Schoology is a similar platform to Blackboard as it also helps learners and their educators to effectively communicate information about their assignments and classroom matters. It gives access to multiple instructional tools, mobile capabilities, and real-time data for educators to use for both K-12 schools and universities.

Website: https://www.schoology.com/k-12

What Users Love About the App

“The biggest draw to Schoology is the ease of storing and sharing resources. The content management Schoology has to offer is unparalleled. I am able to create and share with a huge network of users. I like the ability to preplan and create course content in a sandbox, save it to resources, and then just push it out to my students.”

“It is easy to grade from my phone and on the go. I can communicate with my students almost instantly in many cases. I also like the built-in ability to do voice or video recording from within the LMS without a 3rd party software. I am also glad they are working to smoothly integrate 3rd party software as well.”

“I like that it is a place where I can collect all documents that students need and organize them into a clear folder. It allows students who are absent, sick, or virtual to access everything easily and not fall behind.”

“I like that all my courses are easily accessible, files/folders can be duplicated and used in each class that I select, and there are many features when posting lessons and content. Students were able to use this LMS easily after being guided through the process of using Schoology.”

“I like that Schoology is visually appealing to learners of all ages, even for our youngest students. Schoology gives you design freedom, within some structural guidelines (for continuity-sake). Schoology also integrates with many of the heavy-hitting 3rd party EdTech vendors and allows us to utilize other products within their LMS. It truly makes Schoology a “hub” for all learning without restricting us from utilizing other resources that help deepen learning for our students.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“I have personally had issues with SIS grade syncing and felt that the merger with Powerschool did not run smoothly. Due to outages when many switched to online learning, several of my coworkers reverted to Google Classroom for the remainder of the school year and I was discouraged from using it by many.”

“The UX could use some improvement and simplification, especially on the student end. Sometimes submission can take many clicks if it is from a 3rd party application. Many educators feel overwhelmed because it is so powerful. Improved 3rd party integration and UX design would make this product more appealing.”

“I do not like that “assessments” do now allow for partial points (decimal). I also do not like that Schoology cannot track when students leave the program (opening new tabs on their computer). I am also not a fan of the mobile app (Apple and Android) — it has limited functionality.”

“If students aren’t using Chrome, they cannot record responses for their assignments and can only type in their answers. I found this was an issue for students who were using Apple products. Not using Chrome is the only problem I encountered.”

“Every now and then, Schoology has to “pull back” the functionality of some features while they focus their resources in making some part of this product better. It is bittersweet, though — short-term inconvenience in degraded use of some features for BETTER use for many other features in the near future.”