4. Checkboxes to track student progress

This video and the text underneath it explain what about activity completion/completion tracking and why it is useful. 

Video tutorial

Activity completion or Completion tracking are names given to the feature which allows learners to see their progress through checkboxes at the side of each activity. It is also needed to display completion percentages and activity deadlines on the dashboard.

A teacher then enables it from Edit settings in the gear menu top right. (Activity completion is turned on by default, so you probably don't have to do anything to get it started.) Each activity or resource will then have a section Activity completion where teachers can specify the conditions upon which that activity will be marked complete. These conditions vary according to the activity or resource. A page, for instance, can only be 'viewed', whereas in a forum it is possible to require a certain number of posts.

Documentation links:

Activity completion

(This  Moodle documentation link opens in a new window.)