[Modules] Customizable Checklists to Add to Modules

This is a feature that I was expecting to find in Canvas because I have used it in D2L Brightspace. A checklist is something that is added to a module and created by the instructor. Here's an article about it in D2L and here's a video tutorial

 

Functionality

The checklist would be interactive in that students could "check" the boxes of tasks that they've completed as they work through a module or project or course. Those selections are kept so when students return to that page minutes or weeks later, they can still see which items were checked and which weren't.

For example, I often would create weekly checklists that included a list of the assigned readings/videos as well as the assessments/activities for the week. They could come to the checklist as often as they wish to keep track in a quick summary view of what they had and hadn't done so far that week.

The data in terms of what was checked/unchecked was never integrated with the grading system. Checklists were strictly to help students stay organized. 

 

Rationale

The biggest reason for adding this feature is that it's helpful for students. It is also aligned with Universal Design for Learning in that it supports differences in executive functioning, project management skills, etc. It is especially beneficial for students with learning disabilities and/or processing disorders. For students who don't need or want this feature, it doesn't add any extra work or responsibility since it isn't graded in any way. A benefit to many and a harm to none.

47 Comments
degensp28
Community Participant

@Steven_S I am Happy to provide the background. I'm a cheat. A fraud. A plagiarize. This is not my idea.

The post I made to start all of this is a copy/paste from and idea that has since been moved to a place I can no longer see. I believe the materials I stole were originally posted by @callinger, but the information I tracked down has her by another name. It looks like that might be callinger's real name, and I don't want to accidentally dox anyone.

I mentioned that I can no longer see the original. It took some digging to find that out, but the link to that post is here: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11726 

If anyone else is able to see those posts, I would want to note that the reason I recreated this idea here is because the moderators there told us that would be our best course of action.

callinger
Community Participant

Thanks for the clarification, @Steven_S  and @degensp28 ! I'm not offended, just confused. I must admit that my frustration level with the UI changes to these types of pages has gotten really high --and it's not just the idea conversations section.

I went back through some of the feature requests that I had up-voted in the past (before the change from votes to ratings) and found that I had to re-submit all of them. And they all had just a handful of ratings when I know they had more than that in the upvote system. I haven't discovered a view that shows the old counts. I also hadn't realized that my name changed in the system, but I found where in my settings I could change that back, so thanks for the heads up, degensp28.

When I saw this request title and saw that I didn't have a registered vote for it, I went searching for the one I made, thinking that there was a duplication and that the requests could be combined, but I couldn't find mine. Then I read this one more carefully and realized that this was mine but had been re-posted. (That link that you gave, degensp28, gets me an Access Denied page.)

Anyway, I'm glad that the idea/request was re-created in this new system, but it would have been great if I could have received some kind of notification that it was going away to begin with. I don't mean to take my frustrations out on the community -- I need to find a better channel for feedback to get to Canvas.

And apparently, I need to reach out to my faculty for whom I made this request (and to whom I have forwarded other requests) to recommend that they return to give it a rating since their upvote seems to have disappeared. <sigh>

callinger
Community Participant

UPDATE! I figured out how to see the up-votes. You can see it in a results list, just not when you have the actual idea conversation open. For example, Differentiated Pages  has 280 up-votes visible from a results list, but only 9 ratings.

differentiated pages request.JPG

yarnelll
Community Explorer

I strongly support this request. Some students would find it very helpful to be able to check off on one page several steps of an assignment. I'd love it if this could become an assignment type--a list of steps you could require students to check off as they did them on the way to a longer assignment. It would be good for self-reflection and also feedback for the instructor.

 

kdburke
Community Explorer

This would be wonderful.

kylecage0
Community Explorer

This would be super helpful to our students! I've tried all kinds of workarounds like the module requirements or creating quizzes/surveys but it's not the same as what Moodle and Brightspace provide. Essentially we would just like a progress tracker for students. Here's an example of one from Moodle

 

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Added to Theme