Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. Canvas

Blackboard Learn by Anthology

205 Reviews and Ratings

Canvas

289 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Blackboard Learn by Anthology	Score6 out of 10	N/A	Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. As of December 2010, Blackboard software and services are used by over 9,300 institutions in more than 60 countries. Blackboard Learn is the company's flagship LMS, supporting…	N/A
Canvas	Score8.3 out of 10	N/A	Instructure is an educational software company based in Sandy, Utah. It is the developer of the Canvas learning management system, which is a comprehensive software package that competes with such systems as Blackboard Learning System, SumTotal and Saba.	N/A

Pricing

Blackboard Learn by Anthology

Canvas

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Blackboard Learn by Anthology	Canvas
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Optional

No setup fee

Must contact vendor for pricing information.

Must contact vendor for pricing information.

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Blackboard Learn by Anthology	Canvas
Considered Both Products	Anthology, Inc Verified User Chose Blackboard Learn by Anthology Blackboard Learn is very similar to Canvas by Instructure since they are both essential Learning Management Systems. Canvas is a bit more rigid in the structure and does not permit faculty to customize the course navigation menu fully. Blackboard Learn allows faculty to … Incentivized Helpful? Mark Nowowiejski Instructional Technology Manager in Information Technology at Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (Education Management, 10,001+ employees) Chose Blackboard Learn by Anthology Blackboard has been the industry standard for a long time but they have gotten somewhat complacent and allowed tools like Canvas to surpass them. To Blackboard's credit, they have been trying to roll out a new version called 'ULTRA' for several years now but it has been … Incentivized Helpful? Rachel Hudish Instructional Designer at Independent contractor (Higher Education, 1-10 employees) Chose Blackboard Learn by Anthology Drupal functions as a content management system and it is difficult to use it for learner data; however, the size of the Drupal community makes it a contender for eLearning through the ELMS module, which integrates multiple modules for dynamic course delivery. Moodle is similar … Incentivized Helpful?	Instructure Verified User Chose Canvas This is much easier to use than Blackboard. Everything is easy to locate. The interface is clean and intuitive, which makes navigation smooth for both instructors and students. Assignments, grades, and messages are all centralized, reducing confusion. Setup is quick, and the … Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Milton Alumni Development Manager, College of Education at Florida State University (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas I was not part of the team that selected Canvas, however, I used Blackboard as a student and very little as a staff member. Blackboard was especially difficult in navigating organizations or shared sites. I used it to organize mandatory training for students in one of my … Incentivized Helpful? Victoria L. Graduate Teaching Assistant at Kansas State University (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees) Chose Canvas Canvas surpasses Blackboard not only visually, but technically as well. It offers more customization options, as well as more features for students and teachers a like in regard to grading, notifications, and uploading files. It also seems to stream videos more successfully, … Incentivized Helpful? Nicolas Hanhan Distance Education Instructional Coordinator in Information Technology at Arizona Western College (Education Management, 201-500 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas is more cost-effective when compared to Blackboard Learn. Canvas has lately worked on features improvement especially in the grade center, for example, moving columns around like an Excel sheet, a feature not found in Blackboard Learn. Incentivized Helpful? Christopher Sweets Manager, Systems Administration in Information Technology at Orbis Education (Education Management, 201-500 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas's ease of use and ease of administration were huge deciding factors in the decision to use Canvas as our preferred LMS. We found that on average Canvas took 1/3 the clicks to accomplish the same tasks as Blackboard, and the structure of data in Canvas is far superior to … Incentivized Helpful? Chris Wilkey Assistant Director of Housing and Residence Life for Marketing and Communications and Technology in Marketing at Ball State University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas I have used Blackboard for years and Canvas blows it out of the water. I always felt like Blackboard was outdated and using Canvas has really sped up my teaching and course creation. What used to take me days, now just takes a few hours. There was a slight learning curve, but I … Incentivized Helpful? Sarah Ciras Rousseau High School Special Educator at Landmark School (Education Management, 51-200 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas is the most advanced and most versatile of the products I have used in the past. It has more features and is better able to be customized by the user. Programs like Classroom, Moodle, and Edmodo are geared more toward younger users and therefore do not have the same … Incentivized Helpful? Marina Taylor Title I Director/Federal Programs Coordinator at Aberdeen School District (Education Management, 51-200 employees) Chose Canvas As an online college student, I worked with Blackboard and Canvas. If given a choice, I would choose Canvas. It is easier to navigate through courses, provides various ways for professors to distribute mediums and set up the course, and it allows many ways to connect with the … Incentivized Helpful? Joshua Welsh Assistant Professor at Central Washington University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas is much more flexible and modern than Moodle or Blackboard where I started with programs like this in 2013. I don't actually make this choice though. In other words, I didn't select Canvas, but I am happy that the administrators here at CWU made that selection. I think … Incentivized Helpful? Rita Wheeler Instructional Technology Specialist and Adjunct Instructor in Professional Services at Moberly Area Community College (Higher Education, 201-500 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas has more features and is more user-friendly than Blackboard. It has an interface that is familiar to students and is, therefore, easier for them to use. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas Canvas is a powerful learning management tool that combines so many key elements of an actual classroom and allows teachers to mirror their classroom environment into a virtual platform. It is simply amazing what can be done on Canvas. Grading systems/analysis, progress … Incentivized Helpful? Devarajulu Ravichandran Vice President and CIO in Information Technology at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas Much more refined user interface Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas Canvas is a pricey option, at least when compared to something open source like Moodle. Personally, I don't feel that Canvas has the same ability to customize as Moodle. However, the customer support from Canvas makes it stand out. With an open-source platform, it might be … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas I believe Canvas out does all of these because of its robustness. It allows for more design opportunities including HTML and HTML5 and has many built-in features that are not offered by all of the other LMSs. Some of those features are discussions, assignments, pages, quizzes, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas Canvas is easier to use, easier to develop, and easier to organize. My experiences with other learning management systems have been varied as both instructor and student, and Canvas truly makes the experience streamlined and worth it. The data is always accessible if you know … Incentivized Helpful? Jason Hill Manager of Academic Enterprise Systems in Information Technology at HomeGate Real Estate® An Innovative Cloud-Based Brokerage (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas was the very first cloud-based Learning Management System. This was one of the key factors in our selection of Canvas. Canvas’s open platform and out-of-the-box ability to integrate with 3rd party vendors was also critical to its success on our campus. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas Canvas is easier to use, navigate, and explain. Most of our customers prefer Canvas over the other learning management systems. The only challenge they find is linking non-app integrated content. Thus we set this up for them. Incentivized Helpful? Donna Harrington Chief Technology Officer at Southwestern College Santa Fe (Higher Education, 51-200 employees) Chose Canvas Not as robust as Blackboard, but more robust than the others. Incentivized Helpful? Sean Petty Professor of CIS at Paradise Valley Community College (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees) Chose Canvas Overall, I feel that Canvas outperforms Blackboard in many areas. However, one area that I feel needs improvement is the speed at which CANVAS operates. Blackboard seems to have more of a "snappiness" to it that decreases the amount of time spent waiting to get from one screen … Incentivized Helpful? Raphael Molina Co Chairman - Digital Education Committee at Loma Linda University (E-Learning, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Canvas We discontinued using Blackboard. Canvas is easier to use and has better pricing. Incentivized Helpful? Jerry Sifuentes Distance Learning Director at Laredo Community College (E-Learning, 201-500 employees) Chose Canvas I've used Moodle, e-college, others, but Blackboard was the last LMS adventure we had. I had to evaluate these services prior to selecting Canvas, and based on my evaluation, and the resources that the University of Texas at Austin afforded us, I am confident that we made the … Incentivized Helpful? Emily Saunders Online Russian Teacher at Blended Schools Network (E-Learning, 51-200 employees) Chose Canvas Honestly, I prefer Blackboard. It's a behemoth and hard to maintain with the number of clicks it takes to set something up or edit. And the voice recording tools are clunky, but it offers more variety in terms of course customization. The flexibility of how you set up the menu … Incentivized Helpful? Royce Kimmons Assistant Professor in Information Technology at Brigham Young University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas provides a nice blend of intuitive, simple interfaces with strong functionality. Other products will often try to do too much and become bloated (e.g., BB) or are not mature enough to provide reliable functionality in key areas without extensive support (e.g., Moodle). … Incentivized Helpful? Francis Kohler Graduate Assistant at Bowling Green State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Canvas Canvas is the evolving LMS for improvement, organization, and implementation toward a robust student-centric learning environment. Another important aspect of the Canvas LMS is its ability to harness customer input, feedback, and collaboration for product improvement via its … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Canvas Improved the ease of use for students and faculty Functioned without flaws Offers easy to use tools Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
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	Happy with the feature set
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	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

TrustRadius Insights
	Blackboard Learn by Anthology	Canvas
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published July 16, 2020 Blackboard Learn and Canvas are both learning management systems (LMS) designed primarily for colleges, universities, and other higher education institutions. Blackboard is the classic academic LMS for higher education, with a broad range of features designed to meet the requirements of many different institutions. Canvas is a cloud-based LMS that excels at providing core LMS features efficiently and effectively. Since both platforms are aimed at meeting the needs of sizable learning institutions, medium-to-large organizations make up the majority of the user base for each. Features Blackboard Learn and Canvas offer very similar feature sets, but they each stand out in different areas. Blackboard Learn offers a wide array of features designed to fit many different needs. For instance, it offers multiple communication paths for both students and educators, including an email portal, built-in live chat, and discussion forums. These tools help students collaborate without leaving the platform, which can be particularly valuable for fully-online classes. Recent additions to Blackboard Learn include read-only messaging options for one-way communication and improvements to the integrated content editor. Canvas excels at delivering LMS fundamentals. Users find its document and assignment management features to be robust, and they also appreciate its numerous content creation tools, including video editing tools. Reviewers also highlight Canvas’s gradebook capabilities, which includes features to help give students full visibility into their grades and gives educators options for additional feedback. Canvas continues to improve their UI options, with recent additions such as a navigation history bar to help users return to recent pages. Limitations Although both Blackboard Learn and Canvas are fully-featured LMS platforms, they also have limitations that are important to evaluate before choosing either. Blackboard is often criticized for its UI. It’s notorious for being hard to use, especially for users with less technological savvy. Some users specifically call out Blackboard Learn’s in-system content editor for being buggy and unintuitive. The interface issues also extend to the mobile application. Additionally, its online grading capabilities are relatively limited and can be difficult to use for some educators. Some reviewers claim that Blackboard Learn is not cost-competitive with Canvas, but that information is not publicly available. Canvas, on the other hand, has a noticeably steep learning curve. It also lacks the depth of collaboration abilities that Blackboard Learn offers. Some users specifically wished for built-in video conferencing tools or better quiz proctoring options. Also, while Canvas’s content creation tools are generally well-regarded, some users find that creating and administering tests and assessments is more difficult than creating other content. Pricing Pricing for both Blackboard Learn and Canvas is available via a quote from the respective vendors.

Features

Blackboard Learn by Anthology

Canvas

Comparison of Learning Management features of Blackboard Learn by Anthology and Canvas
Feature	Blackboard Learn by Anthology 8.6 30 Ratings	Canvas 9.8 42 Ratings
Course authoring	9.024 Ratings	9.942 Ratings
Course catalog or library	9.024 Ratings	9.839 Ratings
Player/Portal	8.021 Ratings	9.933 Ratings
Learning content	6.127 Ratings	9.935 Ratings
Mobile friendly	9.030 Ratings	9.941 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications	7.024 Ratings	9.938 Ratings
Assignments	9.030 Ratings	9.942 Ratings
Compliance management	9.017 Ratings	9.833 Ratings
Learning administration	10.025 Ratings	9.937 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics	9.026 Ratings	9.939 Ratings
Social learning	9.022 Ratings	9.934 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning	9.01 Ratings	9.83 Ratings
Gamification	00 Ratings	9.63 Ratings

User Ratings
	Blackboard Learn by Anthology	Canvas
Likelihood to Recommend	9.9 (58 ratings)	8.6 (84 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	4.6 (11 ratings)	9.3 (5 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (5 ratings)	10.0 (8 ratings)
Support Rating	7.7 (14 ratings)	9.0 (11 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (1 ratings)
Online Training	7.0 (1 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (1 ratings)	8.5 (2 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)