Schoology

This is hands-down my go-to LMS for education. Having used a variety of LMS programs out there, and having come from some such as Google Classroom, and 3DGameLab, Schoology is top notch. Constantly being updated, Schoology helps transition the focus from the teacher to the student. The best features are Schoology's ability to integrate with other tools, as teachers can embed edtech tools such as Padlet, Polleverywhere, Thinglink, etc into a Schoology assignment using their LTI integration. As they continue to partner with other edtech companies, some of these then become options within their platform. I have used their integrated Conferences, Lock Down Browser, and more. The ability to transition ownership to the students, monitor their work while letting them work at their own pace is truly remarkable and a game-changer in education.

There are some things I wish were available such as the ability to share an entire folder of contents with an individual student, or to set separate completion rules/dates for assignments within a folder. Not sure why these aren't options. I also think a way to automatically award badges upon completion would really help teachers cut down on time awarding them.

The features that made choosing Schoology the most impactful was that it was free, had many controls as a course instructor and created safeguards for academic integrity. It had more controls to avoid cheating, created amazing supports for test writing (test bank, fill-in-the-blank, mix-and-match, time allotment, weighting etc.). It was very user friendly in that it created items that we used in in-person teaching and made life so much easier!

My co-teacher and I had a hard time figuring out how to prevent students from receiving their grades right after submitting their exams. I'm sure it was a matter of deep diving more, but in our scenario of first-time users, the students received their final grades after their final exam rather than giving us a few minutes to explore the stats and realize if we needed to drop questions or not.

Nothing. Don't know why the administration purchased it. It was not worth the money. Most parents we know can't find anything in there and need multiple trainings.

Too many features, too many folders, trying to find anything on there is like looking for a needle in a haystack. iI is not intuitive at all - this company needs some apple developers on their staff. Fails to facilitate the most common uses for parents and students, with a focus on easy grade reporting and ease of accessing current assignments and the instructions from the teacher. I can't find anything in here. No parents I know like this software.

Schoology seems overwhelming at first, but is pretty easy to catch on to once you start to upload material. There are plenty of user guides and how-to tips available on their website to help out as well. Schoology allows me to teach lessons virtually to my students during the pandemic.

It is a little more complicated to upload some things such as google forms to the site.