Schoology: Flexibility & Functionality in Learning Management System
February 24, 2016
Schoology: Flexibility & Functionality in Learning Management System
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Schoology
Currently, Schoology is being used across our K-12 school district at all grade levels, and it is also the means by which we provide professional development in our district. For us, Schoology solved the problem of having a learning management system that was easy to use, simple to navigate, and accessible on various devices. In addition, it provided digital collaborative spaces where school and district teams could work together.
- Schoology is extremely easy to use, and I think that's been the most common sentiment we've heard from our district users. We've had other learning management systems in the past, and we just couldn't get a wide level of adoption. The comfortable interface has appealed to diverse learners and needs.
- Another strength Schoology has is its parent component. It is very important to us to have parent involvement in learning, both in face-to-face environments and digital learning environments. We have been able to involve parents in their child's learning in ways we never had been able to before.
- Schoology's option of Groups in addition to Courses is another strength of the platform. We have internal teams, professional learning communities, parent groups, and student activity or sports groups who have been able to communicate and collaborate outside of a course structure. This has been a very popular option for our district. Courses are (of course) an important component of a learning management system, but we were surprised at the way Groups have been utilized across our domain.
- Schoology's open API means that integration with existing systems is a possiblity, where other learning management systems don't necessarily have that potential. This is one area where our Information Systems Department has been very impressed and is currently working on ways to leverage the API for our needs.
- Finally, the potential for global collaboration with other Schoology users, schools, or districts is a pretty amazing feature. Not only can we share content in a Public Resources area, but we can also collaborate using public groups or private groups/courses outside of our district. We hope to see even more collaboration between our students/teachers and other students from different cultures and countries as we move forward.
- One area we'd like to see better functionality is with existing calendaring. The calendars that are built into courses and groups work well for assignments and events specific to those areas, but we also have district and school calendars that we'd like to import and use within the system. While you can import an existing calendar, it is a one-time import and not a live calendar feed. We can't use Schoology for some of our district events, but it would be nice if we could subscribe to them to at least have them visible in both systems (especially for districts using Google Calendar).
- The ability to connect to Google Drive is important, but it could work better in Schoology. There is no search mechanism, and while it will bring up recently edited or created items in Google Drive, it would be much more efficient to provide search functionality when attaching Google files to items in Schoology.
- The final thing I'd like to see is peer editing. My understanding is that this is on the road map, but we would like our students to have an opportunity to give peer feedback on assignments, if it's instructionally appropriate.
- We expected a certain level of adoption when first implemented, and it has far exceeded our expectations. We are in our third year of using Schoology, and we more than doubled our district-wide usage from year 1 to year 2.
We did our initial evaluation in the fall of 2012 - spring 2013. At that time, Schoology had the most features that we identified as either tier 1 or tier 2 needs for our district. Also, the support from Schoology has been fantastic. They truly listen to their users and are very responsive to needs and requests. Before we even signed with them, they consulted our district math coordinator on improving the equation editor inside of their rich text editing window. We felt like they went above & beyond in helping us be successful in our adoption & implementation.