Canvas vs. Ellucian Portal

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[.]

Incentivized

It is great and collecting information and keeping it all in one place. But once you go outside of their scope it requires a lot of outside programming that quickly adds up. It's hard to find a good, reliable developer for this software so once you do find one you hang on to them. There is a very steep learning curve, but I would suspect that for any new CRM that you bring on

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Collecting information and putting it into a concise place
• Creating forms for use on our website to collect user information
• Differentiating between different user types and knowing where they are in the funnel

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• We don't necessarily think that what the sales team promised us has been delivered. There are some features we thought we'd have that require hours of outside programming
• The forms that we create for the website would be nice to have more control over the look and feel
• Creating nice looking emails in ellucian is very cumbersome. It's definitely a far cry from a drag and drop like mail chimp or delivra

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The training sessions were broken down into several days as well as different levels depending upon the knowledge of the user

Incentivized

The online tutorials and videos are very clear and addressed the issues/questions that I had about using the system.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

It is about right on par with the marketing stuff that Salesforce had. If you want to use it for email marketing it's only good for very simply designed email campaigns. But the scheduling of these campaigns is pretty painless and does a very good job. It has combined many other software packages that we were using into one place which is nice, but if you need to go outside the box of how they have things set up it will cost you a lot to do some custom development.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It has turned out to be much more expensive to get what we want than we thought
• There is a lot of customizing for our institution so the dollar cost will not be seen anytime soon
• It has helped bring everything into one place, but that has taken many hours of training for a lot of our staff just to get up to speed.

Incentivized