Schoology is the learning management system and learning platform recommended for distance education in asynchronous learning environments. This user-friendly tool allows for the teacher to create engaging learning opportunities for all students in the class. There are many accessibility tools and features available, including an immersive reader, language translator, guidelines, and others. This tool allows for teachers to upload, create, edit, and save resources for future classes, and it encourages students to collaborate and engage with peers. Schoology is also an excellent resource for teachers to seamlessly sync grades, assignments, rosters, and scores with a data management system, and it offers analytics on student use to make data-driven learning decisions.

Best practices recommended when determining this learning management system include being explicit with learner and teacher needs, expectations, and norms (Rappolt-Schlichtmann, 2020). Educators should remember that students are not the only ones that need a learning curve: teachers new to online or distance learning need flexibility and growth time as well. 

Accessibility is another recommendation for determining which learning management system is best. Learners are as various as snowflakes from the sky: no two are exactly alike. Some students need more assistance than others, and this should be remembered when developing online or distance learning.

Finally, one of the biggest factors in determining the best learning platform is student safety. All student privacy and online safety laws should be enforced and supported through teacher training, student lessons, and technical support from coaches, administrators, and technology managers.

Research based rationale with citation and clear explanations to parents and students as to why this platform and best practices were selected.

These best practices and this platform were selected to align with the Connectivism learning theory, which states that due to the way we're now able to share and collaborate with each other, we can engage in a community of learning and collaboration such as never before in history (Tao, 2022).  Online collaborative learning is a model in which students are encouraged to create and discover ways to conceptualize the world around them, share ideas, collaborate on innovative ways to solve problems, and views the teacher more as a facilitator than the traditional classroom allows (Tao, 2022).