How to Track User Progress in an Online Course with a Checklist

Tutorial 1: How To Add Checklists to A Page

This is a basic tutorial to show you how the checklists work – and how you can easily add them to any WordPress post or page with the shortcode adder.

ProgressAlly objective lists

Front-end example (checklist the user sees)

Step 1: Edit the page

To set this up in ProgressAlly, go to the page where you’d like to add the checklist items. This is located under Pages > All Pages and can be opened by clicking on the ‘edit’ link.

You can also edit pages from your Offerings content area.

Step 2: Add objectives to the page

Add new objectives to the page by scrolling to the ProgressAlly Page Settings area and selecting the ‘Objectives’ tab.

Back-end example (what the site admin sees)

There are 8 types of objectives:

• Text: Checkboxes that can be completed by the member.
• Media: To add media that has been placed in the Media tab.
• Quiz: To complete the objective automatically when a quiz has been completed.
• Page / Post: To complete the objective automatically when another page or post’s objectives have been completed.
• Note: To complete the objective automatically when a note has been added and filled in by the member.
• Download Protected Content: To complete the objective automatically when designated material have been downloaded.
• Download Certificate: To complete the objective automatically when a certificate is downloaded. See ProgressAlly Interaction for details.
• Offering: This type of objective automatically tracks all pages under an offering. It will show up as a list of all the pages with objectives. Each page objective can only be checked off when that page is completed. See How to Track Course Progress to find out more!

Step 3: Add the objectives shortcode to the editor

The objective list can be placed on the page by using the AccessAlly shortcode generator or by using the AccessAlly shortcode icon in the editor and selecting the option ‘Objective List’.

Example of objective list shortcode

Tutorial 2: How to Add Partial Objectives to a Page

By default, if you have an objective list, all included items will be shown on it. However, it is possible to separate the items so that each of them appears in a different area on the page.

This will show you how to create a partial objective checklist.

Step 1: Use the shortcode generator

Select the ‘Objective List’ option and check on the ‘Do NOT show all objectives and only show the selected one(s).’ checkbox.

Step 2: Select objective(s)

Check each objective you would like to display in your list.

Shortcode example:
[progressally_objectives objective_id="2,3"]

Tutorial 3: How to Track Progress Across Multiple Pages

Do you want to track progress across several lessons in an online course?  Here’s how to do that.

Step 1: Add an Offering objective or individual page/post objectives

The easiest way to track progress for an entire course is to use the Offering objective type. This will automatically add and remove new pages that get added to your Offerings, so your progress tracking stays accurate as your courses evolve.

If you only want to track specific pages, you could choose these individually using the Page/Post objective type instead. This is more of a legacy feature, since the whole Offering tracking is the least error-prone and easiest to set up.

Step 2: Add the objectives shortcode to the editor

The objective list can be placed on the page by using the AccessAlly shortcode generator or by using the AccessAlly shortcode icon in the editor and selecting the option ‘Objective List’.

Example of objective list shortcode

Step 3 (optional): Add links on objectives to point to module pages

If you’d like to add links to each objective in the list, you can alter the link description to add an HTML link the following way:

HTML Example:
<a href="#">Complete Day 1</a>

The # sign needs to be replaced by the URL of the module page.