CHECKLIST: FEATURES, HOW TO BUILD IT, ADVANTAGES, AND EXAMPLES - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The checklist is a tool that mainly serves as a mechanism for reviewing the learning obtained in a classroom. It can be used to evaluate knowledge quantitatively or qualitatively, depending on the objectives that you want to meet.

The checklists were developed in order to assess the performance of work teams in some public universities. However, its use quickly spread to many other areas in the educational context, due to the simplicity of its use and the advantages it has.

Nowadays they are mainly used as an assessment instrument to observe the knowledge acquired by students throughout the course. However, the information obtained from the checklists can also be used to plan an intervention, or to improve the educational material or its application.

Checklist features

The checklists consist of a set of characteristics, learnings, qualities and aspects that students are considered to have at the end of a course. Its main function is to record whether each of these aspects has been achieved by a particular student.

Because it is only necessary to record if a competition has been acquired or not, its format tends to be very simple. Thus, most checklists have two columns: one in which each of the expected learning is described, and the other in which it is recorded whether or not it has been achieved.

In the simplest versions of the checklists, this registration is made by including a tick (✓) when learning has been achieved, and a cross (X) when it has not been achieved.

In other more complex versions, different columns can be used to differentiate the learning completed from those that have not been achieved by the student. You can even leave another space to indicate those skills that are in the process of being acquired.

Apart from this basic operation, checklists tend to have some common characteristics. Next we will see the most important ones:

They are based on objective observation

One of the main characteristics of checklists is that they must be based on verifiable data and not on the opinion of the teacher. Therefore, it is necessary to complete them with observations derived from objective tests and standardized exams as far as possible.

In the case that competencies that are not so easy to measure are being evaluated (such as the student's interpersonal skills), it would be necessary to have the opinion of at least two different teachers to try to carry out an evaluation as objective as possible.

They should be planned before teaching begins

The checklists go hand in hand with the expected learnings of a course. In this sense, once the competencies that students want to achieve are identified, creating a checklist is as simple as adding a column to indicate whether they have been achieved or not.

On the other hand, it is not possible to modify the contents of the checklists once the educational process has already begun. This avoids all kinds of biases in the evaluation of student performance by teachers.

This is not a rating

Unlike a report card in which student learning is graded by a number (typically 1 to 10), checklists only report whether or not a learning objective has been achieved. Therefore, they are much more neutral and objective than traditional ratings.

An exception are those checklists that include a column in which to indicate those learnings that are still in progress. However, even these lead to far less subjective interpretations than traditional notes.

How to make the checklist?

To develop a checklist that meets its purposes it is necessary to follow some development points.

State objective of the activity

Students should be informed of what exactly they want to achieve with the activity and what they must do to achieve the objectives.

List of criteria to evaluate

Each project will have a series of parts or contents that will have an evaluation criterion. For example: in the case of developing a science project, the idea, presentation, organization and conclusion could be evaluated. This would then be the list of criteria to evaluate.

Assign a value to each criterion to evaluate

Basically it is to add a numerical value to each criterion to make it clear which one has more weight in the project. Continuing with the previous example from the science project, if the maximum grade is a 10, the values ​​to the criteria could be:

1- Idea 30%

2- Presentation 20%

3- Organization 30%

4- Conclusion 20%

So if the teacher evaluates the idea with a 2, a 2 the presentation, a 1 the organization and a 1 the conclusion, a 6 out of 10 would be obtained in the final grade.

In the simplest checklist chaos, it can be done with a simple check column in which a check (✓) is added when the learning has been achieved, and a cross (X) when it has not been achieved.

Advantages and disadvantages

Below we will review some of the strengths and weaknesses of checklists in the context of a learning process.

Advantage

They are simple to perform

Because they are made from the list of expected learning (which teachers have to carry out anyway), checklists are one of the evaluative tools that require less effort to prepare.

On the other hand, completing them once the educational process is finished is also very quick and easy, which further increases its appeal as one of the main assessment methods to use.

They are objective

As mentioned above, checklists should yield the same results regardless of who the experts fill them out.

This is very useful in a process as inherently subjective as education, in which the opinion of teachers can condition the marks received by students.

They allow adapting the teaching process

By clearly differentiating which are the competencies that a student was expected to acquire, and putting in a single document which of these have been achieved and which have not, it is easier for the teacher to know which parts of the syllabus it is necessary to focus more on.

Thus, once the checklist is completed, the teacher can use it to change their educational approach and to reinforce the parts of the course that have become less clear.

Disadvantages

Does not reflect all types of learning well

Although objectivity is one of the strengths of checklists, it can also become one of their greatest disadvantages.

In areas that are not as easily measurable as mathematics or science, it is sometimes difficult to evaluate learning rationally.

For example, in fields such as music, social skills, or art, overly objective approaches to assessment can cause more problems than they solve.

They do not allow to put a rating

Because checklists are only based on determining whether or not certain learning objectives have been met, they fall short when deciding a student's final grade.

To achieve this it would be necessary to use other types of evaluative processes, such as exams, tests or practical work.

Example

Below you will see a real example of a checklist, taken from the Monographs page, referenced below.

References

1. "Checklists, an alternative for evaluation" in: Monographs. Retrieved on: May 27, 2018 from Monographs: monografias.com.
2. "Checklist" in: Teaching skills. Retrieved on: May 27, 2018 from Teaching skills: hadoc.azc.uam.mx.
3. "The checklist" in: ABC. Retrieved on: May 27, 2018 from ABC: abc.com.py.
4. "Checklist and assessment scale" in: Planning. Retrieved on: May 27, 2018 from Planning: educarchile.cl.
5. "Resources for self-instruction" in: Assessment for learning. Retrieved on: May 27, 2018 from Evaluation for learning: educarchile.cl.