So, I’ve been a homeschooling mom since 2012. All four kiddos are homeschooled, and I’ve gone through a lot of curriculum changes over the years.
For the past several years, we’ve been doing some online classes with Power Homeschool. I know there was controversy over the founder, but it was only $25 per month per child, and we could choose 7 classes. It kept attendance and grades, so it was easy for them to be pretty independent with it at times since I’ve worked part time the past several years. Well, a few weeks ago that company blew up. There was a huge controversy over their tutoring mode, and even though we didn’t use the software that way, the way the company handled it was not something I could support.
So, I spent some time on the homeschool boards and decided to try out Study.com. I have a discount code for $41.99 per kid for the first 3 months, but after that it’s $59.99 plus tax per kid. Definitely a lot more expensive, but I figured we would try it out and see what we thought before I go digging for other options.
So far, it’s not too bad. I don’t like that the app doesn’t show me the parent dashboard, so I need to login in a web browser to access grades, but the dashboard is easy to navigate, I can assign as many classes as I want, create due dates, pull lessons from multiple classes to create a custom curriculum, and it also tracks if they are on track or behind, how many lessons, quizzes, and tests they’ve done, and when they last logged in.
Here’s a look on my phone on how it overviews a class on in the gradebook. The orange circle denotes that this class is behind schedule to be finished by September 30th.
Here’s a look at another class with a green circle, which means we are on track to be finished with this class before the due date.
As you can see, it gives me the breakdown of lessons, quizzes, and exams that have been taken. I can look at the course details and it will show me all of the chapters and what work has and has not been completed, which gives me a chapter grade.
We are still getting used to the layout and navigation, but so far it is suiting our needs.