Getting Started on Schoology - For Instructors

Navigating Schoology

The navigation bar is visible from anywhere on the site once you have logged in. You can navigate to the four main areas of Schoology: Home, Courses, Groups, and Resources. Click the Schoology logo to return to the home page. This is where you see your Recent Activity feed and Course Dashboard.

• Click Courses to display the courses you are enrolled in. A shield icon appears on the courses you administer.
  • Your courses are your virtual classrooms. This is where you will instruct, grade, and communicate with your students. Your courses contain all your instructional materials (e.g., files, assignments, and assessments) along with communication and organizational tools strictly associated with the course.
  • From your Courses menu, you can navigate to your existing courses.
  • Click My Courses to create courses, view current and archived courses, join courses and search for courses.
• Click Groups to display the groups you are enrolled in. A shield icon appears on the groups you administer.
  • Click My Groups to create groups, view current and archived groups, join groups, and search for groups.
  • Groups are collaborative spaces to share ideas and resources, organize events, and connect with other educators. Groups can be used in many different ways from professional development to student extracurricular activities, so the best way to learn about their potential is simply by joining some open ones. 
• Click Resources to create, view, edit, and manage all your instructional resources.
  • From Resources, you can navigate directly to: your Personal resource; any Group resources you have access to; all of the Public resources on Schoology; and any Resource Apps you may have installed. If you are part of an Enterprise organization that uses Schoology's Assessment Management Platform, this is where you can access any Managed Assessment Teams.
• Click Search to find courses, groups, and people in Schoology.
• Click App Center to access apps that you can install to integrate content and services with Schoology.
• Click Calendar aggregates events from all of your associated courses, groups, and organizations, along with your personal events.
• Click Messages (envelope icon) to view, respond to, and send messages.
• Click Connections & Notifications (bell icon) to view course events displayed in chronological order to keep you informed of academic activity.

Home Page

1. Recent Activity: a condensed feed of posts that relate to you, your courses, groups, and organizations. Click on the quick post tool to post updates, assignments, events, and polls with files and links attached.
2. Course Dashboard: view all of your courses as a tiled list. Drag and drop course tiles to reorder courses. Click any one of your courses to navigate directly to its main landing page.
3. Reminders: help keep you informed of student homework submissions and ungraded items across your courses.
4. Upcoming: displays all of your assignments, due dates, and calendar events in chronological order.

Course Profile

1. Navigation Panel: access the different areas of your course, such as your Materials, Gradebook and Attendance. This panel also contains your Course Options menu where you can find Course Admin tools, such as View Course As, the Recycle Bin, and your course Privacy Settings. At the bottom of this column, you will find your Course Access Code, which you can distribute to your students to register for your course.  
2. Center Column: you can set the default landing page for your course to either Materials or Updates. 
3. Reminders and Upcoming: displays grade and submission activity, along with all your assignments, due dates, and calendar events in chronological order for the selected course.

Group Profile

You'll notice that your Groups look very similar to Courses. Groups are more about communication and resource sharing. They can be set up for students as well as educators to connect with each other, enabling individuals and teams to work together to improve education on a variety of levels.

1. Navigation panel: allows you to access the different areas of your group, such as Updates, Discussions, and Group Resources
2. Center Column: displays the page you are viewing based on the navigation panel selection.
3. Upcoming: displays your group events in chronological order. Click on the Calendar icon in the Upcoming column allows all Group members to see the shared Group Calendar in the month view.

Resources

The Resource Center is a centralized place where all of your instructional and professional development materials are kept. It is closely tied to your courses and your groups.

You can import files, create new resources, and copy or move them into any or all of or your courses quickly from the Resource Center. You can also share resources with your groups and download them from our Public Resource Library. Any course materials, folders, and even entire courses can be copied in your resources for use on a later date.

1. Navigation Panel: navigate the Resources area of Schoology. 
   
   • Personal: contains the files, course materials, learning objectives, and question banks you have saved to your Resources. Only you are able to access this area.
   • Public: share resources with the rest of the Schoology community. 
   • Groups: access items you share in the Resources area of your Groups from this area, or by navigating to the Group itself.
   • Apps: install and access Resource Apps.
   • Assessment: view, administer, and organize Managed Assessments (if available).
2. Menu Column: displays the menu of contents of the Resources area you are viewing based on the navigation panel selection.
3. Resources View: create, view, edit, and manage your instructional resources.