Is Schoology Benefiting Students?

Sidney Sandoval, Editor

After fifteen years, Fauquier County Public Schools has decided to replace Blackboard, its virtual classroom tool, with a new learning management system, Schoology. When COVID-19 took the world by storm, schools had to act fast in order to keep students engaged and learning. Many schools turned to Google Classroom as their online teaching and learning workspace. Things returned to normal, but the use of online learning tools stuck and became routine. Students of Fauquier County continued to learn with Blackboard and Google Classroom as their main websites, but Fauquier County decided that switching between the two was troublesome and that Schoology would alleviate this.

 

Schoology was made to merge grading, assignments, and learning onto one platform, but it’s not user friendly at all. I have even found myself preferring Blackboard’s perplexing layout over Schoology’s. Within the first three weeks of school, it seems that no student or teacher has had any positive opinion about Schoology, except that it will get better as our understanding improves. When asked about Schoology, Ms. Tuthill said, “I think it’s going to be great… once I figure it out.” But will we learn to navigate it if many of our teachers are returning to paperwork because of the frustration caused by it? 

 

Students have encountered many problems such as assignments being deleted, or not turning in, and the awful organization of grades. In an email to the superintendent, June Johnson wrote, “While at one point I could check my cumulative grade, which was even color-coded…now I find myself wondering what I will no longer be able to do because of this new system”. There are also concerns surrounding Schoology’s code. According to the Washington post, researchers found an advertising ID in the application. This code would allow marketers to track student’s activity across different apps and devices, which then use this information to send targeted advertisements to the user. School’s are enforcing the use of apps like these without letting students and parents express their privacy concerns.

 

Students, teachers, and parents have spent years mastering Blackboard and now have to start from scratch. Google Classroom had outstanding reviews and was foolproof but is disappointingly no longer supported. Now we’re back at square one, but it seems that this time there’s not much motivation to once again, adjust. Was the implementation of Schoology really a way to help students, or just a way to lower costs?

 

You can read more about advertising IDs in remote learning apps at:

Harwell, D. (2022, May 27). Remote learning apps shared children’s data at a ‘dizzying scale’. The Washington Post. Retrieved August 30, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/24/remote-school-app-tracking-privacy/