[ARCHIVED] Canvas vs. Schoology in K12 - your experience?

[todd_elgie]

I'm on a team evaluating rolling out an LMS and we've been tasked to get feedback from users of each. (We've seen sales demos of both.) Some notes: Our SIS is Renweb which doesn't play nice - no API (we would do grading in Canvas, manual entry of quarter grades in Renweb), we use Office 365/Windows Active Directory, we are not a 1-1 but have classroom terminals and limited BYOD, and are a 700 student private school in Houston. Thank you for your help!

[clong]

Hi Todd,

I fondly recall when we were going through our LMS evaluations a few years ago and I know it's an exciting yet daunting task. At the time our top contenders were Canvas, Schoology and Haiku. Haiku would have been the safest choice for us because many of our neighboring K-12 school districts had been using it and had positive things to say about it. However, when we put all of the features of the systems next to each other on a spreadsheet Canvas ranked highest on the things we valued most. At the time this was:

• Open, yet secure, integration and design architecture- Open APIs, IMS Global Standards (LTI, QTI), Turnitin.com integaration, Google Apps/Drive & SSO, and open sourced.
• Feedback Tools- video, audio, annotated markup, rubric, text and peer reviews
• Less clicks to get it done- We didn't have a lot of resources to dedicate to our evaluation so we especially appreciated this report from the University of Texas at Austin.

The list goes on, but those were our top three things at the time. We also appreciated how Canvas shared most of it's future development plans and roadmap and we found that they were the most forward thinking of the group. We've been using Canvas now for nearly three years and we don't have any regrets. Of course, there are always a few things everyone wishes it had but it doesn't right now, but we have seen steady improvement and it's also amazing to see how the Canvas using community has grown and how open source projects such as Utah State's Design Tools (AKA Kennethware)​ and Canvancement: Enhancements to the Canvas LMS have come along and made a good thing better.

In our district no one is required or obligated to use Canvas but it is avaliable for all our teachers to use. Our recent stats indicate that approximately 73% of our teachers are using it and 88% of our students. As I compare notes with surrounding districts, this is much higher than what they are seeing. I think the biggest factor for this is that it was the teachers who drove the selection process and then the training and rollout. They were the ones who wanted Canvas based on their own use of it in the Free for Teachers accounts. For us this made all the difference, so I'd always recommend you empower your teacher leaders to test the waters and define the process. Take sales presentations with a grain of salt. Usually all that will tell you is who can make a better pitch. Teacher & Student feedback should be what is most important.

It's been a while, but I presented a session at a the E-Learning Strategies Symposium- Selecting the Right Tool on how to select the right LMS. Here is a link to my resource document that I shared with everyone at the session. I do not presume to ever recommend what LMS another school should use so you won't see me saying one is better than the other, but I hope this will help you find the right fit and that it may offer a few useful nuggets for you and your team.

Best on your LMS quest! If you have any updates or further questions feel free to share them here or contact me.

PS-- our SIS doesn't  play nice with other tools either, but thanks to the Canvas API and a great programer we have our own portal tool that teachers can use to transfer the grades from Canvas to our SIS, so don't underestimate the power of the APIs.

[Chris_Munzo]

Hi  @todd_elgie ​ !  As a vendor that provides data analytics integrated with the LMS, I would urge you to look at the community of integrated 3rd party applications that broaden a school's technology ecosystem.  Instructure maintains the EduAppCenter and Schoology has an App Center within its platform as well.  You can also visit the Canvas partner page at Partnerships​ and see what we provide at Alliance Partner - AspirEDU​.

[nlatimer]

I will be blatantly biased in my response.

I was just blown away by how feature-rich Canvas is. "You had me at the filmstrip button in the RCE."  :smileygrin:  As our salesperson said to me at the time when we were evaluating Canvas, "You want a product you can grown into, not out of." So true! Do as little or as much as you like. There's something for everyone!

Another very simple reason, to me, was that most of the kids in my high school are heading to college. They will encounter Canvas or something similar such as Blackboard when they get there - but not Schoology.  I loved the fact that so many colleges are using Canvas, and my kids can feel comfortable with it in high school. Several of them have come back to visit from their colleges and confirmed how helpful this was.

"One-stop shopping." "New features on a regular basis." " Responsiveness of company to customer needs and concerns." "Amazing help and support resources, like this Community." "Phenomenal company technical support." 

I'll stop here but I could go on. I just LOVE Canvas. 

[clong]

Your point about high school to college transitioning is yet another reason we thought Canvas was a better fit. We have also had students come back and even write unsolicited "Thank You emails" to their teachers highlighting how they made a difference in their lives and also gave them a head-start because their college uses Canvas.  Instead of feeling overwhelmed with all the changes they were facing, when they started using Canvas in their freshman courses they felt confident and were competent as they were right at home using it!

All the other things you posted are spot on too!

[mje]

I think Canvas is a promising system - for our institution especially due to speedgrader and the outcomes system.

I've never used other systems, and cannot compare Canvas to them. However, to me it is very important that it must be easy, efficient and intuitive for instructors to modify data in the system. Course material is often a lively bunch of "stuff" and if it is difficult to modify, ... well then instructor may be less happy.

Having said that I do not understand why Canvas doesn't support easy copying of (1) assignments, (2) rubrics (evaluation criteria in table), (3) outcomes (learning objectives), and (4) quizzes between courses.

Kind regards,

Michael

[clong]

Hi  @mje ​,

Just wanted to make sure you know about how to use the 'import content into this course' function to selectively copy over assignments, rubrics, outcomes, quizzes and more. You can even use this to import items from the same course into itself, which effectively makes a copy of the item into the same course, if that is what you want to do.

Here's the guide that has the step by steps on how this is accomplished: How do I import content from another Canvas course?​

[mje]

Hi Chris,

I'm aware of above mentioned guides however there are issues with the methods mentioned there, see by example this thread :

Outcomes placed in wrong course, can I move it?

Also, why isn't it up to the user if he/she wants to overwrite an existing assignment or create a copy? It isn't intuitive that first time you want to import an assignment Canvas will create a copy, however if you repeat the import of the same assignment an existing assignment may be overwritten - and if you renamed the assignment you may not know which one. It seems that every assignment in the Canvas world is assigned a unique ID, and that may be a good idea, however, the user is not allowed to overwrite this ID and that is IMHO a bad thing making simple things complex.

[BethCrook]

We went through the process of transitioning a couple of years ago and our 3 top contenders were also Canvas, Schoology, and Haiku.    We were using Moodle for 7+ years at that point.  Also a private high school (boarding) surrounded by a state public school system all using Schoology.   Also a school that doesn't require the use of Canvas, but have a good amount of buy-in, with 100% student participation and approx 70% faculty.   Also, no SIS tie-in.   Faculty are required to submit end of term grades into our SIS themselves manually.  They use the Canvas gradebook for general daily assessment grade storage, calculations, etc.   We have a lot in common

A few top features that sold us on Canvas was:

*  Speedgrader!  The fact that teachers no longer had to download papers/ppts, etc onto their own laptop to grade.   We switched all faculty to MacBook Air's with their minimim size harddrive so space became an issue for faculty.  So many rave reviews for Speedgrader and it's only getting better!

*  Built-in audio/video for assignments, group work, and feedback.  INTEGRATED!  Not a 3rd party.  Doesn't require many steps.  Can be done from an iOS device!!

*  Group Assignments, Collaboration, and I could go on.  

We are very happy with our decision.  We are hearing from many of our graduates that they are now using Canvas in college and really like it. 

[BethCrook]

Also, I left out on the built-in audio/video, also those files do not have to be downloaded to the teacher's laptop for review/grading thanks to SpeedGrader!  This has us singing to the heavens...seriously

[BethCrook]

Oh and thought of another (go figure!).   Another school I was recently talking with who is signed with one of the 3 I mentioned (I won't list which one) contacted their customer support about a rather important need to recover something that was deleted within 48 hours (think Grades :smileyshocked:) and their immediate response was "We can't do that."   Every time I reach out to Canvas, I'm yet again blown away by their support.  If an area of Canvas doesn't work the way I need it to, the K-12 team is on email/phone with me trying to figure out how we can make it work to meet our needs.  I swear my motto there is the "Think Outside of the Box Chick", because that's how I start all of my emails with them.  LOL