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 …
Overview
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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Popular Features
- 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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Canvas Demo Slam
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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
Canvas Video
Canvas 101
Canvas Competitors
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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- Pros
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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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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June 19, 2019
Great choice for instructors
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- User-friendly. It is very straightforward to use.
- There are lots of functions at your disposal.
- The layout is aesthetically pleasing.
- There are really any technical issues.
- 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.
January 20, 2019
Canvas is the perfect training system too
- Announcements
- Communication options within the app
- Building of modules
- Random glitches can occur
- Navigation can be tricky
- Being able to go back to previous versions
January 20, 2019
Canvas has been a revelation for our university
- Grade reporting: easy for students to find their grades once posted.
- Analytics on student interaction: now we can view the analytics around how students are interacting with the application and find ways to better serve our students
- Custom notification for course updates: now we are able to create custom notifications for our students when an update is made to a course.
- Mobile app: the mobile app has been a revelation. Now, students can access their course material from anywhere they are.
- 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
January 18, 2019
Canvas is the best LMS currently on the market.
- 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!
- 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
- 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
- Simple to learn
- Simple to deploy
- Simple to make changes
- Continue improving the admin portal interface
- Prevent lost entries sitting on devices
January 16, 2019
Canvas - Our Best Answer to LMS
- Housing online courses.
- Providing analytical data of course usage.
- Organization of course materials.
- Availability of communication with users.
- 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.
January 10, 2019
Canvas LMS: a great way to provide an online course experience!
- 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
- 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
- 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
Ins and Outs of Canvas
- The landing page is very easy to understand and navigate to find courses.
- As an instructor, it is easy to setup my classes to include only the sections I need for my students.
- 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.
January 09, 2019
Canvas is the online learning system for me!
- 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.
- Canvas integrates with 3rd party vendors extremely well. We have multiple vendors and publishers connected to our instance of Canvas. These integrations allow our instructors to use additional tools such as McGraw-Hill Connect, Kaltura, Box, Office 365, Google Drive, and many more to deliver course materials and pass grades back to the Canvas grade book.
- Canvas has a cascading approach to its organizational design. We can manage roles, permissions, LTIs, etc. at the root account level or within any sub-account. Each sub-account inherits its parents’ attributes. Managing all these items is made incredibly easy by leveraging SIS Imports of .csv files.
- Instructure keeps its Canvas documentation up-to-date on the Canvas Community. Canvas Community users share knowledge, offer help, and provide valuable insight into best practices and approaches for everything from administering Canvas to course design.
- Canvas has extremely reliable ‘up time.’ Because Canvas is SaaS-based and hosted in the AWS environment, we have experienced very little down time. In the very rare instances we have had outages, we’re usually back up and running extremely quickly.
- 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.
January 09, 2019
Canvas is the learning management system for today's student!
- 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.
December 08, 2018
Canvas for Customers
- Easy to use and navigate.
- Mobile friendly.
- SCORM compliant.
- No web design knowledge needed.
- Importing images and videos needs to be more user-friendly.
- Rubrics integration and design needs to be more user-friendly.
- iPad/iPhone app is not always easy to navigate.
February 17, 2017
Canvas - A great efficiency tool for the course I teach!
- The "Speedgrader" option is amazing! I can easily grade student papers and the rubrics are built right into the system!
- We do group assignments in my course and I can assign groups electronically and also assign peer evaluation for assignments electronically! It does it all for me and I love it.
- The ability to require "links" for submission is helpful to me when we ask our students to update websites for the course I teach. They submit the link, and I can access their site easily to do my grading!
- I enjoy the ability to view my site from the "Student View" so I know exactly what my students are seeing on Canvas!
- It took me a long time to figure out how to set up my "dashboard." I felt like it should have been easier considering how easy the rest of the program is to navigate.
- When you assign a peer evaluation to an assignment, the peer comments end up in the rubric and you have to erase them to write your own comments.
November 03, 2016
Getting Better Every Day
- 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!
- Quizzes
- Discussions
- iPad support
- Instructor apps
September 23, 2016
Canvas Review
- 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
- 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.
September 16, 2016
Superior product, from the future; today!
- Canvas is student-centered and very easy to use by teaching assistants, faculty, designers and administrators.
- Students love Canvas, it is far superior to the previous learning management system we used.
- We love the fact Instructure, Inc is receptive to feedback, suggestions and recommendations and as result we have an update every 21 days!
- Navigation
- Student-centric interface
- We would like to see an auto-copy template feature, in order to import the course template we designed into all course sites/shells. At present time, there is no such tool.
- 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.
September 06, 2016
Canvas is a stream-lined, intuitive LMS that is setting the pace for others to follow
- Intuitive: The Canvas interface is generally easy to navigate and aligns with students' notions of how a web app should operate.
- Connected: Canvas connects courses, assignments, due dates, calendars, third-party (LTI) resources, and notifications well.
- Simple: The Canvas interface is scaled-down and avoids bloat, making it generally easy to use for both students and instructors.
- Customization: The instructor has some customization options within Canvas, but as with any standard LMS, power users will sometimes wonder why they cannot do things that seem simple.
- Email: Depending on your preference this may be a pro or con, but Canvas tries to operate as its own email client. Though you can also receive notifications whenever students message you, having the separate inbox in Canvas can be confusing for students and instructors, and the conversation threads in a large course can become confusing very quickly.
- Ugly HTML: This is only a critique that power users would have, but like many Web 2.0 systems that use a WYSIWYG interface for content entry, Canvas pages can often yield ugly HTML that does not comply with usability standards, especially if you work with others that are not mindful of these issues. As a result, I often have to edit HTML directly on content pages that have hundreds of unnecessary elements, that incorrectly use tags for layouts, or that do not provide appropriate "alt" or "title" attributes to visual content.
July 15, 2016
Gibson Canvas Review
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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.