Schoology Vs. Edmodo

There are plenty of Learning Management Systems (LMS) out there these days, and they all do different things. There are those like PowerSchool and Infinite Campus that operate as digital grade books, and then there are those that hang their hats on being able to encompass any classroom need. Teachers can upload assignments, assess students, create discussions, and score it all with one program. Over the course of my spring break, I scanned the websites of twenty-something different LMS, and to be honest, they all started to feel a bit like this:

(Silicon Valley, 2014)

But I do want to know what sets one LMS apart from another, so I launched my own investigation. I uncovered what exactly it is that my school needs out of an LMS, and then I set up teacher and student accounts on the two least distinguishable LMS I could find. Edmodo and Schoology are two of the most popular LMS out there (Barrish, 2015), and the interface of each is strikingly similar. My own school district already uses Infinite Campus as a digital gradebook, and so any classroom-oriented LMS would need to exist as the place where the work is done before the grades are exported to IC. The additional LMS also needs to be able to handle any typical classroom tasks, such as assessing, discussing, and differentiating.

It should be said that this investigation is assuming that we all must transfer to ONE LMS together. Like students each have their own educational needs, so do teachers, and by extension, classrooms. That said, I think that each teacher should be able to choose the LMS that works in his or her classroom. What we may lose in the ability to share across curricula, we more than make up for in personalized learning.

Now to be fair, I have worked with Schoology before, but this is my first run with Edmodo, which is regarded as the most popular LMS on the market (Barrish, 2015). I chose the two for their similar level of popularity and seemingly similar features. In order to investigate features, I first set up my own teacher account, created a course, and posted several assignments, discussion posts, etc. Then I created my own student account for each system, joined my course, and took the assessments while rolling through all of the features. I investigated the student version through both a PC, and my mobile device, which has apps for both Schoology and Edmodo. I figured the mobile device support to be an important factor in choosing the right LMS on account of half of students using their phones for education. For you visual people, here is how it all shook out:

Basically, the two LMS are strikingly similar. They're easy to set up and use, for both teacher and student. The interface for each seems to be based on that of Facebook, and both Edmodo and Schoology have the same basic features: assignment creation, discussion posts, online gradebooks, personalized content, etc. A few key features tip the scales, and honestly, which one you go with depends on what your school needs. Maybe that's why they're both so popular. Here's the long and the short of it:

Edmodo gets points for slightly broader Professional Learning Communities in their groups, and the ability to group students within classes (differentiation is important to our admins). It's free, too. But it's coolest feature is Snapshot, an integrated app that quizzes students with precreated questions aligned to the CCSS. It's basically a data analysis program within an online LMS. 

Schoology makes up for its lack of grouping with the nifty feature of being able to embed media in discussion posts and assignments. It also offers teachers the ability to grade by rubric.

Edmodo may be easy to differentiate through, but Schoology still allows for differentiation, and diverse media. And although the cost of a premium membership ($10 per student, or a similar one time fee from the school) looks outrageous, it allows for integration with Infinite Campus to allow for seamless exporting of grades and other data. Even still the free version of Schoology does almost everything that Edmodo does.

The tie-breaker for me comes down to mobile compatibility. Schoology's app on iPhone and iPad (which we have a lot of at school) is quite fluid with virtually no loading time. Quizzes cannot be taken through the app, but it links directly to the website with login intact, so the transition is seemless. When testing on Edmodo however,  the app simply displays a message that asks the user to log into www.edmodo.com. Not super convenient, and I can see students getting easily frustrated with it, as I did. Edmodo's parent app leaves a lot to be desired as well. While it is possible to follow what your student is doing in school on a computer, the Apple/Android apps are absolutely useless. They are essentially apps that exist only to show this screen:

And any attempts to input a parent code or child credentials results in the same screen. Yikes. From what I have heard from Edmodo users, this is likely indicative of a broader tech support shortcoming. Hopefully it will be corrected in the future, but in the meantime my LMS of choice for our district is:

Schoology! (pronounced as skool-uh-gee, get it right)

If we decide to drop the ca$h on the premium option in integrates seamlessly into our gradebook, and the mobile tech is much better, which I know will satisfy students and parents alike (not to mention us teachers!). Discussions are less messy, and perhaps most importantly, several teachers are already using it (none use Edmodo). Students and staff are both familiar, which will make the transition much easier, and sharing across disciplines will be way easier to navigate.

References:

Barrish, J., & Capterra. (2015, June 3). Best LMS (Learning Management System) software: 2015 reviews of the most popular systems. Retrieved from http://www.capterra.com/learning-management-system-software/#infographic

Nagel, D. (2013, May 8). Reprt: Students use smartphones for school, want more. Retrieved from https://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/08/report-students-use-smart-phones-and-tablets-for-school-want-more.aspx

Silicon Valley (2014). Silicon valley: Changing the world [video clip]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXuFrtmOYKg