Hi @carmen_vallis
I don't seem to be able to attach a document, but when we were first migrating 6 years ago, we shared out our "24 Reasons to Love Canvas."
Below is the text of that document............
24 Reasons to Love Canvas
- Speed Grader - cuts grading time by up to 50%.
- CanvasDocs - can annotate and grade written assignments without leaving Canvas.
- Ease of navigation for students - move forward and backward using the navigation links or next and previous buttons. Control left-side course navigation menu, and content links to documents, discussions, assignments and even quizzes
- Communication tools - send a message, send an audio note, or send a video to students from multiple places within your class – including all grading activities!
- Rubrics - Add Rubrics to assignments, discussions and quizzes to help student know what is required to achieve a certain grade and make grading the assignment easier. Align rubrics to course and/or institutional outcomes.
- Course Analytics - Canvas contains a section for course analytics so you know what the class is doing and when.
- Schedule and Course Calendar are linked to assignments so when a date change is made in one it happens in all.
- Course Copy – copying content between quarters has never been easier, and Canvas will even automatically adjust the due dates for you.
- Course Outcomes - These can be added to a course so you can be sure your assignments align with them.
- Notifications - Students can set up how your communication comes to them and how often, and be notified regularly of course activities.
- Upgrades - No downtime as the LMS is cloud based.
- 3rd Party Application Integrations - Khan Academy and Ted Ed (to name a few) integrate easily into classes from either course level or at an admin level. You can even use the redirect integration to create custom navigation menu items for useful web pages
- Help - truly useful help and support features, including all users being able to request or vote on new features for Canvas.
- Synchronous Delivery – Big Blue Button web conferencing tool is integrated in Canvas for easy live office hours, live lectures, instructional continuity, live demonstrations and more.
- Draft State: publish (make available and visible to students) and un-publish (make unavailable hidden, and not used in gradebook) content in Canvas to provide better access and design control.
- Unlimited course sizes – no limit to the use of engaging media.
- Notification of Due Dates – Canvas has six different location that remind students of due dates, helping online students to better track their classroom responsibilities.
- Modules: Canvas is designed to incorporate content into a native module structure. Modules make it easy to organize content for your students, and make it more accessible to your students
- The drag-n-drop capability for reordering modules and module content simplifies the course creation process, and supports standardized course structure.
- Modules greatly simplify course navigation, and is much more screen-reader “friendly” improving accessibility.
- Module structure permits the hiding of content areas (quizzes, Assignments, Discussions, Pages and Files) further simplifying navigation.
- Modules can support sequential and laddered instruction by controlling access and forcing sequential movement through module content.
- Content Creation tool for modules: this tool not only permits the creation of content, but also the re-use of existing content. Including:
Assignments: create assignment from within modules, and have them populate to the Calendar, Assignments area, and syllabus automatically.
- Quizzes: create quizzes from within modules, and have them populate to the Calendar, Assignments area, Quiz area and syllabus automatically.
- Files: Add files to your Module and simultaneously upload them to your files area.
- Content Pages: create fully customizable content pages in your modules, and simultaneously have them added to the page area.
- Discussions: create graded discussions from within modules, and have them populate to the Calendar, Assignments area, Discussion area and syllabus automatically.
- Text headers: create text headers in modules to better control the display of related content materials or activities.
- External URLs – permitting a web page to be easily displayed within a iframe within the Canvas classroom, thus avoiding external website navigation
- External tools: that permits the integration of external tools within the modules (such as scored SoftChalk lessons) further simplifying navigation while improving and expanding functionality.
- Page Tools: Permit the re-use of course components, and easy construction of in-course navigation links (content links), and also includes a full Rich Content Editor and an HTML Editor.
- Virtually unlimited course sizes: We know that media-rich classrooms improve student engagement, but we also know that media files are large. Because Canvas offers unlimited course size, we can use as much media as we need to create an engaging learning environment aligned with course objectives.
- Rich-Text Page Editor: Besides the expected features of the page text-editor in Canvas, this editor permits the easy creation and/or upload of media content, and embedding of media from a variety of sources including YouTube, Flickr, Khan Academy, TED, and more than 100 library collections with an HTML Editor.
- Group Collaboration Tools: Canvas provides a group structure that creates a virtual sub-classroom within an existing course where students can collaborate in discussions and document creations.
I hope this is helpful,
Kelley
