Instructor Support for Educational Systems

How do I create and use a Checklist?

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This article will explain how to create and use checklists.

Use Checklists to emphasize important and/or mandatory assignments, documents or other topics. This will help your students to remain focused and remember important things. You can, for example, create a checklist for each week of the course (e.g. what does the student need to read for the following week), for assignments (e.g what assignments does the student need to do for the course) or for a specific topic (e.g what is important terminology the student needs to acquire).

  • Click on Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click on Checklist. You will be navigated to the checklist homepage.

You will see an overview of all of your checklists.

  • Click on New Checklist to create a new checklist.
  • Click on More Actions to change the order of the checklists (Reorder) or to delete them (Delete). 

Create a checklist

  • Click on New Checklist on the checklist homepage.
  1. Name the checklist (e.g. Requirements).
  2. Add a description (e.g. whether students need to check off all items in the checklist, or at least three).
  3. Select Open this checklist in a new window if you want the checklist to open in a new window at all times.
  4. Click Save. New options will appear that can be used to fill out the remainder of the checklist.

To add items to the checklist, you have to create one or multiple categories first.
Then you can place the different items under these categories, for example:

A checklist titled 'Requirements' can contain two categories: 'Reading List' and 'Assignments'. The category Reading List can consist out of three literature items that can be checked off. The category Assignments can consist out of items that must be checked off.

  • Click on New Category.
  1. Name the category.
  2. Add a description if needed.
  3. Click Save.

The categories can only be used in this checklist. For every checklist, you will have to make new categories.

  • Click on New Category to create a new category.
  • Click on New Item to create a new item. Note that each new item will automatically be linked to the first category of the list. The category can be edited when creating the item.
  1. Select the category in which you want to place the item.
  2. Name the item.
  3. Add a description in the html-editor and/or a quicklink to refer directly to a topic.
  4. Select Due Date if you want to add a deadline for this item and specify the date and time.
  5. Select Calendar if you want the deadline to appear in the students' calendar (it will automatically be added to yours as well).
  6. Click on Save (or click on Save and New to create more items). You will now navigate to the Edit Checklist page. You can create more categories and items if needed. Click on Save and Close when the checklist is finished.

Make sure students can easily find a checklist by adding it to the corresponding content item.

Edit a Checklist

  • Click on Activities in the navbar of your course.
  • Click on Checklist. 
  • Click the name of the checklist you want to edit.
  1. Change the name and description of the checklist if needed.
  2. Use Categories and Items to:
    • add new categories (New Category);
    • add new items (New Item);
    • change the order of the categories and/or the items in the checklist (Reorder).
  3. Edit existing individual categories and items by clicking on them. You can edit multiple items at the same time by selecting the desired items (or select all items by checking the box next to Categories/Items). Then click Edit. Now you can:
    • change the names of items
    • change the category they belong to
    • set due dates
    • change due dates
    • indicate whether the due dates should or should not appear in the calendar
  4. Delete items and categories by selecting them and then clicking Delete.
  5. Click on Save and Close to save your changes and return to the checklist homepage.

Satisfied with your checklist? Click on the fold-out arrow next to it and then click Preview in a new window to preview the checklist as a student. The checklist will open in a pop-up window (see below for a preview of the example checklist Reading List).

Release Conditions

Release conditions determine when students will get access to the checklist. See the article on Release Conditions to learn more on the use of this functionality. 

  • Click on Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click on Checklist. 
  • Click New Checklist or click on the arrow next to the desired checklist for the drop down option Edit.
  1. Click on Restrictions (second tab).
  2. Click on Attach Existing to link existing release conditions or click on Create and Attach to create a new release condition.
  3. If you have linked multiple release conditions to the checklist, you can choose whether students have to meet all (All conditions must be met) or one (Any condition must be met) of the release conditions before the checklist becomes available for them.
  4. You can see which release conditions have been connected and you can delete these by clicking on the arrow. 
  5. Click on Save and Close to add the release conditions and to return to the checklist homepage.
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