Canvas LMS

Canvas is a learning management software which essentially helps you to save time by being organized and productive by enabling you complete a number of tasks from your central dashboard. I like that it goes beyond this as well to offer you reports to help you analyze your learning data. You're able to provide students with resulting outcomes and measure how effective your content is so you can get involved when they need a bit more help. While the admin has a solid big picture view available with comparison between departments and between courses as well. The canvas commons area is valuable too and you'll find a lot of specific resources and content for various subjects and grades to use in your curriculum. The speed grader feature is awesome it simplifies a lot of systems and saves you time. I like how you can convert documents quickly and use various tools to annotate them like highlighters and more. There's no downloading and then uploading required at all which is awesome. It's so cool you can create a quick video with your comments or feedback on a project including grading. And the automation capabilities possible from your account help speed things a lot like being able to populate your forms, syllabus, calendars and grade books so you're freed up to more important things than repetitive daily manual tasks and data entry. You can also share documents between courses easily which is a huge time saver. The notification options are quite thorough which is great because the situation and reasoning can change a lot so it's good to have a lot of configuration options and types available such as conversation commenting, news or project updates, due dates and any relevant changes a there's more. There's hardly a reason not to be in touch when you can use Twitter or Facebook or email and text to connect. The user experience is excellent I've found so far. It was immediately intuitive and easy to explore the features in your account quickly. I'm glad that they get how important it is to have this much functionality in an dashboard that doesn't sacrifice or over complicate usability. I've been researching a lot of software recently and take note of subtle features which have an impact such the menus which have both icon and label for the most part. This combination I find most effective because it is both self evident with the label and graphically pleasing with the icon making. I like that it's a very mobile software with iOS and Android apps available. It would seem so natural to have this working for you as a student as well this way, but it's interesting because it just wasn't the reality when I was enrolled as a student. It feels like it should have been somehow but came just before the internet was taking off a long before there were smartphones or cloud solutions. The increased efficiency and productivity made possible with this LMS, and therefore your ROI, is tremendous.

There's not much to dislike about Canvas LMS with the exception of not knowing the price upfront. You have to call them for an in person consultation which is fair enough. I'm able to do this research to help my teacher friend so can report as much as I learn about the industry without having to take this step. Due to the fact it's a corporation with no pricing on their website has me inclined to believe there is a wide range of possible costs based on the vast differences in school requirements.

I've tested a few LMS software now and Canvas is right near the top in terms of having a good balance between robust features in a very user friendly interface. The planning possible from your account is complex but it's very easy to do. The automation and speedgrader features are exceptional and you'll find a lot of time savings by using them both consistently. Other than not knowing the price up front so I can report it transparently to my teacher friend I like a lot about Canvas LMS and will be recommending she at least checks it out.