MODULE 6
Canvas by Instructure is one of the most widely used EdTech tools, but is it any good? It is overrated, and should you consider an alternative for your school or classroom? Though it’s used a lot and has many in-depth and considerate pros, there are also some serious disadvantages.
Note: Best viewed in fullscreen mode. Video has sound.
Canvas LMS Pros and Advantages
Share-ability: Replace Google Docs or Microsoft Word in the cloud with Canvas. The Canvas LMS lets students share work right there on the platform. This is very good for remote projects.
Organization: Canvas lets you organize your students’ grades, making them easy to sort through.
Permissions: You can give different permissions to different users to have the teacher with the top-level permission and students under her. Additional roles can even assign projects, other roles, and assignments. There can also be assistants. How different users can access your virtual classroom can be mixed and varied.
Stay notified: Canvas sends alerts about upcoming projects, assignments, feedback, and questions. As a result, canvas helps both teachers and students stay organized.
Personalization: Canvas allows for white-labeled institutions. You can use your school’s logo and have a school-specific domain. This is standard for all LMSs as it’s one of the features all schools want most, but it’s good to see in Canvas.
Breadth: A full breadth of assignments and projects teachers can create on Canvas.
Cloud hosting: Everything is hosted on Canvas’s servers, making it easy to manage for schools. This, again, is standard with any LMS, but it’s important to recognize.
Lots to do: Canvas has so many options that you can almost get lost in the possibilities. This is a blessing and a curse, but the number of options and customization can be significant for teachers who don’t mind a steep learning curve.
Canvas LMS Cons and Disadvantages
Clunky: We wish Canvas had spent more time refining the user experience and interface rather than throwing in so many features and customizations. Frankly put, there’s too much, and it feels overwhelming. This is not a simple plug-and-play school solution combined with the bugs; Canvas can sometimes feel unusable.
Bad duplication: The ability to duplicate assignments to be recreated in different ways is important for end-users. Canvas’s functionality here is limited and sometimes doesn’t work at all.
Not made for higher ed: Though the marketing on its website suggests otherwise, Canvas is not made for higher education. It’s too difficult to configure options related to enrollment, finance and loans, curriculums, grades, and faculty. In addition, there are too many functionality and user experience considerations missing from Canvas for major universities and colleges.
Useless tabs: There are a lot of tabs in Canvas that feel outright useless, confusing, and add to the clunkiness. The People tab is one such tab.
Buggy: Canvas is not reliable. Too often, there are issues uploading, navigating, and editing. Sometimes we’d spend dozens of minutes customizing something, only to lose that customization on our next visit. This infrequently occurred for documents, but even twice is too many times.
Not mobile-friendly: Canvas is best used on desktops, not tablets, and not mobile. There’s too much going on to be used on a smaller screen. Google Classroom would be better for mobile.
Issues with sharing files: Canvas requires too many clicks to share data and files and takes too long. We’ve had students complain, and teachers complain, and we’ve seen this ourselves. This is a make-or-break issue, as document sharing can be critical to an LMS.
Clever
Overall: Organization is always something that I continue to struggle with. With Clever, however, this solves this problem tremendously. It allows you to organize your logins in one place.
Pros: Clever is the most accessible software I have used in a long time. As a user, it is seamless and saves so much time for searching and organizing all of my passwords and logins. Once set up, it instantly stores logins, and with a click of a button, you are immediately logged into the following website. Also, my students use this for online schooling. It has been a godsend. A couple of years ago, we constantly had to remember multiple logins for multiple sites. Once students log in through Clever, they have instant access to numerous educational Apps, textbooks, Microsoft suite, and cloud storage.
Cons: I can't think of anything as a user. Clever might have a glitch every once in a while, and it doesn't automatically log you in. But I think this was due to the thousands of students trying to log on at once. Since then, no issues whatsoever!
Conclusion
Canvas, personally, was a lifesaver during the worst part of the pandemic. Teachers found it easier to synchronize students’ grades directly to Pinnacle (Gradebook for Broward County Schools). While an in-depth solution to many teachers’ needs, Canvas has too many problems. It’s 2022, and some of these problems have not been resolved, especially those centered around usability, to be unforgivable. It’s hard enough to conduct a classroom remote; we, teachers at my school, wish Canvas would make it easier to use. In addition, if Canvas synchronizes to, For this reason, I would rate Canvas as overrated, a mere 2.75/5, and Clever 4.50/5
References
Dixon, P. (2017, March 1) The pros and cons of deploying clever tricks for control systems solutions. Https://Www.controlglobal.com/Articles/2017/the-Pros-and-Cons-of-Deploying-Clever-Tricks-for-Control-Systems-Solutions/.
Littlefield, Jamie. (2020, August 25). Review of Online Learning Platform Instructure Canvas. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/canvas-instructure-review-1098196
コメント