Canvas LMS Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
I have used canvas at both my previous college and my current one which I transferred to, for both classes which were taken entirely on the platform (online classes) and classes where it was used as an aid. The ability to see an up to date schedule for your classes, contact instructors, revisit old modules, submit assignments online, view and respond to instructor feedback... It's completely changed the game. It's become an intrinsic part of my routine to check canvas everyday. You can also customize what alerts you want to see, so if your instructor gives you feedback or sends an alert out you can get an email straight away. The app is also fantastic and very convenient! If you're an instructor and you don't use canvas, I worry that I won't be able to see important changes in time. Plus, feedback is relegated to the old fashioned, penciled in way of the early 2000s. We're better than that now, in no small part due to Canvas, which has genuinely revolutionized the medium learning takes.

Cons
There was one brief time this year where they pushed an update that made it so one of my instructors would see some error message when they clicked on my file submission, even though they were able to successfully download the file. They patched that quickly! Overall, it turns of lasting cons, canvas has tried very hard to become irreplaceable, and they've succeeded. My only problem is when instructors aren't tech oriented, and so don't understand how to set up a course shell, but that's not canvas' fault.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
After my university switched over to Canvas as the preferred course management software, I was happy to finally have a user-friendly interface to work with. The menu is not cluttered and all tabs and icons are easy to find. One of the main advantages of Canvas is the ability to easily sync a school email account and get live notifications when items and assignments are posted. Professors can also setup calendars that help remind students of exam, project, and homework due dates. Students can also setup discussions or threads within their respective courses, which is useful when a lot of students have a similar question. Saves the professor time from having to answer 50 emails about the same question.

Cons
The notification system, both as a student and professor, is not the most efficient system. Canvas is meant to have a built-in emailing program. This creates a lot of confusion when students send messages via Canvas (which is linked to a school email account) and separately send messages directly from their school email. I've encountered times where it was not clear how to send a message directly to particular member of the course, and ended up emailing the entire class by accident. Professors often alternate between general email notifications and "Dashboard" notifications within Canvas. It makes it confusing for students as to where exactly to look for course related information. I find this lack of streamlining for notifications to be the biggest drawback.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10