name or URL and then click the Update button.
   • to edit due dates, click the Edit dates button at the bottom of the list, click the settings cog icon, make the changes and click Update. Then you may click Stop editing dates (though this isn't essential).
   • click the delete icon to remove an item from the list.

Monitoring student progress

Click on the View progress tab in order to see a progress bar for each of the students with a percentage completion and number of tasks completed at the end.

At the top of the list, you can toggle the inclusion of optional items by clicking the Hide optional items/Show optional items button.

To view detailed progress for an individual student:

1. Click the magnify button next to their name.
2. If enabled during setup, click the Add comments button to show a text box for commenting on student tasks.
3. If updates by teacher are enabled during setup, you can choose Yes or No for each item to confirm whether or not the student has satisfactorily completed a task.
4. Click either Save or Save and show next to move to the next student's checklist.
5. Click View all students at the top of the list to return to the progress overview.

To view all students' detailed progress:

1. Click the Full details button above the progress bars.
2. If updates by teacher are enabled, you can click the Edit checks button to enable you to confirm completion for particular students for particular tasks using the drop-down menus.
3. You can use the Toggle Row and Toggle Column buttons to mark all items for a single student and or a task complete for all students. Click the button once to mark all as Yes, and again to mark as No.
4. Remember to click the Save button to save any changes.