CMS comparison

The three CMS's that I looked at were: Hiku, Edmodo, and Schoology. Here is my comparison link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kx-yQPvxbhzIP1j8wwIv3BpUwaLaXoip_Tl4TMO1-48/edit?usp=sharing  

The CMS that I chose to use is Schoology.  I liked Schoology the best because of how easy it is to use.  It has a "Facebook" like structure so it is very familiar to work with.  I think students would find this easy to use as well. I use Schoology for my CMS in my current classes, BUT I tried to be very open minded with the other two CMS's when doing this assignment.  I am not opposed to jumping ship if something is easier to use.  In the end I still liked Schoology better than the other two.  I liked how easy it was to add an assignment, create a rubric (that can show the curriculum standards), and grade.  It is also very easy to add video and audio as forms of assessment.  If I have a podcast assignment students can just upload it to Schoology and I can have the rubric right there to grade it. The same goes for videos as well. I can also put students into "grading groups" to differentiate assignment and tests.  This is important to me because students don't like to be singled out when they have different assessment standards.  This way other students in the class have no idea that someone else is getting a modified assignment.  One of the better features that Schoology offers is a "must complete first" option.  So in order for a student to go to the next step they have to complete the first one.  This comes in handy when you want students to complete an series of assignments but in a particular order.

I like the way I can put students into discussion groups or have just one discussion.  One of the features of the discussion part is that students need to post first in order to read other's posts.  That way students have no idea what others have written until they post. There is also a grading option with the discussion so I can apply points and students will then see their grade. With the discussion groups I can put students from other classes into the different groups.  This is a nice feature so students have a wider audience for their discussions. I can add a URL link or I can upload a video for students to watch and then comment on...these are all great option for discussion groups.

 I also like the quiz feature in Schoology better than the others.  I can import quizzes that I have used before.  I can create a quiz question bank that I can pull questions from for a final exam.  I also like the fact that there is a scramble option so questions are randomly picked so not everyone gets the same questions in the same order.  It is also very easy to add video, audio, and pictures to quizzes.  Again I can differentiate student quizzes as well...and no one in the class knows that someone else is getting a modified quiz. On the quiz part I can see how much time a student has spent on a particular test.  I can see how many students got a particular correct or incorrect. I also like the fact if I want students to take practice quizzes I can put that the student needs a certain score to go to the next quiz.

Schoology works well with Google docs (unfortunately not Google calendar) so for writing assignments I can click on a student's Google Doc link and grade from there.  I also like that students can resubmit assignments and the original assignment doesn't go away.  I do this a lot with rewrites. With all assignments I can always write comments to the students.  This is especially nice with the rubric option.  I can write a student a note on the rubric to tell them why they missed the points they did.