How Learning Works

APPENDIX G What Are Checklists and How Can We Use Them?

Checklists help instructors make their expectations for an activity or assignment explicit to students. This is often quite helpful because students do not always fully understand our expectations, and they may be guided by disciplinary or cultural conventions, or even the expectations of other instructors, that mismatch with what we expect for the current activity or assignment. In addition, checklists raise students’ awareness of the required elements of complex tasks and thus can help students develop a more complete appreciation for the steps involved in effectively completing a given assignment.

Checklists should be distributed to students in advance of an assignment’s due date, and ...