Likelihood to Recommend Absorb LMS is appropriate for any continuing education organization or company that wants a reliable platform to host enduring educational content. It has been a great experience in terms of building and designing courses, monitoring learner progress, and as another touch point for learners to access other resources our organization offers.
Read full review It is really well suited for school situations like knowing what [assignments] need to be done when, getting feedback, getting points, finding the slides that the teacher used for explaining an [assignment] or theory. I think It would be less suited in business situations because it's [primarily] made to be a [one-way] communication tool for schools. Businesses need more control on individual levels I think[.]
Read full review Pros Usability - Both the User and Admin Experience is so simple and intuitive. The admin tools are clearly defined and laid out, yet the functionality makes it still powerful. Integration - We used the Scheduled Data Imports and Exports to connect with our HRIS tool. After the initial configuration, it has worked reliably and gives me all the custom data I need to make assignments and reporting a breeze. Design - I know it's covered a little bit in the Usability above, but the site just looks fantastic. There are a lot of options to customize and fit your branding requirements and all of the thumbnails/posters/billboards/etc give a very visual and appealing look to the LMS. Much better than I've seen in other products. Read full review Creativity options for teachers to create a virtual space that still has fun graphics and accessibility options. Canvas has versatility in viewing options for assignment due dates such as the calendar built in feature as well as the dashboard options to display upcoming and due assignments. Allowing teachers to create community with each other and collaborate in each-other's space. Discussion platforms within classrooms for students to communicate with each-other and with their teachers. Easy messaging portal within each virtual classroom. Read full review Cons Uploading documents is perceived as hard for employees, especially with video uploads. Sometimes the program lacks and then an employee has to start all over. Spacing courses is possible but not with a certain amount of time, which would be useful if the next course could open after a week/month instead of when the employee finishes the previous course. Read full review Their integration with Big Blue Button was a bust for distance learning. Would be great to see them collaborate with Zoom or Google Meets. Their "feature request" process is slow and cumbersome at times because it relies on user "up votes" to get ideas addressed by the developers. They seem to have a lot of turn-over with their staff. We get a new Customer Success Manager far more frequently than with other vendors. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We have no plans to move away from Absorb at this time. It has all of the functionality we are looking for in a learning management system and we have a lot of info stored in our LMS system for trainings including all of our current and past employee transcripts. It is also getting easier to manager with being able to connect the LMS to ADP to update employee reporting/department/location/etc. We don't have a need or reason to move away from Absorb at this time.
Read full review The other LMS tools have fallen behind. One reason is they are not able to update their systems, features, toolsets in a timely manner. While other LMS providers release bug fixes and new features several times a year, schools struggle to install and implement them in a timely manner. It is not uncommon for a school to take 6 months to a year to fully install and implement new releases on other LMS platforms. With Canvas, those features are released every 3 weeks, and there is nothing for a school to do other than choose to turn them on once released. This has allowed Instructure to innovate faster, and get new features and tools to customers quicker. Other factors include great pricing, customer support, and the innovative way in which LTI is implemented in the tool.
Read full review Usability It's a great place to house our trainings and keep things interesting for our associates.
Read full review The functions in Canvas are well integrated and consistent across the application, and mostly intuitive. Overall navigation and setup is streamlined through integrated features and navigation. The feedback we've gotten from our program participants is that it is easy to learn to use. It also integrates well with third party software like Google Docs and
Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing software
Read full review Support Rating I know the support team is hard at work! We are currently dealing with a confusing issue where our buttons don't connect to the pages we assign them, and they have been looking into this for a number of weeks. I hope they will unravel the issue soon so we can role out our modules!
Read full review I do not personally use Canvas support since we have a central office that helps us. However, our central office always has the answers we need and are always able to solve our issues - so I would assume that get great support from the Canvas team on their end. They also offer great training, which uses materials directly from Canvas
Read full review In-Person Training The training sessions were broken down into several days as well as different levels depending upon the knowledge of the user
Read full review Online Training I meet and do training with my absorb support every week. and I have all my questions answered! it's great
Read full review The online tutorials and videos are very clear and addressed the issues/questions that I had about using the system.
Read full review Implementation Rating Once you purchase and sign the contract there is nothing to install or hardware to buy. You can almost immediately start using it and have courses up and going within weeks. We signed in December and had pilot courses online ready to go for the start of school in January
Read full review Alternatives Considered Our organization previously used
LMS365 , which did not support eCommerce and had difficulties supporting external users. (My understanding is the issues with external users may have been directly related to our Microsoft implementation and not directly
LMS365 's fault, but it was nonetheless a deal breaker for us.) Docebo was the runner up in our LMS selection process and I spent significant time chatting with the team at Docebo. It seemed like a strong competitor to Aborb. Ultimately, Absorb was both slightly more cost-efficient for our scenario.
Read full review Canvas is more secure, has a cleaner design, and has more features. For the features, they have in common canvas still stacks up against [Smart school] by going for the extra mile. Besidfor e that, [the] canvas looks a lot more [professional] than [Smart school]. I didn't make the decision myself to get canvas instead of [Smart school] but I'm happy they did.
Read full review Return on Investment Course enrollments and completions have increased by 500% since implementation Employee visits to our learning centre have increased by 300% since implementation Cost saving from a time perspective as we can automate a lot of the admin work we used to do. Pre Absorb we had about 3 or 4 e-learnings that were available. We now have over 100 that are accessible to all employees Ability to seamlessly integrate with Workday and Udemy allowing all learning to be in one place, people data to be imported from WD, and very comprehensive reporting Read full review Canvas has helped us provide a more robust online component to our courses. Canvas has helped us better adapt to a rapidly changing educational landscape. Canvas has reduced the time that we have to spend training faculty on how to use our learning management system. Read full review ScreenShots