Canvas vs. Schoolbox vs. Totara LMS

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[.]

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Schoolboxn is well suited to being a school portal. You can manage user accounts, access to information and communicate to users individually or as a group. The pages allow for a great range of media types, you can use blog, forum or chat and embed videos and images easily. As an LMS, this system is great. Student accounts link to class information easily by the back end sync tools. Giving students instant access to their information. Assessments are easily submitted and feedback given by teachers can be viewed by students and parents.

A situation where this system is less suitable is if you work in a school that already has a dedicated portal and/or LMS.

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As a real estate services company with properties (& employees) in six states, Totara LMS is well suited for implementing and our employee learning platform to our many team members that work remotely and cannot benefit from regular in-person learning courses. Totara LMS's comprehensive and customizable reporting system also allows us to accurately review and tell the story of employee performance and talent development, while tailoring this reporting to the needs of different internal stakeholders.

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• 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.

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• Learning management
• Feedback management
• Communications - email/news posting

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• Distribute elearning
• run exams

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• 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.

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• User interface
• System search
• Quiz builder

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• Reporting can be a little inflexible - sometimes, the report cannot be customized to have all the columns you need as they are not available from that area of the LMS.
• Graphic reporting needs some more work to be a bit more professional looking.

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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.

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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

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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

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Easy to access both local support and support/advice from other Totara LMS users as we keep in regular contact as a part of the totara government users group. Our vendor also keeps in touch with this group and a lot of knowledge is shared. It's easy to access the Totara LMS users academy, and one of my administrators has also set up a local forum where they ask each other questions and share knowledge as well. Our vendor is easy to access via our support plan and we have monthly catch-ups with our account manager where we hear about anything new coming up.

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

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

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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

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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.

Canvas is purely an LMS. Whilst it is a good system, it didn’t allow us to manage parent communication or use it as a portal. In the end we didn’t want to manage 2 separate systems. Schoolbox is the only all in one system we found that stacked up. Other systems did the portal well, or the LMS well, but not both together.

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• 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.

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• It’s a time saver for teachers as course information can be re-used
• User administration rules allows for automation
• Parent comms are centralised and easily managed

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• Totara LMS has helped increase our employee retention by 15%.
• Totara LMS has drastically improved our employee learning and development processes that weren't in place prior to having this system.
• Totara LMS has decreased the time the onboarding process takes by 1 day.

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