As students, teachers, and administrators of Mead High School get settled into their remote learning schedules, serious issues are starting to occur on online learning platforms. Programs like Schoology and Infinite Campus are being swarmed with more people at a time than they’ve ever had before.

Previously, students and teachers would log on at different times during the day and for shortened periods of time. However, with the new online learning in place, these same people are on for several hours each day and at almost the exact same time. 

As you may have guessed, this is leading to some serious issues. 

For students like Ashlei Kee (‘22), Schoology and other platforms are “[crashing] almost everyday,” and “[running] very slowly and [glitching] a lot.” 

Almost every student is dealing with this daily, and it’s having a large impact on online learning. As said by Kee, “The problems are having a very negative effect on my remote learning.” 

“[It’s] very frustrating, which makes it difficult to get the motivation to do my work,” she continued.

Schoology specifically has reached out to its users and apologized for the increase in the glitching and crashing of both their websites and their apps. In a recent update posted on schoology.com, Schoology directly addresses the issues, saying, “…we had to place Schoology Basic under maintenance for some of today, but were able to restore it to normal service earlier this afternoon.” This was referring to Thursday, April 2nd. 

Schoology also explains that they were faced with, “nearly a 400% increase in usage of the platform” almost overnight and that this increase has “put a strain on parts of the software and resulted in some service interruptions.”

If you’re having any problems with Schoology, we suggest going to their Status Monitor before anything else to see what is operating normally and what is not. This monitors and breaks down each section of the program including things like imports and exports, portfolios, and messaging.

Schoology is not the only program that is experiencing difficulties. Infinite Campus is also having some negative effects of the sudden increase in active users. Most of the same issues happening on Schoology are happening on Infinite Campus, both on it’s mobile app and on it’s website.

“I’ve had the most issues with Schoology and Infinite Campus,” said Kee. Besides glitching and working slowly, she also mentions how the apps refuse to load on her Mead High SVVSD issued iPad.

With all these difficulties, what can students and parents do? Kee suggested that getting up early and working on the platforms helps, as almost no one else is using the program at that time. Though this can be frustrating, it does seem to help with the glitching and disconnecting.

If the issues get much worse and you cannot successfully work, try contacting the program you’re having problems with. Search for their help center, email, or call them.