CANVAS Reviews

A very powerful platform with a low threshold for adoption and ease of use. Our instructors rave about the intuitiveness of the course builder features and functionality. Since the pandemic, nearly all of the institution's thousands of courses have content online in Canvas - including the traditional in-person classes.

Integration with our student information system required some additional outside services to that students, courses, and grades could be synced in real time in order to give students immediate access once enrolled for the class.

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 Your default home is your published and unpublished courses.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.

If you work in a school or a scientific competition, or if you wish to teach a class, you can use CANVAS. It's an excellent application because the grade book offers an Effective Teaching option for tracking progress against a set of academic criteria. Students and teachers will benefit from this mobile-friendly and easy tool. The largest business would be distance education, although it performs excellently in general.

It can be tough to cope with at first when using the application, and it takes a long time to publish a post on the student page.
Students occasionally carried assessments in the incorrect location and took time to get acquainted with the mobile phone application.

I've mentioned quite a few technological pluses in the rest of this review, but for this particular response I think the most important thing was how friendly the system was. It handled tens of thousands of us constantly logged in at my university, relayed grades instantly, never crashed while administering tests, and simply had an aesthetic layout (using our college colors!) that didn't treat you like a criminal (think of other test monitoring software) or unduly freak stressed students out with how they present grades, feedback, deadlines, and more.

Honestly, I found no faults with the software while using it as either a student or TA. Given the option however, I would have suggested integration options with other, lesser tools we used as TAs such as timesheets and hour submission portals.

Once you learn the software, it is easy to use. There are several tools that are beneficial to both students and teachers, such as Speed Grader, TurnItIn for plagiarism checking, inbox, collaborations, etc. I really like that it lines out the schedule for students (syllabus tab), provides a calendar that has the option to display days that assignments are due, a to-do list for each assignment, etc. Teachers have to put the assignments in, ahead of time, for this to be useful to students, but I've been told many times by students that it makes their lives easier by being able to see everything they have coming up. I also love the ARC video uploader. It allows teachers to see statistics on how many students watched the video and how long they actually watched it. It also gives students an option to leave a comment or question at an exact timestamp in the video.

There are some quirks to Canvas that sometimes require workarounds. An example of this is moderated grading. I have had it somehow get selected, but it does not tell you when it gets selected. Once one student submission has been graded, it will not allow you to turn off moderated grading. You have to go through the process of moderated grading before it will even show grades or comments to students. The inbox also sometimes hides my emails in the spam folder in my Outlook account. It does not do that constantly, but every now and then I will get an email from a student wondering why I haven't responded to an email. I usually find it in my spam folder.

My college has been using Canvas for the last several years. It is so instructor and student friendly. We are able to upload assignments, create videos, and grade with such ease. Also, students are able to navigate the platform very easily.

There are a couple of features that I think could be improved, and they are deleting old emails and sending emails to all of my classes. I wish that I could highlight all of the emails and delete in small batches. Also, it would be great to email several classes at one time.

One thing I love is that unlike Brightspace/D2L, Canvas has continued to develop and gain new features as long as I've used it. I also like how easy it is to transfer course materials from one course to another so that classes I teach each semester, or every other semester, can be easily copied over.

Some of the more advanced/useful features aren't always easy to use, and there isn't great documentation from Canvas. In fact, most of the documentation I've found has been from other university's websites.

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.

As an educator, I am always on the lookout for innovative and effective tools to enhance my teaching and make the learning experience more engaging for my students. I recently started using Canvas by Instructure, and I am thrilled to say that it has exceeded my expectations in every way.One of the things that has impressed me the most about Canvas is its user-friendly interface. Navigating through the platform is a breeze, and the intuitive design makes it easy for both teachers and students to find what they need quickly. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of all my courses, assignments, and announcements, allowing me to manage my classes efficiently and stay organized.The customization options in Canvas are outstanding. I can easily create and customize course modules, assignments, and quizzes to suit the unique needs of my students. The platform also offers a wide range of multimedia options, allowing me to incorporate videos, images, and interactive content into my lessons to make them more engaging and dynamic.The communication features in Canvas are top-notch. I can send announcements, messages, and notifications to my students, facilitating seamless communication and keeping them informed about important updates and deadlines. The discussion boards are also a fantastic tool for fostering collaborative learning and facilitating peer-to-peer interactions.

While Canvas is known for its user-friendly interface, some users, especially those who are less tech-savvy, may find it challenging to learn initially. It may take some time and effort to familiarize oneself with all the features and functionalities of the platform, especially for those who are new to learning management systems (LMS). Although Canvas has a mobile app, some users may find that the mobile version has limitations compared to the desktop version. Certain features, such as complex grading or content creation, may be more challenging or limited on mobile devices, which could impact the ability to manage courses effectively on the go.

The intuitive design features and ease of use are great! You can create a great course in a short amount of time and you can share courses with colleagues for this purpose, too! If you're new to online course design, Canvas is definitely the platform to use. It also has design features for more advanced users that let you customize your content even further. There's definitely something for everyone here - whether your a new online content creator or well-versed.

If I had to pick one thing it would be the actual process of integration of external software. While I love that I can integrate external software, the process is multi-step and counterintuitive. You have to secure permissions (product key or registration number externally) and separately add/activate the software in the settings feature for the course (for EACH course), and a few other steps when you actually want to use the external program in Canvas for an assignment. It does require a bit of setup and patience. The good thing is that once you do it, you're set for the term.

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.

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.

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.