Instructure is an educational software company based in Sandy, Utah. It is the developer of the Canvas learning management system, which is a comprehensive software package that competes with such systems as Blackboard Learning System, SumTotal and Saba.
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Ellucian Colleague
Score 7.4 out of 10
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Ellucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.
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[.]
Colleague Student is a great solution for smaller schools. I'm not sure it would work well at a large university (10,000 plus students) -- I'm not sure it has capacity to handle that. It is also well suited for universities where departments communicate well with each other. There is so much cross functionality, that if departments don't communicate well, issues could arise if one department makes changes without notifying or talking with other departments about the change
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.
Colleague offers a single reference point for all student data, which creates consistency and unity across campus and ensures students hear the same information from every source.
Colleague recently updated its interface to be more accessible to all people. Previously, it was not accessible through any browser aside from Internet Explorer.
Colleague provide helpful user restrictions that prevent departments from altering or erasing data they do not typically use. For example, I cannot change student billing and accidentally wreak havoc for the cashier's office.
Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
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.
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
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
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
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.
Ellucian Colleague remains the most cost competitive solution for our organization. Alternative solutions, have had ridiculously high migration costs and ongoing maintenance fees which have not been friendly toward a migration of our existing data. Some the features of the other solutions are very nice to "haves" but the reward has to out-weigh the cost of adoption.
By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
