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Manage Content | How to use the Checklist tool in Brightspace

A checklist is a list of actions that require completion. Creating a checklist is a great way to highlight important aspects of the course. Students can use this as a visual guideline to determine their needs to complete the course.

When students need to finish specific tasks which cannot be linked to Brightspace activities, or tasks that are not to be submitted and/or graded, checklists can be used. This will allow the creation of an easy overview of tasks that need to be performed before continuing; and that can also have release conditions based on them.

This manual will show you:

Why to use a Checklist

The Checklist tool allows instructors to make use of an organizational tool to improve effectiveness of groups and individuals performing complex tasks.  Instructors can create checklists that:

  • Account for tasks to be completed in a particular order.
  • Allow for review of completed course content.
  • Allow for assignment-based checklists to ensure that the appropriate items are covered in the assignment.
  • Allow for a method of assessment by evaluating and assessing with checklists.

You can create a checklist that lists the activities users should complete throughout the course. For example, a checklist for the first week might include reading the course’s introductory content, posting a message to an introductory discussion topic, and submitting a list of learning goals to a dropbox folder. You can set release conditions based on users checking off items from their checklist. For example, you might release a news item on your course’s homepage once users check off that they have completed the first week’s activities.

(Source: D2L)

What tools interact with Checklist?

Many tools in Brightspace interact with the Checklist tool. Some of the most common are:

Checklist - interaction with other tools

(Source: D2L)

An example of a checklist and how it can be used

In this example (picture below) a Checklist was used for Food Law (LAW22806). Students often had to read different materials from different sources, only some of which were in Brightspace. To prevent a long list of separate items, checklists were created for each lecture that would list all the different actions for a student. This could be to read a chapter from a handbook, browse through a piece of legislation, or read (parts of) case law. Materials that were available online were immediately linked.

An example of a checklist and how it can be used - example 1

In addition to the lectures, a checklist was also created to aid students in preparing for the exam: listing all the parts of the course that could be part of the final exam, and to which degree. As the course had an open book exam, some parts required students to only know where to find specific topics in the reader (browse through), and which part they really needed to know in detail (read). Here again the parts that were available online are immediately linked.

An example of a checklist and how it can be used - example 2

In the video below you can see a teaching tips from D2L on how to itemize Assignments using Checklists:

You now know about the Checklist tool in Brightspace!