I think that online is best done with the student (and prof) being able to track the progress of the student in the most straight-forward manner possible.
After a few days between looking at the the course page, and having forgotten where the student left off, it should be really clear to the student where exactly she is. Is she 20% done? Is there an assignment that she left because it was frustrating and wanted to come back to later? Which one?
Turning on "completion tracking" is important. Find the Moodle gear icon and scroll down, as shown here.
turn on completion tracking by going to the "gear" icon for "settings"
This opens up all kinds of options:
Course completion options
And now you can set the completion setting in individual activities (like regular assignments or H5P activities)
completion tracking for a particular activity can be turned on and modified.
For a gradable activity, this kind of setting is good:
complete upon a grade
But maybe you just want the student to view something...
check to see that a student has downloaded or viewed a document
a student clicks here to check to see their progress.
how can the student find out more about tracking? Right here.
and that means there are check boxes throughout where it counts...
check boxes provide information about what is complete to the students.
And the instructor can use the "add a block" to add more information to the Moodle page about overall course material progress.
instructor can add more completion summaries to the main page
and so the student can see, with the "Completion Progress" option:
The interactive "completion progress" option for students to see (and click on) what they're missing.
while the "course completion status" appears to add a link for the instructor....
instructor view of course completion for multiple students.
...to be able to view summaries with all the students in it, like this:
summarize completion for different students (instructor view)
James Andrew Smith is an associate professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department in York University's Lassonde School. He lives in Toronto, Canada. While on sabbatical in 2018-19 with his wife and kids he lived in Strasbourg, France and taught at the INSA Strasbourg and Hochschule Karlsruhe and wrote about his personal and professional perspectives. You can find him on Twitter.