Checklists for Education

In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawandi (surgeon, writer, and public health researcher) describes how checklists have improved safety and success in airplane flights, building construction, and medicine.  Checklists have proved useful in completing both simple tasks and also complex processes.  In this post, I describe the power of the checklist, and I brainstorm how checklists can be useful in education as well.

The Power of the Checklist

According to Gawandi, checklists help us remember simple and mundane tasks that may be easily skipped in a chaotic environment, such as during an emergency surgery.  In this sense, the checklist serves as an “external brain” – it remembers things that our tired and stressed out brains may forget.  Checklists are especially useful for “simple” processes that have a clearly established set of tasks, such as following a recipe.

“Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us — flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness.”  (Gawandi, p. 48)

But even complex environments benefit from checklists.  Gawandi describes how expert pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1935 used checklists to fly the new, complex Boeing 299 bomber plane.  He also describes how complicated construction schedules (a type of checklist) have been used to build large sport stadiums, hospitals, and shopping and condominium complexes across the country.  He also describes several instances in healthcare – including in under-staffed and under-funded hospitals – where checklists have improved patient safety and decreased operating costs.

In these complex environments, the checklist creates a process of steps that are easier to follow.  In a multi-million dollar construction project, each day has a list of activities that must be performed for the project to stay on schedule.

In some situations, the checklist also includes safety checks.  For example, in healthcare, a surgery checklist includes a “stop before proceeding” step, where the surgical team stops before a major step (such as the first incision) to verify that everyone in the operating team is ready, that they have the correct patient, that they are about to perform the correct surgery (on the correct body part), and that all necessary materials are ready.

Some of the safety checks are designed to resolve problems that cannot be solved with a checklist.  As Gawandi explains, a checklist cannot predict all of the problems that may occur in a major construction project, but it can provide a scheduled meeting time for discussion to resolve the problems.

Overall, checklists are useful in the following ways:

• Instructions – Checklists provide instructions that novices and experts can follow and increase their skill level.
• Verification – Checklists make you review your work, and this provides quality assurance to help you verify that you are doing the work accurately.  As Gawandi explains, experts often forget to perform simple mundane tasks because they are taken for granted and because the mind is focusing on the more complex, challenging tasks.  The checklist helps bring mindfulness to simple, routine activities that are critical but easily overlooked.
• Problem Solving – In complex situations where there are no clear action steps, the checklist can include a scheduled meeting time to discuss problems and create solutions.  In this case, the checklist is not providing a sequence of best action steps; instead, it provides an opportunity for discussion that may otherwise not happen.

Checklists in Education

Gawandi’s book has inspired me to think about how the checklist can be incorporated (or is already incorporated) into higher education as a quality assurance method to promote operational effectiveness and student success.

Checklists are already incorporated into student services.  For example, when prospective students consider applying for a college, they see a list of application requirements – online application, FAFSA, letters of recommendation, SAT or ACT scores, application essay, application fee, etc.  These application requirements serve as a checklist of what must be done to gain admission into a college.  Other checklists provide students with information about campus housing, scholarships, student loans, orientation, technology and email setup, and more.

Checklists are also used within administrative offices.  Just as students have checklists of admission requirements, so do admissions officers.  They use checklists to verify that interested students have submitted all of the required materials.  They also use checklists to verify that students meet admission and scholarship standards such as GPA and SAT scores.

In other areas, IT staff use checklists (or at least a list of steps) to install and update hardware and software, to create new student and employee accounts, and to process specific tasks such as run data reports.  On the academic side, professors and academic administrators use checklists (often a form or a sequence of steps described in a policy) to develop new courses and academic programs.  Often, these checklists include steps such as completing a “new program form,” developing syllabi for all new courses, developing a curriculum map, developing an assessment plan, performing a market study, and obtaining approvals (signatures) from deans and academic committees.

Checklists for Teaching

Beyond using checklists for office and administrative operations, I wonder how useful checklists can be for teaching.

On the technology side, instructors can use checklists (or at least a set of instructions) to setup course content and assignments on the online platform.  There are also semester-start checklists (or at least reminders) about submitting copies of the syllabus to the academic office, opening or publishing the online class, signing the annual contract, posting office hours, and verifying first-day and 10-day student attendance.

Students also have checklists for assignments and projects.  They often come in the form of assignment requirements, and they provide information about what should be included in the project (such as a thesis statement, 3-5 scholarly sources, accurate writing) and how the assignment should be formatted (such as 1-inch margins using APA or MLA format).  Instructors also use checklists for grading.  Assignment rubrics often contain the same components as the assignment requirements, and instructors use this list to check a student’s assignment.  These checks include a thesis statement, supporting evidence, proper documentation, accurate writing, and so on.

What about preparing for a class session?  Do instructors use a checklist to prepare lesson plans and lectures?  There may be too much variability between subjects and classrooms to create a checklist that could be used by everyone.  But Gawandi explains that checklists are often most useful when participants make their own checklists; they both include the necessary components that will be used, and they create greater commitment.

As an instructor, I made a list of topics I wanted to include in my lecture, and I often put these on a PowerPoint presentation or in a notebook so I could write on the board.  During the class session, I also performed many of the same tasks even though the content of the lecture was different each day.  Specifically, in most class sessions, I did the following:

• went to the classroom a little early to talk with students and prepare my materials (login to the computer, pull up the PowerPoint, etc.)
• took attendance
• collected homework assignments and answered questions about the homework
• reviewed the lesson from the previous class session
• gave a lecture
• conducted a class discussion or assigned an in-class activity
• summarized the discussion or the activity
• assigned homework

When creating a lecture, I also followed these steps:

• assigned the reading material (by listing it on the syllabus, reminding students about the reading assignment during class, attaching links to the article or distributing paper copies)
• provided a few introductory comments about the topic or reading assignment in a previous class session
• re-read the material
• created an outline of the content by identifying the overall idea and at least five major talking points
• wrote all necessary definitions and concepts and created clear explanations for each one
• identified real-world examples of each concept
• added all of this to a PowerPoint
• created an in-class activity that could give students an opportunity to apply these concepts
• etc…

While, admittedly, I did not use a formal checklist to do this work, I eventually developed a reliable process that worked for me.  Now, as an administrator and faculty developer, I share this list with new faculty who don’t have any experience creating class lectures.  When I do so, I don’t suggest that my process is the best way to prepare a lecture, but I do offer it as a basic strategy beginning instructors can start with and modify as needed.

Feedback:  Do you use checklists either in education or in another professional field?  For which processes do you use checklists?  Why do you use them – reminder of action steps, quality assurance, promote mindfulness and attention?  Have you noticed better results with checklists than without them?  Do you wish you had a checklist for a project you completed without one?  If you could provide someone else a checklist to help them, what steps would it include?  Add a comment below or send me a personal message.

Lirim Neziroski, Ph.D., MBA is an academic administrator and faculty member with expertise in curriculum development, assessment, academic technology, and strategic planning.  Contact Lirim for resources and for speaking, consulting, and writing opportunities.