Canvas is Comprehensive and User Friendly
I have had the opportunity to use canvas as both a student and a professor, providing unique insight to its features and nuances. This …
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What is Canvas?
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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- Assignments (41)9.090%
- Course authoring (41)8.989%
- Mobile friendly (40)8.585%
- Course catalog or library (38)7.171%
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What is Canvas?
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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For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.instructure.com/contact-us
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- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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ProProfs LMS is a learning management system software that is designed to help instructors create and deliver online training courses. The LMS offers both businesses and educational institutions comprehensive training solutions by allowing them to create online courses, complemented by tests,…
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Atomic Apps for Canvas LMS, Webinar recording from #CanvasLive August 2017
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How to Use Video with Your LMS | Powtoon's Canvas LMS Integration
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What is Canvas?
Canvas by Instructure is a cloud-based learning management system for every stage and style of education. Available to institutions of all sizes and types, from individual K-12 classrooms to universities to companies with a blended or fully virtual environment.
As the hub of the digital learning environment, Canvas offers complete LMS functionality, including standards-based grade books, course content authoring, customizable student assessments, mobile communication, video learning, and digital badging.
Canvas LMS integrates with an institution's existing SIS and other teaching tools. With over two hundred different LTI tools educators can customize courses and monitor engagement with classes or individual students. Canvas also has mobile apps to keep everyone informed and connected, on the go, on any device.
Canvas Features
Learning Management Features
- Supported: Course authoring
- Supported: Course catalog or library
- Supported: Player/Portal
- Supported: Learning content
- Supported: Mobile friendly
- Supported: Progress tracking & certifications
- Supported: Assignments
- Supported: Compliance management
- Supported: Learning administration
- Supported: Learning reporting & analytics
- Supported: eLearning
- Supported: Assessments
- Supported: Live online learning
- Supported: In-person learning
- Supported: Micro-learning
- Supported: Video learning
- Supported: eCommerce
- Supported: SCORM-compliant
- Supported: Social learning
- Supported: Gamification
- Supported: GDPR Compliant Learning
- Supported: Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning
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Canvas Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
| Supported Countries | Global |
Canvas Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Assignments highest, with a score of 9.
The most common users of Canvas are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Canvas has proven to be an invaluable tool for various educational institutions and organizations. Users have praised Canvas for its user-friendly platform, effectiveness in managing distance courses, and seamless integration with other vendors. It has been widely adopted by universities, community colleges, and high schools as the primary learning management system due to its intuitive interface and ability to bridge the communication gap between instructors and students.
Canvas has been used for a multitude of purposes, including online degree programs, blended courses, and supplementing face-to-face classes in educational institutions. Human Resource services have utilized Canvas for assessing new employee skills and providing information to employees. Student Services have used it to promote clubs and other services, while the library has used Canvas as a platform to provide information about their services and obtain feedback.
Canvas has also been used by administration committees and faculty committees for discussions, dissemination, and data maintenance. It has served as the central hub for organizing assignments, sharing content, managing grades, and supporting hybrid distance learning models. Instructors have utilized Canvas to post announcements, assignments, theory slides, Zoom Meetings, as well as give points and feedback. Canvas has provided a dynamic and student-friendly interface that encourages interaction and engagement among students.
Furthermore, Canvas offers a mobile app that allows students and instructors to access course content on the go. This feature has greatly enhanced the flexibility and accessibility of online learning. Additionally, Canvas has been used by universities as a replacement for other learning management systems due to its frequent updates and robust features. Its versatility supports a variety of course types including online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses.
Overall, Canvas has been widely adopted across various educational institutions due to its ease of use, versatility, and ability to deliver content effectively. It has become an essential tool in delivering quality education regardless of location and promoting student engagement through its range of features such as discussion forums, assignments, embedding Google docs, sharing files, speed grader for assessments process, integrated rubrics, and more.
Frequent updates and evolution: Users have expressed their appreciation for the frequent updates and evolution of Canvas. Some reviewers have mentioned that these regular updates demonstrate the platform's commitment to continuously improving the user experience over time. The consistent release of new features and bug fixes every three weeks ensures that Canvas stays current and addresses user needs.
Efficient mobile grading with Speed Grader: Many users have praised the mobile app for grading assignments, Speed Grader, for its efficiency in reducing grading time by 30-50%. Reviewers find this feature convenient as it allows instructors to grade assignments on the go, making use of any available time. By providing a way to grade assignments while waiting for meetings or commuting, Speed Grader saves users valuable time.
Intuitive WYSIWYG editor: The WYSIWYG editor in Canvas is highly valued by users as it simplifies the process of creating and editing content. This intuitive editor appears in almost every tool within Canvas, allowing users to easily create engaging and visually appealing course materials. Its presence enhances the overall learning experience for students.
Difficulty in navigation: Several users have expressed frustration with the navigation within Canvas, stating that it can be confusing and not user-friendly. They have mentioned difficulty in finding desired features and having to click through multiple options before reaching the required functionality. Some users also find the linear structure of Canvas makes it difficult for students to differentiate between lessons.
Lack of customization options: Many reviewers have mentioned a lack of customization options in Canvas. Users have stated that there is a limited ability to customize colors, profiles, and class pages, making it difficult to personalize their experience. Some users have suggested including more basic color options for personalization and providing more freedom for designing a visually enhanced environment.
Challenges with customer support: A number of users have experienced challenges with customer support in the past. They have mentioned issues such as unanswered complaints via email or phone calls, delayed response times, and a lack of availability. While some users acknowledge that customer support may have improved over time, others still express dissatisfaction with the level of service provided by Canvas.
Note: These three cons were selected based on their frequency of mention throughout the context provided.
Users of Canvas have provided several recommendations based on their experience with the platform. The most common recommendations include: getting familiar with Canvas before submitting assignments, taking the time to navigate and figure out the features of Canvas before the semester starts, using Canvas for collaborative work, considering Canvas for higher education settings, appreciating its user-friendly interface, and valuing its seamless experience. Overall, users express that Canvas is a simple yet full-featured solution for online learning, which they find more user-friendly than Google Classroom.
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May 02, 2022
Canvas Makes Learning Effective
Canvas is used to offer online and hybrid courses for students. It is used across the whole organization.
- Creating different course sections with effective course design.
- Creating assessments and learning measures tools.
- Work on third-party application integration especially browsers compatibility.
- Make more cost affordable for schools and Universities especially for those interested to switch from higher-cost LMS
November 05, 2021
Great LMS
We used it as a Learning Management System--I posted assignments and grades on Canvas, and students could use it to check their daily assignments, future assignments and assessments, and their grades. We used it across the whole school, so it was a uniform way for students and teachers to keep track of assignments and progress.
- Serves as online gradebook
- Helps students keep track of daily assignment
- Helps students keep track of grades
- Full school calendar/events
- Teachers seeing student grades in other classes
We work with Canvas in our learning platform with the objective of facilitating academic teaching, which is extremely practical for planning and teaching online classes. We also take advantage of the integrated system that allows us to keep track of studies and student evaluations, which is optimal for keeping our study system up to date.
- This tool has a responsive web design, its adaptation to all devices facilitates access to the platform.
- It has a dashboard, which presents a detailed list of our recent activity and academic history.
- It gives educators the ability to create content to evaluate and upload grades to the system, allowing students and representatives to monitor grades and teaching methods.
- Canvas is a software that is easy to access and operate through the web or application, but it should be taken into account that in order to create course content from scratch, training is needed since this area is not easy to do by yourself and the platform does not offer tutoring in this regard.
- The user must have a stable internet connection as the system does not have auto-save, a slight fluctuation in the connection automatically generates the loss of information.
- It offers few options to customize profiles, which makes it difficult to identify students at times.
- Unfortunately, this software has a very bad customer service, since complaints, via email or phone call, have not been answered within three days, which hinders and hinders the smooth and continuous learning process.
We use Canvas across our organization - it is the standard learning management system and the only one supported at our institution. It is used by every academic department and is critical for achieving our goal of providing a modern, accessible, and flexible educational environment for our students, faculty, and staff.
- Learning management - Even as the educational landscape rapidly shifts due to current events, Canvas is a great LMS for providing a consistent learning environment for students.
- Mobile accessibility - Students can access their courses on Canvas from a variety of devices, including their smartphones.
- Rich content - Instructors have the ability to create dynamic and engaging content for their courses.
- Support - Response times for tickets and other support requests have increased over the last year.
March 13, 2021
Canvas - A full palette of online education tools!
Canvas is used by the entire school I am taking classes at. It provides an online instruction module, attendance, grading and file distribution point for users. It seems to be closer to a "one stop shop" for online education than others that are currently available. I am familiar with Canvas, Google Classroom and Skyward.
- Provides internal communication, not requiring an outside message or email system.
- Includes a file sharing structure for instructional materials within the system.
- Provides a grading platform that is viewable by students and instructors alike.
- Getting used to the platform takes a little effort. Not quite plug and play.
- File names used to be truncated - but that is fixed now.
March 08, 2021
Canvas: The LMS for Everyone
Canvas is our LMS for students in grades 5-12 (approximately 1,000 students and 150 faculty). It is the central hub for organizing assignments, sharing content, managing grades, and our current hybrid distance learning model. It is considered an essential technology tool/core application for our institution and students, faculty, and parents rely on it for structuring our academic program.
- Many popular third-party educational apps have LTIs that integrate with Canvas.
- The gradebook has a Mastery Learning option for recording progress against a set of academic standards.
- The UI is very intuitive and even non-tech savvy users can use it effectively with minimal training.
- 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.
March 08, 2021
A consistent and powerful platform
Canvas [is being used] across the organization. We are able to streamline certain course delivery for all of the stakeholders.
- Simple design interface.
- Basic analytics for organization and courses.
- The simple function for each module within the system.
- The should be a possibility of having at least three basic colors for customization.
- More local service support for Malaysia.
- Pricing is still quite expensive for now although not as expensive as BB.
August 12, 2020
The perfect LMS out there
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Canvas is used by most universities. At times Moodles can be used as an alternative. Depending on the requirements of the department. It houses courses in a structured and easy to manage format. Allowing students to proactively do their assignments and access course material with ease. Teachers can create and manage course modules efficiently and with ease. An extremely efficient platform that bridges the communication gap between instructors and students. Its integration with third-party tools makes it easy for the administrator to keep the platform up-to-date with the university requirements. A well thought out idea that is helping millions of students all across the world and improving how education is delivered.
- Simple and user friendly user interface.
- Third-party solution integration.
- Ease of course management.
- Inbuilt discussion forum.
- Lack of inbuilt video conferencing tools.
- Quizzes should have proctoring and browser locked capability.
- Mobile app can get have glitches.
- Notifications are missed at times.
April 22, 2020
Canvas Review
Canvas is a learning management system. It houses everything for all of my courses. This includes my face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes. Canvas helps me organize my course into modules. In each module, I have information pages, discussions, assignments, and assessments. Canvas also includes a calendar and gradebook. Moreover, Canvas has a messaging system so I can message students in my courses.
- User friendly: I found it easy to figure out how to use Canvas
- Variety; there are a variety of types of assignments an instructor can create
- Organized: the tools help you organize your course
- Sometimes messages are delayed
- It does not have it’s own video conferencing tool
- Would be nice if there was a way to message groups of students based on a risk factor
February 18, 2020
Canvas
At Northwest, Nazarene Canvas is used as our learning management system. I use this at NNU as a student. I previously used Canvas from the admin side, where I was putting in classes and helping teachers create content. Canvas allows teachers to publish their courses online in a user-friendly platform. Students can then engage with the course material and each other throughout the class. Canvas also allows students to submit homework online and for teachers to publish grades so that students can see it.
- Ease of student use
- Completed assignment tracking
- Journal function
January 18, 2019
Canvas is the best LMS currently on the market.
We use Canvas to host programs for the majority of our 18 partners. Canvas is our first choice of LMS for all partners we support, and we strongly discourage the use of any other LMS. Students find Canvas simpler to use than any other LMS, and it presents fewer barriers to learning than their competitors.
- Easy to use interface for students and faculty. No need to switch to "Edit Mode" or any other different views to make changes.
- Well defined APIs make administration easy.
- Intuitive design lets students start on course materials right away, without having to take time to learn the system.
- Instructure can be slow to address admin-only issues or change requests due to the community voting on issues.
- Submitted assignments or assessment attempts cannot be removed at all, so if a student makes an erroneous submission it will always be visible.
- All or Nothing question types do not have a choice for all or nothing points grading.
- Exam settings are not available/appropriate for high-stakes testing.
January 17, 2019
The greatness of Canvas!
Our entire district uses Canvas. Our teachers use it as a Learning Management System with their students, our curriculum and district handbook are housed in Canvas, and we use Canvas for Professional Learning. It allows 24-hour access to all resources and learning for both students and staff.
- User friendly design.
- Great support through assigned CSM, 24-hour help, and the community.
- Tons of pre-made materials in Commons that you can pull into your own courses to use.
- When you first log in, it can be overwhelming to see nothing in your course.
- When you first start using Canvas, it can be daunting to begin designing and building your course since it is blank when you first start one.
January 16, 2019
Powerful LMS for Effective Online Learning
Spending a lot of time utilizing an LMS system myself within my current school district and having to be knowledgeable on most LMS systems, I had to evaluate how Canvas stacked up against other popular systems such as Schoology and Google Classroom. I use Canvas outside of my school organization. As with most learning management systems, the goal is to help provide a platform for blended learning, where students are able to manage their digital selves, track homework assignment, interact with the teacher and students, and submit work digitally. For teachers, this helps solve problems with missing work that needs to be turned in physically, or during the creation phase as teachers struggle to integrate technology into the classroom and design more digitally engaging lessons and activities for students.
- LTI integration. This is particularly useful for teachers creating digital lessons and activities so that can embed other digital tools within their canvas materials.
- Collaborative in nature. Easy to navigate and engage in discussion with students and teachers.
- The Calendar view. Teachers are use to utilizing agendas and Google Calendar for daily routine like a planner. This give you an overview of your course highlighting various assignments, quizzes, tests, etc.
- An easier way to manage and/or organize materials and be able to share them with others.
- A way to track what learning objectives are being met.
- Integrated badging system to create and award badges for gamification elements.
January 16, 2019
Go with Canvas for Accessible Digital Platform
The paper forms used by technicians were constantly lost or incomplete, and we used Canvas to create our own electronic forms that everyone could simply access on their smartphones. As we became more proficient, we made use of extra features to verify work location addresses by GPS, scan barcodes to save time and prevent typos, add prefix data from other databases.
- Simple to learn
- Simple to deploy
- Simple to make changes
- Continue improving the admin portal interface
- Prevent lost entries sitting on devices
January 10, 2019
Canvas LMS: a great way to provide an online course experience!
TCS Education System is a non-profit organization that uses Canvas for all of its five affiliates. We have an Instructional Design team under the Academic Affairs Department that designs all of the courses. The majority of courses are totally online, however, we do have many blended and on-ground courses that also use Canvas. Canvas solved a problem we had with our previous LMS, which was costing us a lot of money as well as not providing the flexibility and up-to-date design technology that we wanted for our students. We have been very happy with the quality of the product as well as the professionalism and helpfulness of the Canvas staff.
- Canvas does a great job of integrating many third-party vendors. We use vendors such as Flipgrid, Padlet, and Storyline to help enhance our student experience in the online classroom.
- Canvas is very user (designer) friendly. It uses a simple Rich Text Editor that is easy to create text, insert pictures and video and enhance the text. With that comes an HTML Editor which is very useful if you have knowledge of HTML. This provides the designer with the flexibility to design more than just plain text on a page.
- For the student, Canvas is also very easy to use and organized well. The Modules listing provides students with an "outline: of the course and helps keep them working in a linear fashion (if that is what you want). There are also direct links to assignments and discussions so students can see all of the specific assignments at once. The grade book is also very easy for students to read and interpret.
- Even though Canvas works great with third-party vendors by integrating them right into Canvas, there is room for improvement on this subject. There are still glitches with certain programs as well as programs that simply do not work well with Canvas.
- The Rich Text Editor is a good selling point for Canvas, however, it could use an upgrade There are features that could be implemented that are not there and it can make designing a dynamic page difficult.
January 10, 2019
Canvas Allows for More Freedom for Educators
Our high school is using Canvas with junior and senior classes to help ease the transition from high school to college. I have been using it since we piloted it, and find it very intuitive and also very customizable. It is a great product to share resources and lesson plans with students while still allowing for individualization.
- Provides a customizable platform where the user can determine the experience for others.
- Allows for integration with many useful services, such as Drive.
- Is fairly user-friendly and you can use only the features you desire.
- The integration with Drive and Gmail could be more intuitive. Originally I found a workaround for this. I am now able to link shared pages, etc, but it still could be more native.
- The interface can seem cluttered at times, so a way to be able to remove or hide features you don't tend to use would be helpful.
- A way to archive courses in a more accessible way would be helpful.
January 09, 2019
Canvas for K-12
LEISD uses Canvas for a myriad of reasons. Teachers use Canvas in their classroom for blended instruction, campus leaders use Canvas to provide information to staff members, district-wide professional learning is also offered via Canvas. Canvas is versatile enough that it has been used to house curriculum, host book studies, and serve as a traditional learning management platform.
- Customer Service--Canvas has great customer service. I have reached out via phone, email, and their help desk and received prompt reliable service each time.
- Training--Canvas and the Canvas Community has a plethora of training materials available for use. These range from documents and"click-sheets" to video tutorials.
- Innovation--Canvas is not content to sit still. New products and enhancements are added.
- One of the big things I would love to see would be a way for students to annotate PDFs or other documents within the Canvas web platform. The app has an option like this, but currently, there is nothing of equal use in the web version.
- It would also be great if students could highlight questions in the quiz portion of Canvas.
January 09, 2019
Canvas is the online learning system for me!
Canvas is being used at the university where I attended. It is used by the university as a Learning Management System for online learning at college. Canvas provides an easy platform as another avenue for teaching and learning where teachers set up their course and students easily navigate through the class. Canvas allows easy communication between the professor and students individually and as a group. Students can submit their work and received feedback from their instructor with ease.
- Canvas is easy to navigate for both the instructor and student.
- Skeptics of online learning claim that it limits the ability of students to communicate with their professor or the social interactions with fellow students. My experience was the opposite. I felt closer to my professors and colleagues because of the diverse ways Canvas allows for communication. There is email, chat options, and ways to set up groups to work together. Professors can add video lectures if needed. I loved the experience.
- Canvas provides various ways for professors to create and set up their courses. Instructors can offer video, links to specific readings (documents), set up groups to work and perform together, and more.
- Canvas allows the business, instructors, and students to design the way it looks.
- Instructors need to take the time to learn all that Canvas allows them to do. If not, the course could be quite dull.
January 09, 2019
Canvas is the learning management system for today's student!
Canvas is the LMS for all of Moberly Area Community College. We are an educational institution, so it provides the service of delivering online, hybrid, and even on the ground course material.
- Speedgrader helps instructors cut down on grading time.
- Provides communication between students and instructors or administrators
- The multitude of media and apps that can be used in Canvas creates an enhanced learning environment for students. We use Turnitin, publisher platforms like Connect and MyLabs, and many other tools that easily integrate and can be accessed from Canvas.
- The new quizzing (quizzes.next) interface needs some work. We need to be able to electronically proctor these quizzes with Lockdown Browser and we cannot do that right now since the quizzes are delivered through the assignments area.
November 03, 2016
Getting Better Every Day
Canvas is used for distance education and for electronic delivery of classroom materials for traditional face to face classes.
- The user interface is clean
- Course design elements make it easier to keep students on task
- Communication tools are easy to use
- The gradebook has some integration challenges with some textbook publisher tools
- Canvas should collaborate with textbook publishers for more robust test banks
September 23, 2016
Canvas = Awesome!
Canvas was used to create a blended learning environment. We also used it to submit all homework and take quizzes.
- Quizzes
- Discussions
- iPad support
- Instructor apps
September 23, 2016
Canvas Review
Canvas is currently being used across the Maricopa Community College District as the primary LMS for all 10 community Colleges. The LMS provides a technology based solution for faculty to deliver classes in several different modalities. Canvas is used both in online and in-person classes, and has been incorporated into nearly every subject.
- Canvas does an excellent job of organizing lessons through the use of modules and HTML options
- Canvas has a fairly straight-forward grade-book that makes grade management easier
- Canvas does a great job integrating other apps and technologies such as MyITlab.
- Canvas's Inbox and messaging system is easy to use and integrates with other messaging platforms
- Speed up the time it takes to navigate between menu options.
- Include more options for modifying test banks, such as listing all details of questions without the need to expand each question to see its answer contents
- Include more options in the WYSIWYG such as font types, active content, and rotating banner capability
September 16, 2016
My Canvas Experience
Our business is a 2 year college. At first, Canvas was intended for use mainly for online instruction. However, because of it's user friendly platform, after a bit of persuasion and faculty input, the academic division decided that all instruction would use Canvas, not only for online, but also for all face to face classes to provide instructional support-grades, testing-(e-tests cut down on the significant cost of paper printing), and for the use of other features, handouts, chat, etc. It is also used by Human Resource services to assess new employee skills and provide info to employees; Canvas is also used by Student Services-to promote clubs and other services, numerous administration and faculty committees use it to discuss, disseminate, and maintain data in one place 24/7; the library uses it to provide information about their services and to obtain feedback about their services-tours, and it is also use as a survey tool by several departments. Nevertheless, the bulk of its use is for instructional purposes.
- Ease of use--it is very friendly and its access from different e-sources-iPad, phone, keeps students and instructors in touch with their course/s any day any time. My returning and new students are able to navigate the platform with ease without getting lost.
- The simplicity of importing content and creating courses makes it ideal for faculty in support of their F2F and online courses.
- Since I over saw the implementation and support side of Canvas, I can say that the technical support to resolve issues was excellent. You have an assigned tech and he/she is very resourceful and the communication is constant. I never had to follow up on issues; they would keep me informed on the developments when we submitted a ticket on a specific course issue that were promptly resolved. I can add that I felt as being part of the Canvas team; I could get on the phone, and there was a live person at the other end....here in Texas.
- Another positive venue was our "migration" from Blackboard to Canvas. Because of Canvas' ease of use, we trained all of our online faculty during the months of June, July, and part of August to get them ready to migrate their courses to Canvas---all 140 plus online sections--more than 90 faculty--for the start of the fall semester. The migration was very favorable and all faculty commented positively to the migration of their course content-as one instructor noted in his training evaluation, "it was a piece of cake."
- I would like to have a drop down menu in Quiz Moderator view so that when I am grading a student quiz, I am allowed to grant the student permission to retake a quiz/test-instead of getting out and having to go to another screen.
I have experience writing course materials in Canvas for Russian language classes. In particular I've been modifying some materials originally written in Blackboard to use in Canvas.
I've also worked in Canvas as a student taking graduate courses online. The institution offering these courses (coincidentally) had also recently made a switch from Blackboard to Canvas.
I've also worked in Canvas as a student taking graduate courses online. The institution offering these courses (coincidentally) had also recently made a switch from Blackboard to Canvas.
- I looks clean and modern.
- "Next" and "Previous" buttons allow for a linear and relatively smooth navigation between pages.
- The video and audio recording tools are easy and fairly intuitive for both teacher and student.
- Canvas is very linear. When working through modules students will not be able to see the border between Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 unless you add numbers to the headings and (even better!) create a "Finished with Lesson 1 / Go on to Lesson 2" page. Also it is awkward to add in any "If you want to know more on this topic..." folders within Canvas. It'd be possible to add a link to an external resource (YouTube playlist, Padlet, Thinglink, GoogleDoc), but you wouldn't assemble those resources within a Canvas page.
- It's not intuitive for students to know where to start. You really need to create a straightforward Homepage in Canvas to give students a point of navigation beyond just clicking the Modules link in the Menu.
- You can't add Menu items, only control which of a number of set items students can see (as opposed to Blackboard where you can create any number of content folders, tool links, web links and keep them in a left hand menu).
- In Discussion boards the indent difference between an original post and a response to that post is basically negligible. When scanning a list of posts, it is hard to take in at a glance which were original posts and which were responses. It makes for a really crowded looking Discussion board.
July 15, 2016
Gibson Canvas Review
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used as the university's primary LMS.
- Ease of use
- Cloud hosting
- Update strategy
- Some areas of the product have poor UX. For example, integration with Turnitin and Kaltura.
- Missing several core features.
- Needs improved analytics.