Canvas LMS

Overview:

• LMS Infrastructure and Migratorial Control
  • DevOps & Cloud Architecture Compliance
  • Content Modularity for Scalable Development
  • Open Source:
    • Plugin Support
    • Plugin Creation
    • Process Automation
    • Internal Process Integrations
• LMS Features
  • Content Types
  • Content Control and Scheduling
  • Roles and People
  • Grading
• Issues & Areas for Improvement
  • User Interface Isn’t the Most Appealing

---

---

LMS Infrastructure and Migratorial Control

DevOps And Cloud Architecture Compliance

• Canvas can be Instanced in the cloud, allowing complete programmatic access and control over the system.
  • This enables PaaS, IaaS, SaaS capabilities.
  • Courses can be converted to LTI-Standard-Compliant format (.imscc) to be imported into other LMSs (in the case of migration to Blackboard, Schoology, Nearpod, etc.) and even other systems (ig. Github, AWS S3, Google Drive, etc.) for disaster recovery.

Content Modularity For Scalable Development

• Courses can be Templated and Imported into other Canvas Courses; “Super-Modules”
• Courses can be Instanced
• Courses can be separated by Modules
  • Modules can be separated by Topics
    • Topics can be separated by Posts
      • Posts can be sorted by Post-type:
        • File
        • Page
        • Quiz
        • Assignment
        • Discussion
        • Announcements

Open Source
Plugin Support, Plugin Creation, Process Automation

• Very large ecosystem for external application support: Google Apps and Google Ecosystem, Zoom, Skype, AWS Educate, and much more.
• Applications which do not have preexisting plugins, can have plugins created to be integrated into Canvas.
• Canvas is completely open-source!
  • Canvas can be instanced on a private server, allowing programmatic integration at every level.
• Canvas has a massive community of more than 1.2 million users, and an intranet for querying common questions, concerns, and curriculum development issues.

---

---

LMS Features

Content Control and Scheduling

• Announcements and Upcoming Due Dates
• Control of Timing for Publishing (Revealing to Learner) Content
  • Unpublished Posts
  • Unpublished Modules
  • Unpublished Courses
  • Scheduled Posts
  • Copy Link (to share for direct pathing)
• Add comments within discussion-type resources exclusively
  • not every resource can be commented on

Roles and People:

* Teacher, Student, TA, Designer, Observer (access privileges)
* Ability to add & remove individually throughout course
* Email student, selected students or all (selector control box)

Grades:

• Assignments can be Graded / Ungraded
• Workflow: Read Article / Discuss Article / Receive Exercise / Submit Exercise / View Submission / Grade / Return / Private Msg Log / Resubmission possible
• Has grading interface which auto-populates with assignments, learners, and their respective grades.
• Shows lateness and no-submit at a glance
• Grade is override available
• Grades can be exported as .csv

---

---

Areas for Improvement

The Default Interface Doesn’t Look Entirely Appealing

• compared to modern LMS UI styles like Schoology or Google Classroom, the default view of the Canvas LMS presents itself with older-looking UI styling. However, the view is completely customizable.
• Because of the amount of features that are visible when using the Canvas LMS, it can become overwhelming to identify the few areas of importance depending on different use-cases and work-flows.