CANVAS Reviews

The first thing I noted about Canvas is that when creating content, the page looks like an MS Word document. This makes creating pages with content easy as the learning curse is very gentle. There is very little need to be technical. It is more a matter of formatting rather than getting to know the software platform itself.

The dashboard is clean and modern with easy navigation on the left sidebar for courses, account information, calendar, inbox and help. Your default home is your published and unpublished courses. On the courses tabs, are announcement and conversation icons that notify if a course has issues you need to attend to in a specific course.

The settings menu is straightforward with nothing cryptic even for non-technical people.

Setting up courses is a breeze with a 'Course Setup Checklist' button available inside each course shell you create. There is a walkthrough for each element of a course from content to publishing your course. If you have an existing course you can simply import the course with several formats supported including but not limited to Blackboard, Moodle and zip. For educators at various institutions, they can just import and customize where the need arises for the different institutions.

Assessment types include quizzes and assignments. It also integrates easily with other services like Google Drive, Office/Docs and others.

Video elements management needs improvement, the thumbnails are poor quality and very small. There is no option to edit them. To get a good visual of Office elements needs embedding the content hosted somewhere else. Natively on the platform PDF and PPT display poorly with just vertical scrolling. Exporting An exported courses from Canvas is in a custom format that is not compatible with other LMS platforms. This makes it hard to move between platforms. There not much customization of learning elements compared to other LMS available. Some of the support documentation is dated and needs updating.

As a returning student attaining an MBA through an online program at a state university, I spent the first several semesters suffering through Blackboard. Like CANVAS, Blackboard is a learning management system used by today's higher education institutions. However, I always found it to be difficult to navigate and challenging to use. Recently, my university switched to CANVAS. I was nervous at first because, while I was no fan of Blackboard, I feared CANVAS might be worse. Thankfully I was completely wrong. CANVAS features a clean dashboard where all of your courses, assignments, grades, discussion boards, and other online learning tools can easily be accessed. It's extremely user-friendly and I had become a skilled CANVAS user in under an hour. I used to dread accessing Blackboard, but now I welcome accessing CANVAS instead.

There is literally nothing to dislike about CANVAS. Even those new to online learning will find it simple to use and extremely flexible.

I feel that the quiz tool is one of the best assets to online learning I've seen in recent years. With our virtual learning system in which back-and-forth conversation (a more traditional lecture style) is not currently possible, the quiz tool allows instructors to gauge student knowledge and understanding of everything taught so far, without requiring a grade for accuracy. So much more powerful than the old-fashioned approach of requiring a weekly forum post to promote "engagement"!

Canvas has a huge variety of learning tools that really enable instructors to customize their teaching styles. Instructors who use it to the best of their abilities really empower their students to learn, even in this crazy virtual world.

The platform can be difficult to navigate at times—it's not a particularly intuitive design—and materials can get lost or overlooked (not a great situation when grades are involved!). In addition, it doesn't always play nicely with certain web browsers or ad blockers. If it's best accessed under certain settings, that should be clearly communicated!

It is easy to see why Canvas is one of the most well-known and well-used learning management systems by schools and colleges across America. Its simple customizable interface, mobile app, and many integrations are definitely a step up from moodle, blackboard, and other more common systems of a generation ago. I have used it both as a student and as a teacher. I appreciate its robust features (discussion boards, file integration, quizzes, announcements, custom pages, assignment options, html design). Classes are usually organized via pages and the "modules" page which allows the building of a customized course flow. If there is something you want to be able to post to your class website Canvas probably makes it possible, and most features have many options. Your online assignment settings can be highly customized with settings such as when the assignment in visible, what kind of submissions and documents are accepted, and what category of grade the assignment is. Likewise the online quiz/test maker is fairly robust, allowing for most question types, has some auto-grading capabilities, and offers taker-friendly features like question flagging, test timer, and unfinished question reminders. Perhaps one of its best features is its plug-ins. Canvas works with other popular providers to integrate their products into Canvas. Our school uses the very well-designed Zoom plug-in for scheduling and posting recordings for our virtual classes as well as others including WebEx and Kaltura.

While Canvas is an excellent learning management system it is far from perfect and there is still definite room for improvement. The main feature I have found frustrating is its navigation. There is no universal back button which means that rather than easily going back to a previous page you have to use a combination of your web browser back button and the course menu. Each course has a helpful customizable sidebar with major navigation links, but this is not "sticky" and so you may need to be scroll to find it on longer pages. While the online quizzes/tests are a step up for many platforms, like google forms, but not as robust as such an important feature could be. Matching questions have no easy way to tracked used answers, which can make questions with many options harder to track. Adding alternative answers for fill-in-the-blank questions can be cumbersome. Not all plug-ins are of equal quality either, but this is probably at least partly the responsibility of the developer. The mobile app works well in general but occasionally I have seen issues such as auto-rotating video screens or issues with certain quiz questions.

The platform is very easy and flexible to navigate so, you can be sure that you’ll never be lost while searching for the material you need. Besides, you can add text, upload pictures and videos without difficulty. In addition to this if you know how to work with HTML code you can have the design you like. The next thing that I like about Canvas is that you can communicate with your teacher and fellow students easily. You can send an email to your teacher or start a chat with your classmates. Canvas is used by educational institutions for two purposes: either for creating courses that are taught exceptionally online or for blending the traditional way of teaching with online one. This platform is especially useful for students who always need to find all the material on their course online, including the textbooks, lectures, homework, individual works and of course, their grades and attendance. Canvas makes collaboration between teachers and students more effective and fruitful.

It is fascinating to know that the Canvas app is available on mobile devices. However, the app needs some improvements because some features are still not available there and notifications sometimes don’t pop up.
The platform successfully cooperates and works with third-party vendors. However, I should mention that some programs do not work well and obviously they need to get improvements.
And finally, there sometimes some glitches may occur but I wish the platform could work more smoothly.

1) Easy to use as a teacher. Once you get the schema of how the software works and accept its ways and limitations, then you can really use it to your advantage within that framework.
2) Integration with other softwares. Canvas integrates with many other LTI providers, but everyone is slightly different, so you need to be willing to pay the price to learn how to integrate things carefully.
3) Speedgrader is nice. I've seen better ones in other LMSs, but Canvas Spreedgrader is pretty good.
4) Training and support. You can find, if you search carefully, tons of training resources for Canvas.

1) It's easy to create things that clutter your course, system almost without knowing.
2) The assessment engine is quite limited. The new quiz engine is still too buggy to use and has been way overdue.
3) I hate that there is not an autosave feature, specially when building quizzes. More than once, I accidentally save the quiz without saving the individual question and loose a ton of work.
4) It's almost impossible to find your grades across multiple courses. You have to go to each course individually and click several places at that.

Canvas from an administrator side is incredibly easy to work with. Installing addons takes just seconds in comparison to the fear I experienced in installing anything in Blackboard, and the confusion I experienced trying to set anything up in D2L.
One of the deciding factors in moving forward with Canvas was ease of use for our faculty and students. If Canvas was not easy to use our transition would have been near impossible.
It's mobile app is excellent for students and they are in the middle of improving their faculty mobile app now.
They have an incredible Community that has asked most of the questions you have and someone has provided the answer you're looking for. There are also folks that create customizations and share those with everyone to help improve your workflows. They also let you in on the development process and share with your their progress and let you beta test things for them.
I love having a beta server, test server and production server to work with that is always up to date.
Lots to love about Canvas.

There are some features that are lacking from Canvas that we are attempting to work around or build customizations for.
1. Set Discussion boards to need grading after x number of posts. Right now it says it needs to be graded after the first post and will not notify the instructor once they have submitted the required amount of posts. This isn't as big of an issue when there are due dates but a majority of our courses do not have due dates.
2. It's Outcomes capabilities are lacking. They have plans to improve on this but it may be awhile.
3. They are releasing a new quizzing tool in 2018 which we are excited for but are worried about how we will need to go about migrating quizzes.

We use the Free for Teacher edition. When it comes to setting up courses, having assignments, files, students, deadlines, and grades set up, it's pretty simple. Not a lot of trouble getting things put together. You can integrate videos, there's a conference capability called Big Blue Button that allows all the members of the course to video in with each other and you can share screen and everything. It has been a big help allowing our students to have a portal to do their assignments, and connect with everyone in the class.

One of the nuances to Canvas that is difficult is limiting what teachers can see. By that I mean we have two different types of courses that we run.

One is an individual cohort of a few students and a director. The only way to make these closed down to just these members is to create a duplicate of the course and put those members in. Not a terrible thing, but then the courses start to stack up with all the different cohorts you have going. Plus, there's not really a way to have any updates filter down into all the same semester courses. So if we want to make an update on Semester 1, we have to go into each individual course and update it. There's also no way to update deadlines when you copy a course. So I have to change every assignment's due date so it fits in the new semester's timeline.

The other kind of course that we have is an open course that anyone can jump into, and then we assign a TA to grade certain students. The problem with this is that there's no way to limit the TA's view of who is in the course. So it shows them that there are dozens of students' work that needs to be graded in their To-Do List and makes it difficult for them to know when their assigned students have actually submitted anything. Haven't been able to find a work around for this yet.

Advanced education instruments that play pleasantly with others.

Rubrics. Modules. Schedules. Plans. Tests. Prospectuses. Investigation. Speed Grader! (Signal heavenly messengers singing.) Canvas has so many master bang includes that will add flair to your courses. Furthermore, we could go on and on about the combinations. The Canvas API pals straight up with apparatuses like Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Adobe, and many other innovation accomplices to convey one brought together learning center point.

Instructors are influential individuals doing significant, groundbreaking things. Material doesn't impede that-it simply makes those significant, Canvas is groundbreaking things more straightforward to do and simpler to share.

1. Communication Tools: CANVAS has robust communication tools that allow me and students to easily communicate. This includes messaging, discussion boards, and video conferencing.2. Integration with Third-Party Tools: I can integrate CANVAS with a wide range of third-party tools, such as Google Drive, YouTube, and Dropbox. This makes it easy for me to incorporate multimedia into their courses and for students to submit assignments.3. Analytics and Reporting: CANVAS provides me detailed analytics and reporting features that allow to track student progress, identify areas where students are struggling, and adjust my teaching strategies accordingly.

1. Limited Customization: I have found that it is not as flexible as other learning management systems. This can be a challenge for teachers who want to create highly customized courses.2. Technical Issues: Like any online platform, CANVAS can experience technical issues that can disrupt the learning experience. For example, I experienced slow load times and difficulty accessing certain features.3. Lack of Mobile Optimization: I have found that it is not as fully optimized as they would like. This can be a challenge for students who want to access course materials on their mobile devices.

As a student who used to use Blackboard, I immediately saw Canvas' UI and overall look-and-feel as a huge upgrade. I like that it's based on modern UI design patterns, with features like the sidebar and the single flush column of content. It makes the web app inviting and fun to use for young students like me who are on their phone for most of the day.

One relatively minor feature that I greatly appreciate is the in-app PDF previewer, which saves me from wasting time having to download the file or opening it in a new tab and cluttering my workspace. Just this feature alone was enough to show me that Canvas' developers really had the end-user in mind.

One last big net positive I want to mention is the integration with the mobile app. It's great! Notifications show up on time and don't duplicate or perform other wonky stuff. Having a seamless experience between desktop and mobile goes a long towards making students like feel in control of their learning.

While there's a lot to like about the UI, I do have some minor grievances with it in a few places. The one thing that really stands out is how some blue links are clickable but don't actually do anything. For example, discussion threads have a clickable subtitle that shows which Lecture Section they're intended for. If it's for "All Sections", then clicking on it does absolutely nothing. I know this is a minor nitpick, but you would not believe how many times I've ended up accidentally clicking on that link intending to go the discussion board.

Canvas is a great organizing tool. Some pros include the following: a calendar with due dates, to-do list, easy to use, tabs that is very easy to locate, the what if feature, easy to communicate with teachers, pleasing to the eye, has a mobile app, coming up assignment features, viewing files without downloading them, break down of your grade, and very simple. With this system, I did not have the need to buy a planner to write down all my assignments.

There is not too much I dislike about the system. Though the system is very organized, if the instructor does not put the files in an organized manner it can be hard to seek the desired files. In addition, there are some times where canvas can be very difficult to use as you have to click different features to get to the desired file. In addition, for the discussion page, it would be super helpful if the reply comments could be in a file with the original comment of the discussion board. In one class, we have weekly discussions and the students of that subjects has to write a powerpoint to explain a character that defines it and the student who did not create that has to write comments for it. At first it was not much but later became very hard to locate the different power point comments due to the immense amount of reply comments.