Schoology: The Breakthrough Classroom of the New Normal.

"Never stop learning" so goes the timeless adage. As such, learning must continue despite the difficulties and challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The education sector, in particular, needed guidance on how students would continue learning despite limitations at home. Many digital learning management systems (LMS) were explored, searching for the best alternative to physical classrooms. Among them, Rex Education's Schoology has grown in popularity and has become one of the most useful and impactful LMS.

Schoology is a cloud-based LMS that helps educators and academic institutions create engaging content, teach lessons, and evaluate students' performance, bringing learning and assessment together in one platform.

This digital tool enables users to utilize new and existing content, making it easy to create instructional materials. It contains rich shared resources, including user-generated lessons, assignments, and exams. Furthermore, its assessment tools aid teachers in more efficiently annotating and grading student responses. It also includes data and analytic functions for tracking student progress and identifying learning gaps.

LMS oversight is more complex than it appears. Apart from the country's challenges with Internet connectivity, some people may need more technical expertise to use this kind of system. However, this is manageable with Schoology because it is easy to navigate, user-friendly, and has a broader reach.

Moreover, Schoology is the only LMS with a built-in collaboration feature, connecting everyone to the same network to improve communication and sharing in the classroom, throughout the institution, and even globally. It makes linking apps, materials, and systems easier, allowing any institution's system or requirements to run and be monitored more seamlessly. Additionally, using its mobile application, any student or teacher can access resources, classes, assignments, and discussions no matter where they are.

Photo credit: Ivan Samkov on Pexels.

As witnessed, especially in the last three years, learning management systems are becoming increasingly crucial in helping teachers and learners manage, plan, deliver, and track the learning process. Therefore, selecting the best system, such as Schoology, is vital to meet everyone's needs and assist schools, teachers, and learners in achieving their goals.

The country has reopened schools recently and returned to a face-to-face learning modality. Despite this, it is safe to conclude that some pandemic breakthroughs, such as online learning, are here to stay. After all, Schoology is not a replacement for physical classrooms but rather a tool to aid learning strategies, provide flexibility to accommodate more students and strengthen the educational system.