CANVAS Reviews

I've used a couple of alternatives both as a student and as an educator and this has by far the best user experience. This one helps going straight to what you need to do with it. I like how it doesn't try to add a lot of functionality that no one will ever use. The features it has are great and the way to access them just makes sense. When we changed to Canvas, we all agreed at my institution that it was one of the best decisions we have ever taken.

I would like to have the option as an admin to disable some features. Take forums as an example, my students use social media for pretty much anything or some other stuff. That fact that forums are there is nice, but if you won't ever use it, I would like to be able to remove it.

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.

Some help as a company to be synchronized in our continuing education

Since in my experience everything has been pros but I could say that perhaps the page could be a little more dynamic the home page

Learning & Teaching: Various useful features, e.g., upload/download files, page creation, announcement and discussion and valuable apps containing ubiquitous tools, like MS Team meetings, Panopto, Vimeo, YouTube, Dropbox etc.

Assessment: Huge variety of Quizzes, secured quizzes, quizzes SWOT statistics, lockdown browser, Assignments, anti-Plagiarism tools, Moderation, Marker Allocation, Grades,

Research: Conferences, collaborations, Canvas digital forum support.

Assessment of students: sorting may not be sync'd with local university database. i.e., downloaded grades and university's marksheet contains names of students starting differently. Imaging if you have 300+ names! this causes sorting issues while assessing online.

Quizzes are great but cannot create duplicate questions, some time academic need this feature. Also because quiz question can be an Essay therefore, this type of assessment must include anti-plagiarism tool (i.e., Turnitin etc), not available in Quizzes but only in Assignments.

Reference Manager and Library tools are not available but can be added, e.g., Talis, StudyNet etc. These features are necessary for cognitive learning and cresting your own Library does help. I need to use either Endnotes or Mendeley as an external app on my desktop or on cloud.

Its good to use integrated Email tool but its not linked to outlook or other email app. I cannot send email to other people outside my module, i.e., cannot do cc to manager, examiner etc but I need to permanently add in the list of people.
Also cannot add images etc in text but can attach files. Also cannot format the text but just plaintext is allowed. You cannot add http link to a text.

What I like most about Canvas is that it’s very user friendly and very easy to use, checking on assignment due dates from my phone is something I do everyday when I’m enrolled in classes.

Something I don’t like about Canvas is that whenever the app for Canvas is updating it takes a while to update and things don’t load properly.

When I use Canvas, I enjoy its ease of use and flexibility for taking online courses. It also offers a wide variety of features for teachers, such as content creation, assessment management, and student communication. In addition, the platform can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, which is very convenient for me as a student.

As a user, I have noticed that navigating the platform can sometimes be confusing and difficult to understand. In addition, there may be occasional bugs and errors that can affect the user experience. Finally, some users may also find that the features offered by Canvas are limited compared to other similar platforms.

It’s convenient. The app is a plus for any student

We would difficulty uploading documents when the software wasn’t working

In Canvas, everything just offers excellent course administration tools, message boards, and other valuable resources for educators. I find the quizzes to be the most helpful. Students' quizzes can be automatically graded, have restricted access, permit numerous attempts, and contain a wide variety of question formats.

Customer support appears to be underperforming in terms of client responses.

Canvas is universal. It is organized and easy to use on the end of educator and student.

The app should prompt for permission sharing with google related integrations.

I think one of the most useful tools about Canvas is the student portal allowing access to assignments past and present.

Canvas can be user friendly but some features can be confusing at first. with time of using it becomes easier.

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.

What I love most about Canvas' software was how simple and easy it is to use. It is the one platform that I have used for six-to-seven years that has allowed me to feel connected to my fellow students and professors most even during classes that were strictly online. It has options like a calendar that automatically shows you all of your assignments on their due dates a weekly and monthly glances. It has neatly color-coded panels that allow you to divide up and access your courses easily. It even has a built-in grade book so students can manage their grades, estimate their overall course grade using the built-in grade estimation system so they aren't in the fark about their grades the whole semester. It even has a feature where students can email other students and teachers directly through Canvas and a system where students can record themselves saying their name so it won't be mispronounced! There are so many other tools to name and I love that so very much about Canvas. For its inexpensive price, accessibility, and variety of tools, I would wholeheartedly recommend Canvas to any school or teacher to use.

While it's hard to pick out something that I didn't like about Canvas, I would say that the test and assessment grading system could use some improvement. It's a challenge for students and teachers alike to enter numerical equations that require certain formats such as scientific notation, for example, and it would be wonderful if that could be improved for future use. Even so, Canvas still has a great grading system for other courses that do not require equations and such so I still very much recommend it to anyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Canvas is a flexible learning management platform that integrates well with zoom, panopto, proprietary websites, and more. It helps students take exams and submit homework with reliable automatic grading and robust grade calculations. It does a good job at providing an efficient interface between teacher and learner, and helps students make better study habits. Very happy user of CANVAS

The biggest drawback of using canvas is easily the possibility that an administrator doesn't set their course up efficiently. However, this is no fault of the platform itself as many make it perfectly easy to use and reliable.

Mostly I like the To Do list set up. This greatly helped me keep track of assignments, when they were do and what new ones were coming up. I could also just click right on the link and would be taken directly to the assignment. It was also very helpful that each to do list was separated into its own class. I was able to stay organized because of this feature. I also loved that there is a mobile app so I can check in with my assignments, grades or inbox wherever I am.

During my classes there is an option to have your grades be shown in the corner of the class box. On the app I had to repeatedly keep checking that I wanted my grades to be shown. Every time I would log back into CANVAS my preference would change. This did get frustrating because I prefer having my grades somewhere easy to keep an eye on instead of always having to go through the menu steps and switching between grade books in my classes to see my grade.

This platform provides the best tools to expose information and constantly train our support staff, it is these students who benefit from the easy integration of CANVAS that allows them to understand much of the information guide that we want to teach them, there are many benefits when you have a program that would train you with the new co-workers who request an opportunity to operate within the company, imparting the knowledge that could be reinforced thanks to the support of this program, I really like how practical and dynamic each one of the projects that are taught by this means, this with the aim of approving the student body to reinforce their skills in this area, CANVAS is undoubtedly one of the best spaces where it allows us to teach order and administrative efficiency when working and performing in our company.

This program may be a bit basic, this is because the tutorials and guides for its users may be very limited, having the opportunity to further expand its functions in other areas, that is, it may be a bit more versatile for the training of other types of more complex programs that require more practice and theory before implementing them in the company, the potential that this program has is very great, although it also does not have the integration of more common programs in the use of administrative offices, this can be a great point that play against them.

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.

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.

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.

This software is great for keeping courses all in one place and adds easy communication between instructors and students. As well as communication between students themselves is easy and straightforward. Being able to have quizes, assignments, and anything else from the course on Canvas makes it neat and organized. Also, the customization within the app makes it great for unique use cases.

Recently I was having an issue with a footer banner when testing in "student view". The banner sits on top of some of the navigation buttons from the left side and therefore hides them. I used to be able to double click on it to hide the banner, but a recent update makes it so that additional steps have to be taken to hide this banner. It has made it inconvenient to click on the button that I need to access from the navigation bar.

I have been using canvas regularly for all my graduate classes. It has been the epicenter/hub for the instructor and all other students to come together and create a intuitive learning environment. Things I really like with canvas:
- Discussions and Help Forums
It's so easy to post questions in canvas and ask the professor and other students for help or clarifications. my graduate classes are pretty demanding and requires lot of back and forth with the instructor. But imagine if every student asked the instructor the same questions over and over again. On canvas I can see other student's questions and responses so it's like big FAQ hub.
- Easy to navigate Contents
All of the contents such as lecture slides, videos, homeworks, grades etc are in one location under different tabs. It has been organized properly and I don't have to click 100 times to get tot the page I want.
- Interaction with other students
I think this is what differentiates Canvas from moodle and what I have used in the past. This platform is very much student geared and student centered. It is there to help students interact with each other and learn from each other.

Canvas is not perfect though if you are not an expert user or instructor.
- Many times instructors said the contents are released but it wasn't
- The grades accumulation does not always makes sense
- Very much dependent on how the instructor has laid out contents.
- Redundant information
- Not always user friendly. Does take a while to get adjusted to it