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Has anyone transitioned to Canvas from D2L Brightspace, Blackboard, or Moodle?
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As an educator who actively seeks technology solutions that benefit student learning and streamline course management, I'm genuinely puzzled by my Canvas experience after five weeks of use. Having previously used other LMS platforms, I'm encountering what feel like fundamental design oversights that impact my teaching effectiveness (to dispel concerns that my problems are "user error" due to technological incompetence, I should mention that my colleagues often turn to me as the "tech guy").
Having been extensively using Canvas since my arrival at a new university 5 weeks ago, I'm seeing patterns that suggest insufficient user experience testing during development. Basic features that should be intuitive require multiple tries, aren't available at all (like showing students only their incorrect quiz answers, which both D2L Brightspace and Blackboard support natively) or are illogical (why is there a "Share with me" option in Item Banks...why would anyone need to share with themself? That defies the definition of "share").
When I was building websites for my business, someone recommended the book "Don't Make Me Think" which essentially says the app user shouldn't have to pause and ask "What do I do next?" or "How do I do what I want to do?" and instead it should be intuitive, but that only comes with extensive user testing (this philosophy is how Steve Jobs championed the Mac and iPhone in what were already saturated markets...they were the first devices that were intuitive to use).
I discovered the University of Washington's Canvas evaluation found that "instructors still experience Canvas as a poor fit with their desired teaching practices" and noted "many instructors still experience Canvas as 'clunky," which suggests my concerns aren't isolated.
My goal isn't to criticize but to see if others have a similar view. If not, I'll be quiet. But if so, it might send a message to Instructure that it needs to invest in user testing and update for what I consider the missing, counterintuitive, and complicated aspects of its current design.
