Schoology Learning vs. Teachable

Schoology does the job well enough, but there are enough areas of contention that make advanced use of the system unwieldy. District staff does not have easy reporting ability to determine adoption and use of the platform without having to export to another program for analysis. The reliability of the system is a huge pain point as we need to deliver the curriculum but cannot count on it being available when we need to use it.

Incentivized

Teachable is excellent to work with as a software platform. However, after change of ownership, they made a massive price hike to legacy users, and stripped away many of the benefits that early adopters had enjoyed. All with next to no communication and transition. This burned a lot of trust and is the only reason for a7 rather than a 9.

Incentivized

• Customer Service is amazing. If there is something that doesn't see to work, the customer service department is there to help! The help and support page is comprehensive.
• It is easy to embed various programs, web site and apps into this one LMS platform. This makes if very easy to customize.
• Improvements and modifications are constantly being made. The company stays ahead of current trends.
• Organization of courses and groups is easy, with many an endless amount of possibilities available for creation.

• Hosts digital content such as video & PDFs
• Allows us to bundle multiple courses together
• Has a decent Zapier connection to sync with our other platforms
• Really easy to use

• The test banks in the personal resources need to be more functional. The ability to be able to create folders for a course and insert multiple test banks within that folder for different units of the same course would be more efficient. Being able to add colors to different folders would also make it easier to identify which course teachers were looking for and separate test and quizzes from the unit and final exams. It would be nice if the tracking of the test banks could be turned on and off so that graphs, charts, political cartoons, and other images could be changed without the need to necessarily change the question. For example, using red for US History, blue for World History, green for Economics, black for Government then within each folder quizzes could be orange, unit exams could be yellow, and finals exams could be purple under each course, or whatever color made sense to the teacher.
• The graphing capabilities in assessments need to be more functional outside of math. It would be nice if geography students could create population graphs that would include inverted x and y-axis charts to the left of a regular x and y-axis chart with the ability to add age ranges in between them and then have bar graphs going both directions. Economic students need to be able to create dot line charts that curve to demonstrate supply, demand, and equilibrium charts. These also need both the x and y-axis so that price and quantity can be included. Bar graphs need to be able to have multiple bars in groupings so that students can compare the different measurements of GDP across multiple countries. Graphing isn't only for math.

• Communication with customers about changes to terms
• Customer support is slow
• Integration with Active Campaign

Incentivized

While we have taken time to re-evaluate our selected 1:1 devices, Schoology's impact on student learning is unquestioned. Students are able to connect with other learners, create and share products of their learning, and develop their digital fluency through their use of Schoology.

Because we haven't had any major issues with it. The platform is really simple to use and the content can be uploaded and modified very easily. It has a drag and drop feature that makes everything fast and easy. Their support has always answered our questions or concerns and the cost is affodable. We will keep using it in the future.

Incentivized

It's very easy to use Schoology. As with any LMS, it helps to learn some tips and tricks prior to getting started. But, each item is clearly indicated within the platform. If I want to add materials, it is right at the top of my screen. If I want to view the calendar, it is indicated to the right of my screen. Navigating a course and the platform is quite straightforward. Additionally, the benefit of Schoology's help center and user community makes asking and answering questions quick and easy.

Because it's easier to use both as administrators and both as user. We have never heard of any users having issues login in or going through the lectures or completing the course

Incentivized

Generally good, but issue self-reporting has become a problem. When there are issues, it can be 20 minutes to an hour before it gets noted on the status page

We haven't had any issues, it's always available. Even when they schedule a maintanance on their end, students still can access the courses

Incentivized

Course saves or transfers can take several minutes and up to an hour

Never had any issues with pages or videos not loading

Incentivized

We have county-level support and district-level support, but their HELP page offers everything that is needed to answer questions and to find "how-to" information for staff. This includes video and written directions for every available feature. Schoology has also worked with our district to improve their product.

Their support is good overal. There are a couple of things that I would change, like answering faster. Sometimes they take a day to answer a concern and that's kind of annoying considering sometimes there are urgent issues we have to deal with. But the support has been good, they have answered properly.

Incentivized

Too surface level with no follow-up. A

Sit and get with very little hands-on time. 5 minutes to try out a feature/question type, etc. is not enough time. Once your training is done, there is no option for new employees to get that training without having to rebook and pay for the training again. If you pay for basic training, that should be available to a district to use in the future.

I'd say: learn the system first, try it out and then publish the content with customers. There are a couple of features that will cause issues with customers (especially lazy ones) but I'd say it's easy to implement and modify if needed. People don't need to train much to use Teachable, but they should take their time to know it.

Incentivized

As mentioned before, Schoology has a lot more capabilities than Google Classroom. Granted that Schoology is an actual LMS and Google Classroom is not. Assessments are better; guardian views and information; communication with our Student Information System; Better organization of files and assignments. I find Canvas & Blackboard difficult to navigate and understand

Incentivized

It's honestly just worked really well for us in terms of serving the actual course content. Plus, our customers can maintain one profile and use that to access all of the courses and bonuses that they've acquired from us. And the cost of Teachable has been very reasonable in terms of our budget.

We use it 5-12 so scalability is not an issue but sharing materials between departments including common assessments is difficult without paying for add-on features

We haven't had any issues with it. Their maintanance hours are always at times when we don't have students there, and even then, they still can access the platform

Incentivized

• Schoology has had a positive impact on my classroom because it allows me to easily organize content as well as assign content based on the specific needs/wants of my students.
• Schoology has had a positive impact on my classroom management because it allows me to easily embed everything my students need with no reason for them to leave the LMS and venture out on the wider internet.

Incentivized

• We were out the money and time of loading all courses onto Teachable, paying their fees, and then having to scramble to transfer thousands of students to another platform and pay all the setups again.