Canvas Reviews

I use the Canvas App as a part-time graduate student, and the functionality in the Discussion Board posts is a little off. I have to post discussion board posts often, so I find myself entering the information from my phone sometimes. After one or two sentences, the text lags behind. I'll be 3-4 sentences into a thought, and the text is still finishing the first line. This requires me to stop and let the text catch up, which often breaks my train of thought. I've noticed the same thing on my iPad - so I think it's strictly an App issue.

Canvas has so much to offer, that it can be overwhelming. When I was first assigned as a TA of a course, I had no idea where to start. It's not that Canvas is not user-friendly, but it definitely has a level of understanding that must be done before you can even begin. I wouldn't just assign a student to start using it and assume they could "figure it out", which means that we have to allow for training to be done when we expect anyone to use it. This just means a little more time and energy on the user, which is sometimes not always possible.

Using the People tab within a course is kind of pointless for me. This may be a setting at my institution, but when I look at the "people" in my class, I can't actually contact them. I can pull up their profile, see what sites they are enrolled in, their bio and their "links" - but there is no secure "send message" button from this landing page. I think that is a missed opportunity. I know there are other ways to send messages, but it seems that it would be pretty useful to add a contact button on the people tab.

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.

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

Differentiating for particular students

Setting up groups for the teacher's side of things

Not intuitive

The notification feature could be improved upon as the professor has to put the due date as "midnight" otherwise the assignment will be automatically erased from the platform.

The audio recording feature has its technical issues. I have never been able to use it correctly.

If you send a message to a teacher, there is no record of the message until they write you back.

The Zoom features are confusing.

Not all of the teachers are as tech savvy as the students. This is user error, but more training would be helpful.

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

It would be great if we could deal with multiple assignments at a time.

Better visibility of how students see a course would also be helpful.

Searching for rubrics is really bad. The rubrics from the current course should default to the top. As it now works, the user has to search through every course ever taught to find a rubric.

It's compatibility with Banner

The speed grader could be improved

Extra credit assignment feature would be nice

Journal function

Providing walkthroughs on how to carry out certain tasks could be helpful.

Allowing instructors to use the 'what if scenario' for grades to gauge students' outcomes.

Making profile pictures bigger so they are easier to see.

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.

I would like to see Instructure continue to focus on improving the user interface and functionality for the Canvas roles and permissions. In the summer of 2018, they made vast improvements to this area of Canvas, but they still have a little work to do. I’d like to be able to manage ‘sub permissions’ within the top-level permissions for each role. I’d also like to run a report/export of the roles and permissions, make edits in a .csv editor, and then upload the updated roles/permissions via the SIS Import tool. This would alleviate the time-consuming process of managing roles permissions by hand.

I’d like to see more LTI integrations that are set up like the Box integration. The Box LTI integration is accessible via the user’s profile page and allows the user to access content in Box via a native Box window that is embedded in the page. Most LTIs are only accessible via an actual course. Instructure has the potential to turn the user profile page into a hub that allows the user to jump in and out of multiple apps, whose provisioning and authentication is handled by Canvas

Instructure needs to create a permission that manages the access to a course’s start and dates. At our institution, we have to programmatically hide the start/end dates for courses from instructors, so they don’t open courses early or leave them open after the semester has officially ended. Canvas customers should be able to treat the opening/closing of a course (not the publishing) as an administrative task only.

Canvas admins should also be able to restrict who can control the course visibility and course format functions in the course settings. At our institution, we have committees and processes in place to determine these attributes. Allowing faculty to edit these options creates confusion for students and administrators.

Random glitches can occur

Navigation can be tricky

Being able to go back to previous versions

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.

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.

Instructors need to take the time to learn all that Canvas allows them to do. If not, the course could be quite dull.

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.

It's mobile app needs improvement as it often misses notifications and assignments

It's messaging system is clunky

It's quiz/test interface could offer more advanced settings. It's too basic

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.

Native integration with third-party applications i.e: Zendesk, Salesforce

Sometimes you have to click through many features before you get to what you are really looking for

There is no simple way to add one-sentence reading assignments to a calendar

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.

Data can be difficult to manage - need knowledge of API calls and databases.

Extra products can drastically increase the price.

Development of background structure needs to be done correctly the first time.

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.

I would like to be able to add more creativity to my class page since I work with middle school students. I would like to be able to make it more inviting to keep them engaged.

It can be difficult to navigate between pages when you go into a small group section. There are times when you simply have to go completely out of the class and start over.

We have had difficulty accessing and printing student quizzes after they complete them to be able to include them in portfolios.