Creating and Managing Observation Checklists

Introduction

Learners and their managers often find it difficult to perform simple task monitoring in their working environments. Observation Checklists are an easy-to-use tool integrated in your learning platform, enabling you to observe and document how your learners and team members perform their tasks in a quick-to-configure checklist format.

You as an admin, can easily create observation checklists in multiple formats (e.g. single choice, multiple choice, drop down, and other response types) for users to complete for themselves or for managers to complete for their team members. This tool gives you an at-a-glance view of the status of users progress related to certain tasks (inside or outside of the platform) across a specified period of time and enables you to monitor users compliance with certain requirements that you may have in your everyday on-the-job processes. Checklists can be triggered by specific events (such as course completion) or can be scheduled.

Use Case Scenarios

The Observation Checklists feature opens various opportunities, such as:

• Monitoring and ensuring that users work in compliance with requirements or processes.
• Quickly checking on how users perform specific work tasks.
• Monitoring the status of user progress related to certain tasks inside or outside of the learning platform.
• Ensuring that your learners are following what they’ve learned beyond formal training.

For example, if in your company new hires are enrolled into a learning plan containing courses that teach employees how to properly use, maintain, and service your company’s products, after new hires have completed their training, it is important that they can demonstrate their knowledge in practice. To accomplish this, managers and employees work together to fill out Observation Checklists, whose completion can be tracked in the platform. When managers complete the on boarding checklist for an employee, there is a reportable record for compliance purposes, and validation that the new hire’s competency is at the desired level.

Creating an Observation Checklist

As an admin, begin by accessing the Admin Menu from the cog icon in the top right corner of your platform to create an observation checklist. Then, select the Observation Checklists (Beta) option in the E-Learning section. On the Observation Checklists (Beta) page, you can create and manage your checklists.

If you haven’t created any checklists yet, you’ll find an empty page without any checklists displayed. If you have already created one or more checklists, you’ll find them listed on the Observation Checklists (Beta) page, where you can view the checklists details, edit them, duplicate or delete the checklists.

To create a new checklist, press the plus icon (New Checklist) in the top right corner of the page. The Create New Observation Checklist right panel will open. In the Details section, insert a code, a name, and a description for your checklist. The only mandatory field is Name.

If you want to add an area for free notes at the end of each item of the checklist, select the corresponding checkbox in the Options section below. Additionally, if you want the observer (the person who fills out the checklist) to review the checklist responses in order to close it, select the acceptance review flag in the Options section. By enabling this option, at the end of the checklist, the observer will do an acceptance review of the completed checklist.

In order to close and send the checklist, the observer must select the thumbs up if he/she accepts the checklist responses, or the thumbs down if he/she doesn’t accept them.

When finished configuring the checklist properties, press Create and Edit.

To edit, duplicate or delete a checklist, click the ellipsis icon on the right side of the checklist, then select the corresponding option. When you duplicate a checklist, a new checklist is created and it will contain the same items (and group of items) and have the same configuration as the ones in the checklist you duplicated. Once you have duplicated one of your checklists, you can then edit and schedule it according to your needs. Of course, your new checklist won’t contain any schedules, so you won’t see any schedules in the Schedule column on the Observation Checklists (Beta) page. Please refer to the Scheduling and Selecting Users for a Checklist section below to learn how to schedule your checklist. Please note that you can also duplicate your duplicated checklist.

Viewing and Editing Observation Checklists’ Properties

The page that will open after having selected Create and Edit is composed of four tabs relating to your checklist: Properties, Items, Preview and Schedule. In the Properties tab, you’ll find the info that you have just inserted in the Create New Observation Checklist right panel and you are free to edit it if you need to do so.

Adding Items to an Observation Checklist

Reach the Items tab on your checklist’s page to add new groups of items and new items inside each of the groups you just created. Here, you will view the structure of your checklist. 

You can create groups of items if you want to gather them by theme, subject, or if you need to group the items of your checklist depending on when each item is checked (for example, tasks to be performed before starting an activity, tasks to be performed during the activity, and tasks to be performed after having completed it).Press the plus icon (new groups of items) to add a new group. A right panel will open, where you can configure the details of the newly created group of items. Fill in the Group Name (it is the only mandatory field) and the Description/Instructions text fields. Then, if you don’t want to show the group name in the checklist, flag the corresponding option. Otherwise, the group name is shown by default. When finished, select Create. Repeat this process to create new groups. Please note that there is not a limit to the number of groups that you can create. 

Now, press the plus icon (new item) to add a new item to the group you have created, then insert the name of the item in the Item field, and choose a response type (short answer, paragraph, single choice, multiple choice, drop down, date picker, or time picker). According  to the response type you have chosen, the corresponding response fields will appear below the item.

To edit, delete or duplicate a group of items or to delete or duplicate a single item inside of a group, click the ellipsis icon in the right part of the group section or of the item section, then select the corresponding option. You can organize the order of the items or the groups in your checklist by dragging and dropping them. To do so, hover your mouse over the item’s or the group’s row on the far left until the icon appears, then drag and drop the item or the group.

Viewing Your Observation Checklist’s Preview

In the Preview tab on your checklist’s page you will see a preview of the checklist that you as the admin created and then configured in the Properties and the Items tabs. Any changes you make (and save) in the Properties and Items tabs will be reflected in the checklist’s preview.

The preview shows the checklist as it will be viewed by the user or manager that will complete it. If you want to know in advance how your users’ experience will be, you can also complete the checklist shown in the Preview tab.

Scheduling and Selecting Users for a Checklist

On your checklist’s page, move to the Schedule tab, where you can configure and schedule the observation checklist that you are creating or manage the schedule of an existing checklist. If you haven’t scheduled the checklist yet, you’ll find an empty page without any schedules for that checklist. If you have already scheduled that checklist, you’ll find all of the schedules for that checklist in table in the Schedule tab.

To schedule your checklist, press the clock icon (schedule checklist) in the top right corner of the page. The Schedule Checklist right panel will open. This area is divided into three steps:

First Step: Select the Users to Check

In the first step, decide the users who will be checked. You as the admin can choose users assigned to a group, users associated with a branch or single users. Then, select the group(s), the branch(es) or the single user(s) from the corresponding table at the bottom of the Schedule Checklist panel. Please note that you can select up to 10 single users.