Schoology Erfahrungen

Vorteile

Schoology is academia's answer for engaging with today's social media obsessed generation of students.

Nachteile

I can virtually ALWAYS come up with something that I didn't like, Schoology however is one of those few exceptions. For the sake of entering a "con" however, I will say the one lacking feature I did wish users had would be an option to switch from the blaring white to a dark mode type theme. Helpful for battery life when using mobile devices and also more conducive for night-time study and eye health. After all, many students are working while studying, leaving night time as their only option to get their classwork done.

Vorteile

Ease of use. Student portal works cleanly. Ease to move from one class to another. Lots of choices for adding different types of questions to assessments. Easy to organize.

Nachteile

It would be nice to have more options for displaying content. We have found some work-arounds in adding a few variations to the straightforward listing style, but it isn’t easy. It would be nice to be able to add some flair.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Schoology gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Schoology

Vorteile

This allows me to keep grades for all of my students easily. Schoology gives educators the ability to create assignments that automatically grade student responses. One great benefit of using Schoology is that it allows students and parents to stay current on overall grades.

Nachteile

It takes a bit to get used to using Schoology. But after a few days of messing around on the website, you can easily use the program.

Vorteile

It's better than nothing. I have never used another complete LMS, but there HAS to be a better one when based on the gradebook, which is what teachers use the most. I also work with teachers who say they've used Canvas and it's much better. Previous to this, I used EasyGradePro and Illuminate, both of which had gradebooks that were far more customizable. I am literally writing this right now because, in my 5.5 years of being forced by my district to use this LMS, not ONCE am I aware of any teachers being asked for product feedback--and only a couple times have any noticeable improvements been made. I find this intensely frustrating, as I have a long list of improvements that should be made and nowhere to share them. I arrived here, not at the product's website, after Googling "Schoology+feedback" And so I will post them here in their entirety in hopes that Schoology designers might actually care one day.

Nachteile

--NO SEATING CHART--should allow teachers to save pre-set comments in Resources to save time--teacher should be able to set a default to show comments to student instead of having to click the box every time they want the student to see the comment--comments should be dated--system should be able to mark empty cells missing automatically once due date has passed (regardless of grading status)--when student submits an assignment, missing mark should disappear--missing mark value should be customizable (not always zero)--”Mark empty cells missing” should be accompanied should be accompanied by the option of “except ones with submissions”--submissions should be time stamped--should have the ability to sort assignments in order of date of late submission--score for quiz needs to update automatically if student takes it late--should be able to sort students by who has most ungraded submissions--Bulk Edit should allow you to change the lock date--I should be able to type in a LAST name to send a message--Teacher should be able to merge rosters so that students on different rosters (i.e. SpEd) can respond to same discussion topic instead of having separate boards--Copy Rubrics should not make endless duplicates; should notify when they are duplicates --read receipts for messages--in Mastery tab, should be able to display assignments by alpha order, number order, etc.

Vorteile

Schoology was used when we transitioned from face-to-face to online classes. At first, since I was a first-time user, I thought it would be so hard to navigate since I am not tech-savvy. I also thought it would be so intimidating and complicated, but it proved me wrong. It was indeed beginner-friendly and very easy to use for students and even professors.

Nachteile

I have honestly nothing against Schoology because it was one of the biggest help I had when I transitioned from face-to-face classes to online classes.

Vorteile

Excellent sync with our self-hosted powerschool server, once all was setup. Uptime is excellent. Communication when there IS downtime is also excellent. Ability to implement additional features via plugins/other services [such as NoRedInk] is good.Teachers are using the product pretty well [ granted, it is a requirement on our campus, but they are going beyond the bare minimum.]Support is excellent.

Nachteile

Schoology's GUI is dated - it hearkens back to the 90's and MSFT Access.The admin team SORELY misses the ability to "masquerade" as a teacher - we used to be able to login as a teach admin, masquerade as a teacher, and quickly fix implementation and setup errors that the teacher had made. Under Schoology we have to get their login credentials from the teacher - not exactly an easy process.Perhaps one day that feature will be available.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Schoology gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Schoology

Vorteile

Schoology feels like a social media platform. It's easy to use and makes sense when you're using it. It has a tremendous ability to be extended with integrations with Google, Microsoft, etc. and connects well with other learning platforms that are important in K-12 settings.

Nachteile

At the enterprise level, sometimes support the can be lackluster when dealing with things such as the synchronization between Schoology and PowerSchool. On the positive side, we anticipate with PowerSchool's purchase of Schoology that this might improve over time.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Schoology gewählt wurde

Zuvor genutzte Software

Vorteile

Schoology has a lot of features that are conducive to a high-fuctioning online learning program. Many things can be done within the program, such as connecting outside links, videos, and materials.

Nachteile

I have not be able to copy assignments from one course to another that include Google Docs. If I copy this type of an assignment, the Google Doc copy does not attach. I have to personally go into every class and reattach the assignment.

Vorteile

One of the strengths of Schoolology is how easy it is to use. The user interface is intuitive.

Nachteile

However, it can be tricky to combine various platforms. Google Classroom allows multiple activities with one account, but Schoolology has limits.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Schoology gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Schoology

Vorteile

This is the best possible LMS that I have found out there-has several features. Organized folders, quiz giving ability and integration with ExamView, discussions, and district wide setup ability.

Nachteile

It is very spendy if you want to implement it into your school-hard to justify when Google Classroom is free. I wish the integration with google was more seemless, and the lockdown browser option was free for quizzes/tests.

Vorteile

•Ease of use - Most teachers, students, and parents learn to navigate the LMS pretty easily.

•Many levels of use - Teachers can begin using the LMS at a simple, basic level with great success, and then progress to use more advanced features that enrich the educational experience of their students. I love incorporating online discussions and media albums in my classes.

•Anywhere, anytime - Teachers can set up their daily classes in Schoology, embedding images, media, discussions, quizzes, and more. This lends itself to all types of teaching experiences from whole class to small group to individual assignments. Assignments can actually be assigned to small groups or individual students, and these will not populate the Schoology feeds of other students. The Schoology course can be used to facilitate the classroom experience, but also allows student access to classroom content 24/7.

•Great integration with G Suite - Schoology plays very well with all things Google. I love the Google Drive Assignments app, which organizes my students’ assignments so beautifully.

Nachteile

•Cannot create recurring calendar events.
•Badges are only visible on Profile Page. I wish they were more visible on all pages, like they are in Khan Academy. Badges are also not visible on the iOS platform.
•I wish assignments had both “assigned on” dates, as well as “due dates.”

Vorteile

Schoology is packed with features that let educators customize their courses and content to meet the specific learning needs of various populations of students. The user interface is fresh, simple, and easy to navigate. Many popular external applications are already integrated and available to use within the Schoology platform and sync effortlessly with the gradebook. For me personally, I really appreciate the way I can build customized, authentic, and engaging assessments from their wide assortment of question types. Schoology also has a badge rewards system where teachers can reward students for accomplishing certain tasks. Schoology simply is super customizable with a ton of features that other LMS don't offer.

Nachteile

As a user of many learning management systems over the past decade, there is no area where I feel Schoology is lacking in. It is the best for what it does.

Vorteile

Before I transitioned out of teaching, I used Schoology quite a bit as a teacher. Schoology made it easy and convenient to engage students in the classroom. You could post informational resources for them such as notes and websites, or create more interactive lessons with embedded youTube or other videos and they can be set up so students can do scavenger hunt type things on the computer. They also can be used for assessments to see if students learned the material they were supposed to, as an exit ticket, or a way to review information at home. These assessments could then be loaded directly into e-school for student grades.

Nachteile

One thing I found difficult was sometimes setting up answers to questions especially if I wanted a more free response type of question, although they do offer ways to grade on a rubric as well. Sadly in the day and age of inflating grades there was also no way to grade on a curve, which meant that even though grades could be directly loaded into e-school, administrators desired you to then have to go back into e-school to inflate student grades. All in all they seemed to be keen to adding new features that made things easier for teachers. They also had two different kinds of assessments, one of which I found not nearly as friendly as the other to use.

Vorteile

What I like most about Schoology is the ability to integrate multiple external tools within a Schoology course--you can embed videos, apps, and other tools directly within Schoology, which allows students a single point of access for all of the learning tools they'll need for a given lesson. For example, you can easily embed a FlipGrid, Padlet, or EdPuzzle directly into Schoology--this has been a great benefit to teachers and students.

Nachteile

There are a few small issues that we have a Schoology users--the most notable is the inability to force-submit quizzes and tests on behalf of students who forget to submit their assessments. This makes it impossible for the teacher to grade a students work without having the student go in an press the submit button. Additionally, the inability of teachers to rotate pages in document submissions (i.e. the student uploads a document horizontally, but it needs to be read vertically) adds additional difficulties for teachers as they grade. Finally, the fact that when a student uploads multiple pages to an assignment, Schoology displays them in size order instead of in the order they are uploaded increases difficulty for teachers when it comes to grading because often an assignment is not in the correct order.

Vorteile

I haven't collected a piece of paper in 3 years. It grades many things for me and I can get feedback on how my students are doing. I continue to have access to everything in a course even after it has ended. Schoology is incredibly helpful in fixing problems, and asking for feedback. It merges seamlessly with my school's grade book program. It has allowed me to turn my traditional classroom into a flipped-mastery classroom that use standards based grading. Differentiating instruction and assignments is easy with this program.

Nachteile

There are still things I wish it could do that it can't... yet. They are still working on those things.

Vorteile

Schoology's greatest asset is its ease of use. When my institution adopted Schoology as the LMS (to replace a previous, more complicated LMS), we saw a 2/3 increase in active users, effectively transforming our classrooms. Schoology excels at communication (to your entire course, co-workers, or individual students) compared to other learning management systems. Additionally, schoology is an LMS visibly built around a learning centered classroom, unlike the obvious content-centered approach favored by prominent, older learning management systems.

Nachteile

Schoology's ease of use does mean some loss of complicated features. At first glance, schoology has a smaller feature set than some LMS's. However, if you are willing to be creative, the platform engages very cleanly with third party tools to accomplish any functionality that may have been lost.

Vorteile

As a vendor, Schoology is top notch. I feel like the crew there is an extension of my immediate work group. Everyone at Support, our Account Manager, and especially their PD team are friendly and professional. I follow many of them on Twitter and we share ideas and thoughts on the product. I'm thankful for their responsiveness and their authenticity about not being able to do everything at all times, but to hear all concerns and appropriately triage them for the product's future.

The product is very clean and straightforward. I am a system administrator for our institution, so I am always poking around in the nitty gritty. I may be the sole user at our institution that uses as many aspects of Schoology as I do. From course level settings, to groups, to system wide, I am all over the product and I heartily give my approval. I can navigate through the product with ease and can easily lead others in doing the same. I support our faculty and students on using the product, so it's great to know when I point them to a feature that it will always look and operate the same. I might say that is the BEST part of the product: the uniformity. We previously used Moodle, and our setup was not uniform. Thankfully, Schoology is.

Nachteile

The product is young and still catered towards the K12 environment. The language, the features, and the community of users are primarily K12. While that's not a big deal, it can often make community events or new features irrelevant to the higher ed environment.
The only other downside is that there are not many settings for students with special needs. It is often clunky to create workarounds to accommodate students who need more time in quizzes or struggle to access media content.

Vorteile

Schoology is a turn-key solution for any school, college, university looking to deploy blended/hybrid learning or develop online courses. Schoology allows for increased communication, collaboration, and connectedness among your class, content, and students. It is extremely easy to use, set up, and navigate for both instructors and students. Its integration with both Google and Microsoft365 increase the efficiency of assignment collection and grading than ever possible in a class without a Learning Management System. Schoology also provides a free version of their platform for teachers who may not be within an organization able to fund the full Enterprise version.

Nachteile

Schoology needs to devote more of its engineers to expanding the platforms LTI integrations and UI to surpass its competitors.

Vorteile

I cannot stress how incredible this software is. It looks a bit like Facebook, which makes it both familiar and easy to use, the user-interface is a huge reason why my company uses Schoology. Schoology interfaces with Google, allowing embed of my google files so that it will automatically update in Schoology if I update an assignment sheet and/or calendar. Students can also upload assignments from their Google Drive. In fact, the interfacing means you can grade, view, and comment on all assignments in Google Drive. It's incredibly easy to use in the classroom setting and I have had student parents thank me for their children's learning progress because of this software.

Nachteile

The thing I like least about Schoology is that while it has great Google interfacing, there's a lack of some other platforms that could be useful for people who might need that kind of feature. It's not a problem for me and my company.

Vorteile

*User Functionality - easy for teachers and students to use!
*Consistency of Updates from Schoology - they are constantly improving the platform whether it be with new app integration or ease of use in design.
*Support - Their support team is amazing, and client services are impeccable.
* Number of Apps that integrate is growing all the time!
*Google Assignment App stepped up the overall experience and use for Teachers.
* Assessment update changed the game - appeals to all different subject areas.

Nachteile

Honestly none because any issue that has existed Schoology has responded with an update if there was enough need for a change! That is one of their greatest strengths as a company.

Vorteile

I loved being able to assign and see student progress. We also had the option of deciding what needed to be teacher graded. My favorite feature of all was that it automatically integrated and synced with PowerSchool.

Nachteile

It took some time to get used to adding standards and just using it, but after that I don’t feel like there was anything negative.

Vorteile

Schoology is a robust yet flexible tool that helps teachers provide content, instruction and feedback to students and families. It is highly customizable and allows teachers to integrate most any other digital tool to meet the diverse needs of learners. Schoology can be used in basic to deeply developed ways. One of my favorite features is the ability to save and build content and items from course to course. You are able to save time and build stronger learning experiences as your skills and created items grow.

Nachteile

The biggest challenge with Schoology is the shear volume of customizable features and functions. The basics are relatively easy to learn, but it does take time to play and learn the full capabilities this product has to offer.

Vorteile

I love the addition of the discussion board feature. Requiring students to post prior to seeing other students' post makes it easier to ensure they are not summarizing/rewording someone else's post. This was something that several teachers at my school requested and Schoology was very quick to implement it.

Nachteile

I really have nothing negative to say about the software. Many teachers at our school had a real problem with handing over a copy of our drivers licenses to a company when we already had a full background check with our school during the hiring process. It felt like a violation of privacy.

Vorteile

I use Schoology on a daily basis. I am a big fan. I love everything that it has to offer. I assign all homework assignments through Schoology and expect my students to submit their assignments through Schoology. It's very easy to upload an assignment and to go through the submitted assignments. I also appreciate the Resources tab, which allows to to upload files, links, and more, making it easy for me to pull up materials I need to use in class.

Nachteile

I really like this software and it has made my life much easier as a teacher. The only function I wish it had would be the ability to schedule publishing of an assignment. Right now I have to manually publish an assignment when I want it to appear to my students.

Vorteile

This platform has been a savior in the current remote learning context we are in with this extended closure due to COVID 19. They've adjusted their settings, provided support and are responsive to the customer needs.

Nachteile

I wish they would make blind scoring a reality in their platform for written work! This would allow us to eliminate one other platform and it seems like something that this LMS could manage.