As you navigate your course, proceeding through the topical learning activities, you will notice little boxes on the right side of each item. Some of these boxes are solid lines, which indicate required activities (); the others are dotted and optional (). Required activities have their completion status set to automatically fill in.  A box that has been ticked indicates that you have clicked on the item and have viewed its content. You can also manually tick the boxes for those optional items.

Students can view their activity completion statuses in a box on the left side of the page: 

Students can use this to keep track of their progress throughout the course. This is also visible to instructors and course administrators, who can monitor the class's progression and make adjustments where and as necessary.