Canvas Reviews & Product Details

The array of features it allows you to work with. Virtually everything you would ever need in an online class platform is offered by Canvas. You can keep a grade book, send messages, create group discussion boards, give out assignments as well as have students turn them in, and even submit take home exams that can be automatically graded.

Not a whole lot to dislike about Canvas. I do wish as an instructor you could use the 'what if scenario' tool in order to see what grades students will receive based on certain performances on assignments. This is a very handy tool that students can use to gauge their potential grades in a class.

give it a try if you are looking for an online learning/teaching platform. It is straightforward and the students tend to really like it.

I have used Canvas for the past two school years in every single one of my classes and have never had any issues with it. It is user-friendly and organized. I couldn't imagine an online platform doing much better than Canvas.

Canvas is an intuitive LMS that offers good customer service and many free add-ons. Learners really enjoy how easy it is to use and find the content they are looking for. The use of colors can help many learners. There is an option to email learners that have missed an assignment to encourage them to complete their work. There is also the opportunity to improve the product as you use it and receive feedback from different stakeholders.

At times, Canvas can be slow to download and the downtime can be annoying. Updates often happen at times users are using the product so it may impact productivity somewhat. Also, some of the features are not default features and there is a need to use add-ons that are not always free.

Good and reliable platform with competent customer service. There is also a blog where people can exchange ideas on how to use the platform in the most efficient way. I have found options through that blog.

Canvas offers great customer service and an intuitive platform. Creating content for L&D is easy, and users can find that content in an effective and efficient way. We used a different platform before Canvas and learners have been pleased about the change. Now, it is faster, more reliable, easier to use and more visually appealing. It is important to offer a platform that learners find appealing: They will more likely use it!

I like this system because it allows me to share and teach my students all the knowledge that I have been able to accumulate over the years, so I can interact directly with the students, establishing tasks according to the respective lessons learned. It allows me as a teacher to be able to establish learning methods, tasks and assessments in a flexible way, seeking to adapt to the time that each person taking my courses has.

This system has a very friendly interface, with some very useful tools that I have not seen in another platform. Being able to manipulate this system does not require much effort and technological knowledge since it is very versatile and fast.

I have been using this system for a while and it still seems to me an excellent tool, I have no complaints about this system, since I think it is very complete and designed with a unique precision.

Definitely, I highly recommend this program and I firmly believe that it should be used by the largest number of universities and educational institutions worldwide.

Thanks to Canvas I have been able to develop myself better as a teacher, since being able to impart knowledge through this system requires having a high level of teaching and pedagogy, looking to them for our students to quickly learn the lessons, this system has also facilitated the interaction between students in which they have been able to share experiences and interesting discussions according to the different topics seen in class.

I feel very satisfied, since I have seen the growth of my students throughout the use of this system, it is very interesting to be able to meet people who like to learn and apply the knowledge learned.

I like that it is easy to use. it gets the job done. There are times that I am able to look at the grades and assignments at the same time.

it can be hard to log in sometimes and other times it can be difficult to get to a screen. I do not like that I am not able to reply to only one person when doing my discussion board posts because I have to reply to other posts and it is frustrating when there are more posts than what is warranted.

It is a great product. it really helps with getting work done and it shows in how the program works.

it has made it easier to get work done. i am able to get my assignments completed in a timely fashion and look at the calander without leaving the site. it is easier for me to look at each event an have an idea of what work needs to have been completed or what work needs to be completed for the week previous and the week ahead.

All courses are displayed in one place and it's easy to see assignments, grades and attendance.

Some completed courses remain which are no longer needed. Some completed courses disappear and you can no longer view the grades - perhaps final grades could be posted in a separate section. It would also be good to view course credits - how many we've completed and how many we need to graduate etc. I dislike that attendance is graded as an assignment - perhaps attendance could be a separate marking system within canvas as well.

Make sure all professors use this system if it's part of the institution's online system. If a few opt not to use canvas it becomes very frustrating for students trying to locate learning materials.

Communication about tasks and assignments is very clear and easy. Viewing course materials is easy and also great for reading uploaded music from an iPad in practical classes.

Canvas is great way to manage your students' learning.It is the one shed for all the lessons resources, submitting assignments online,grading and providing all feedback.It offered way we approach to our teaching styles to next superior level making an new experience for learning.It allows each teacher a great flexibility to design the online course material in the way that fits their need.

Canvas is a great tool but takes some time to learn.Besides, it personal messaging section can be improved.Rest everything looks good and there is no such problem is being faced till now.

As a teacher I absolutely recommend all to work on it at least for once Beside the fact that it is hard to adapt every teacher must try this tool.It comes with various of load reducing features which is very helpful in teaching and learning.

As a teacher Canvas has been very useful in providing wonderful content and assessment instrument.Range of quiz option is vast with multiple choices.It has also mastered in managing all my assignments in order and organised students and instructor together.

Canvas is a really easy to use system, with tools and features all located where you'd expect to find them. Resulting in a very short learning curve to get used to the system. The reliability of the system is also a great positive to the system, I have experienced very little down time at all within our 18 months of having access to the system.

There is very little to dislike to be honest. My only real "gripe" is around grouping/sections. It is only possible to allocate assignments to certain groups within a space, there are many times that our academic community would like to assign certain teaching units/materials to certain groups and that so far has proved not to be possible.

I'd highly recommend any educational institution to choose Canvas, it's reliable, intuitive and developing all the time!

We have implemented Canvas as our VLE and use this to teach our students both on campus and distance learning. It allows us to give all our students the same level of teaching no matter where they are in the world. One of the biggest benefits we have seen with Canvas over our previous VLE is the ability to really automate things and reduce the number of support calls we (University Learning Technologists) have to deal with. It is possible to link in numerous external tools via API/LTI which allows the VLE to become the hub of all learning.

It is undoubtedly a tool that greatly facilitates the organization of didactic material. It is very easy to keep track of the subjects and the academic load in general. Likewise, it is useful as a tool for discussion of the topics seen in classes. As a student, I was really satisfied with the use of this platform as the professors were very organized and uploaded daily material that complemented what was said in class. It was very easy to use and keep track of personal progress in each class. Likewise, it is an ideal platform to clear up doubts with the teacher since they used to be attentive to any questions that the students asked.

Mail notifications should be a little more explicit. In some occasions, the notifications received in the mail were not linked to the correct content or simply not all the notifications were received while other users received them. Also, I think the interface could be much more intuitive and direct. At times, the branches of the directories of the uploaded files are very confusing. Finally, I think that if an internal chat and a tool for group elaboration and collaboration of documents can be incorporated, it would be great.

To be able to have all tasks sent in digital in an orderly manner is really useful for our purposes. All of this facilitates the process of evaluating and reviewing student progress.

Canvas is very easy to use as a teacher, student and administrator. It has lots of documentation to show you how things work and can be customised in many different ways. We like that we can provide Single Sign On using SAML. If there are functions that Canvas itself cannot provide, you can easily bolt an LTI tool into the system to provide the desired functionality. Canvas is constantly a work in progress. Instructure consider the requests of all their users and are always working to improve user experience. There is a 3 weekly development cycle in which new features are incrementally released in an Agile development cycle so the next new change can be less than 3 weeks away.

There are some undocumented features which are not clear. The permissions are very difficult to manage and maintain as many of them are bundled together as "create, edit and delete" permissions so you cannot give someone permission to create records (courses, assignments, announcements, etc.) without also giving them permission to delete them. We don't like that the Blueprint functionality cannot be nested. We also would like our courses to be nested so we could nest modular courses into course structures.

Consider who will need to manage and administer the product. Who decides how quickly your institution will adopt new features released by Canvas?

We use Canvas for many different things, the primary one being to provide web-accessible content and resources to our students for their studies with us. We are also using Canvas courses to create community spaces for students and staff to share information and have discussions.

The ease of use as an administrator. Being an admin using Canvas is far better and much more clear than ever! It's great to see the community feedback as well as the development team taking action regarding certain requests for improvements. I love the written / video guides too, they are a massive help for not just me as an admin, but for other members of staff too.

There's nothing that I dislike! If I had to mention one thing, it would be better if assignments could be muted by default upon creation, a future update providing this would be brilliant!

Perfect VLE for eLearning and offers an intuitive way of learning. Canvas has just about everything and it's easy to use whilst efficient!

Assisting academics with their creation of modules and units, training members of staff so that they are confident in utilising all of the features in Canvas so that their students can have the best learning experience there is.

Canvas is really flexible. This is the one characteristic that stands out for me and I feel that the name of the product is apropos. You can tailor make the content to suit the needs of individuals. We have managed with the product to create content that is suited to individuals, groups and which is adaptable so that it enables continuous content development and improvement.

I have just tried getting to grips with Canvas data. I accept that this is a complicated process; however, I felt that the user experience could be better. The issue is that after spending 10-15 hours learning how to use Canvas data I still could not get what I wanted and the exports seemed to be missing large chunks of vital data. If the portal and process cannot be simplified, is there any training support that can be accessed other than guides written with a great deal of assumed knowledge implied?

Engage fully with the training and allow time for colleagues to experiment and play with the tool, trying all kinds of possibilities before committing to an implementation plan. Throughout this period nurture a creative culture and celebrate those who integrate no matter how little they manage. Have a change management strategy in place with buy in from the highest levels in your organisation.

We are evolving educational practices in a key area of restorative justice, prison education. This service provision is extremely behind technologically and Canvas will be the missing link that allows us to move forward into modern digital practice. Canvas will help us to embed digital literacy, save time, save money, improve engagement and the learner experience. It enables us to apply blended learning models so that success and differentiation is improved with individually focused playlists for learning and subsequent data and analytics which can be used to inform practice.

Our institutional move to Canvas has supported a real shift in the manner in which we facilitate learning, design our assessments and moderate student group working. Not only did Canvas enable us to realise our curriculum design plans, it also offered us opportunities to rethink the way we approached our teaching; offering students enhanced and enriched learning experiences.

I think I'm only now just pushing at the boundaries of Canvas functionality, as it has met all of our learning and teaching needs, over the last 18 months. Perhaps, when marking and feeding-back to students a larger pop up 'comments' section with better formatting options would be really useful.

If you'd like to be part of a community pf practitioners, using a VLE that will likely meet all of your learning and teaching needs and have excellent support on hand - then move to Canvas, I can highly recommend!

The moderation of student group working was a priority for us (on our online course), so the 'Canvas Groups' functionality has met all of our needs. We can check student engagement, see evidence of their group working skills and facilitate iteration, dialogical feedback specific to each group... amazing!

I use Canvas every day to organize my classes. I put all my lesson plans and materials on it, and students upload their work directly into Canvas. We all use the calendar function to keep track of due dates and assignments, and I can send announcements that go to their school email.

There aren't many things I dislike, but it could be more intuitive in design. We had some training on how to use it; otherwise, I would not have found all the features.

I don't know what Canvas costs, as I was not the purchaser, but everyone (students, staff, faculty) uses it so constantly that I think it's a good investment.

It's allowed me to go entirely paperless as a teacher! Instead of wasting tons of paper making copies of materials, I upload all of it to Canvas so students can view on their school laptops.

We love the ease of use for our staff and students, the 99% uptime, the responsiveness of their support team and our account manager, and Instructure's commitment to improvement.

We also use Canvas in an unusual way, as far as roles, sections, and permissions go, due to having staff in pastoral roles, that many schools do not. Canvas worked with us to find a way to set up our staff that gave them access to what they needed in an unconventional way.

There are some features we would like (broader overview of student grades for certain roles, for example) that have not and probably will never be implemented due to US laws - as a UK school, these don't affect us and it's frustrating to have the US market dominate concerns

As a fully online school, Canvas is essential to us! It's how we provide students their coursework, receive and mark their assignments, and communicate with them. The range of tools and also LTIs available allow to create interesting, interactive and fun courses for students.

We've grown by more than 100% in 3 years, and tools such as Blueprint help us to maintain consistency.

Canvas provides with a very flexible and modulair Learning Management System. Not only for the day-to-day basic stuff but also for empowering our (extremer) open didactical vision. It's not locked to vendor specific features, but it embraces open-source thinking and facilitating open standards like LTI, IMS, REST API, xAPI, open source code, etc.

Canvas had some issues adopting the more European way of operating, but they are progressively are changing their business to suit a more global approach for the product and their services. This takes ofcourse time in a growing market.

Great LMS, with the occasional quirks (which other vendors also have), but high level of customisation, open interoperability with other software platforms. Easy to manage and a lot of insight for administrators, teachers AND students.

Canvas streamlines our educational processes with a all-in-one solution of publishing educational material but also receiving assignment work. It speeds up the proces of grading and keeping the overview of the learning progression of learners.

I think that canvas is a very reliable learning management system (LMS) when compared to others such as Blackboard, it is more cost effective . I like the ability of creating videos from within the system . Sharing videos in Canvas works flawlessly and encourage collaborative sharing with students . I think that this kind of LMS helps student and instructors have a great learning experience.

As any other technology some technical difficulties may come up, institutions may need to have a staff ready to solve these problem . Also note that institutions running Canvas may need to install third party tools to enable some features such as gamification.

I recommend that institutions do a comparison between several systems in order to choose the right product. For education the process may include a trail setup and then surveying students and faculty for their likes and dislikes.

Canvas is a good solution for online learning engaging large number of students.

I really like the ability to have students submit their homework through Canvas. It makes it easy to store online file submissions in one location, rather than having to save them to a laptop or other online data base.

One thing that can be a little tedious to deal with is the amount of clicks it takes to get to somewhere. There are no short cuts. This is difficult to deal with especially when I have multiple courses I have to navigate through.

It is an easy product to use, regardless of computer skills. The move from one course page to the next is seamless.

One business problem that has been solved using Canvas is the ability to complete professional development and have all of the evidence of completion stored in one location

Its a simple and intuitive platform where you can submit assignments, take polls, display grades, make announcements and have discussion. Its a complete solution for managing an academic course in a big university with a large number of students.

The discussion section and personal messaging can be improved upon. Rest, everything looks quite good. There seems to be a bug related to unread announcements/discussion thread. Even if you read it, it still shows that its unread. That is frustrating sometimes as an user of platform.

Its a very good platform for managing your academic coursework and classes. I highly recommend it for usage in your university/course.

I use Canvas as a student and an Graduate Teaching assistant in my university. As I said, its very simple and intuitive. Its a complete package providing all thing necessary for managing a big class. Its proved to be a very good platform so far and I am happy with using it for my courses. The provision for statistics of grades is quite useful. Also the feature of accepting multiple submissions and maintaining the activity history is useful for students.

My favorite aspect of it is the calendar. It organizes all my assignments very easily, and displays everything in a linear fashion. This prevents me from forgetting anything, and it easy to import into google calendar as well.

The grading system can be a little weird at times, especially when there are many instructors within the same class. However, I feel this may be more of a user error (a fault with the professor), as opposed to the software.

IF you are setting up a class on Canvas, please do not put all the professors and TAs under one segment, we will receive notifications from ALL of them. Just my opinion as a student user

It organizes all the students and instructors together very well. It organizes all my assignments very easily, and displays everything in a linear fashion. This prevents me from forgetting anything, and it easy to import into google calendar as well.

I like that it provides a straightforward organization among the different tabs, classes, and modules of each class. There is an email tab that connects with that of the organization of the school and it just makes everyone's tasks easier and faster throughout a smooth platform. It provides a smooth experience while making it fun for children and adults who use this software.

Getting used to using the tabs and panels is confusing at the first time, but it is about dedicating some time to become comfortable with them. It is also complicated when having too many classes and understanding the preview of an assignment on the calendar.

As a creator of your own teaching style, there is plenty of options to customize and make use of every tab that Canvas has to offer. It can facilitate your work in many ways, only if you dive into it and make the most out of an amazing site.

I use Canvas as an online learning platform through which I submit assignments, respond to quizzes, stay updated with announcements from professors and emails from both professors and students.

I like the ability to easily create quizzes and customize those exams. It's easy to add a password or IP restriction for exam security. You can also easily add time to exams for accommodations. It's very easy to set up assignments as well. The speed grader works well and the grade book is very handy.

When designing the course the controls are not very intuitive. It's hard to figure out how to set everything up without assistance from someone like an instructional designer.

When switching from Blackboard to Canvas, may faculty members complained about the change. Some still complain more than 6 years later. Overall though, Canvas has greatly improved the quality of our instruction.

Our university uses Canvas for every course both online and face to face. It is used for instruction, grading, and communication.

Canvas is a highly intuitive platform. Teachers rapidly assimilate the necessary skills to deliver effective learning. Equally our students report high levels of satisfaction and find Canvas works for them. The company deliver a standardised tool for online learning that does not constrain teachers or seek to steer them toward a single pedagogy/ style of teaching.

I have no strong dislike. It is important to recognise that Canvas is pedagogy neutral. It is for your team to decide how you will use the platform. The great thing is that once the vision is established then you will have a tool for delivery.

Canvas is highly scaleable and supports an agile solution to online schooling. Audit tools and integrations promote synergy and the presentation of learning to our students is outstanding.

Canva is very user friendly for all ages. The left panel provides easy access to all pages and options in the class in Canva.

Discerning where specific items are located can be difficult if one does not interpret the options correctly. The options use jargon that is not frequently used in brick and mortar classrooms (like "modules"), so this can be confusing for new users.

Canvas is a great way to assign Professional development to adults in the workforce. They provide an asynchronous way to learn content. As a creator, you can manage assignments, grading, and projects in a class section.

My business uses Canvas as a platform for online learning. It is a way to create assignments, quizzes, modules, and more to assign individually or to a class. Canvas is easily used by all students of all ages- children and adults! It is great to use for professional development as well.

Of all the programs available as support tools for teachers, this one is by far my favorite. For each class I teach, I can create modules for each unit of curriculum. Within each module, I can upload documents, notes, web links, and even create assignments. In addition to creating modules, I can create tests and quizzes. All assignments and tests can be graded through Canvas' "SpeedGrader", and grades can be saved in the "Grades" section for immediate student viewing. There is also a special feature for Turnitin.com, which checks all work turned in for plagiarism. The interface is extremely easy to use.

Although the interface is easy to use, it looks a little boring and basic.

One problem I was able to solve was getting work to students that were absent in class. By me loading notes and materials into Canvas, students can access what they need from home.

I have been able to go virtually paperless in the classroom.

I think it's a very organized platform, with a clean layout that allows for functionality and easy access. I like grading papers directly on the Speed Grading tool, which makes it easy to point out or highlight details, leave annotated comments, and even search Google for plagiarism. I also like how we can create/add our own rubrics for easy grading as well.

The only thing I don't like about the platform is the inability to completely connect to certain tools, such as the VoiceThreads Assignments, that aren't possible to create reminders for the student's calendar.

I would totally give Canvas a try. As any new tool, it takes time to adapt and learn the tricks. However, if given the right consideration and constant use, I definitely think it makes an effective difference on a daily basis, saving time and stress with unresponsive software. I have never had a big issue with the platform and it has never made me angry os stress. It does just what I need in the easiest way possible for my needs.

I use it as a student and as an instructor. From a student perspective, I find it easy to submit assignments and get full feedback from my instructors, as well as to follow the TO DO LIST and calendar reminders for what it's due. From an instructor perceptive, I also find it easy to keep track of my students' submissions, my previous comments left and schedule announcements. I also find benefit on being able to visualize how much students are using the platform and if they are opening the documents and viewing all the feedback available.

I like that I can highlight and comment on assignments within the website. Communicating with the whole class and/or specific students or groups of students is really simple and convenient.

I dislike that you only have the option of downloading graded assignments with highlights or comments as a pdf, which is a lot harder to read through than a word document with track changes. The assignment viewer also can change the font or formatting of a paper too.

There are a lot of advanced functions you can use that I have yet to try--it does a lot more than just serve as a website for a class--embedding videos, powerpoints, and other online/visual media is pretty simple and reliable on this platform. I definitely recommend this platform for online grading/online course work.

Multiple people (instructors and TAs) can all collaborate on grading in real time. We do not have to wait for each person to review before we can go in and provide our own, personalized feedback.

Canvas provides a platform for my digital resources for my students. It has an iPad app that is relatively functional and allows for uploads of rubrics and grading directly in the LMS. I particularly like creating that I can put students in groups on Canvas and grade a group project using one rubric, that is visible to all students in the group. Canvas is a huge platform with lots of capabilities (like in-app quizzes, grading, written and spoken feedback, etc)

Canvas is so enormous that the functionality of many of it's capabilities is relatively limited. In a 1:1 iPad school, the many problems with the App and very limited capabilities of the app are causing our school to look elsewhere for another LMS. Canvas has not been able to keep up with updates of other services (ie gradebooks) and loses functionality each time another service has a big update. Their service team has not provided us with solutions to many of our issues and is relatively non-responsive.

Look elsewhere

All teachers use the same LMS to provide resources to students. Our students know how to use Canvas since all teachers use it.

It's easy to set up modules with assignments, announcements, syllabus, etc. I especially like that you can easily duplicate the classes since my work makes it necessary to have the same assignments and modules duplicated every few months for new class groups. It's also easy to contact students via the Canvas network.

The speed grader is the BEST! It makes it really quick to go through assignments and quizzes and grade them.

We've had some difficulty with enrolling students in the classes on occasion--once or twice I entered all the students' names and email addresses and the program didn't send out invites. I've also had some problems trying to respond to students' messages through email. (Canvas will send in-Canvas messages to your email as well, but it doesn't always seem to work.)

I have really liked using this program. It has made my job a lot easier and is very user-friendly for both admins and students!

We run classes every month for international students that involve pre- and post- assignments and in the past it was very difficult to keep track of all of their assignments. We have 9 different class locations all over the country and each class generally has 100+ students. You can imagine how many emails that is to keep track of when they're just sending in assignments via email! Canvas has cut down on a lot of hassle and made it easy to keep track of students' assignments.