Schoology most definitely
February 25, 2016
Schoology most definitely
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Schoology
I work at a regional education service center (RESC). We are a not-for-profit organization that provides services, consulting and professional development to schools and organizations. We also manage a system of public magnet schools. Our students and faculty - as well as administrators and parents - use Schoology to communicate, provide instruction and assess learning. School administrators and other employees at our RESC regularly use Schoology to manage projects and serve as a repository of resources and communication - this works well for committees and smaller departments. When trainers and specialists deliver professional development, we regularly enroll participants in a Schoology course to facilitate communication and share resources. This has replaced paper printouts in most of our trainings.
- Schoology does a great job of managing communication - organizing classroom materials and workflows... that is, students and parents know where to get information for their courses. They have a place to turn in work (even when the work is completed in other productivity platforms like Office 365 or Google Apps). Students and parents have a regular place to see feedback from teachers on submitted work or in-class performance.
- Schoology is a very flexible tool that can be "hacked" to serve several purposes beyond just learning management.
- Schoology's enterprise customer support and free community groups are very responsive and helpful. In an odd way, I feel like their customer service is happy to hear about any bugs or service disruptions. They respond quickly and work to resolve issues. Schoology's community is managed to be informative and inviting. I often "pay things forward" by answering questions of new users because I felt so welcomed when I first started using the platform.
- Schoology's design language / user experience is on the whole very clean and intuitive... "it just works, and makes sense." It's easy to teach and this leads to high / quick adoption rates.
- I don't personally use their mobile app that much, but I've gotten lots of feedback from teachers (and second hand from their students) that they really like the mobile app.
- Schoology as a company is very responsive... beyond their community and customer support they do a good job of messaging their road map for new features. They do a good job of listening to user feedback about new features and adjustments to existing ones.
- While they currently have integration with Google Apps, drive, calendar, etc., tighter integration would be great. 2 specific examples would be 2-way syncing between Google and Schoology calendars. Additionally their Google Drive integration through the resource app desperately needs a search / sort / filter option.
- There needs to be a way to aggregate student data / performance. Data visualization and analytics need to be available at the teacher, course, department, building and district levels.
- A way for students to self assess or peer assess assignments, discussions and assessments would be great.
- ROI is often a fuzzy concept in schools, but it definitely allows our teacher, parents and students to communicate in a way they expect in the 21st century.
Schoology is generally more fully featured than Google Classroom and Edmodo. Schoology has a better UX than Canvas. Platforms like Moodle, Haiku, and Hapara lack features and feel especially clunky in design and look.