Canvas vs. PowerSchool Unified Classroom

If you have a school you can let teachers easily create new deadlines which [automatically] get shown in the calendar. Teachers can also [temporarily] hide deadlines [until] they've given the explanation about the tasks. [Besides] that the teacher can also choose what should be uploaded, should it be a link, file, pdf, link,...

We use PowerSchool Unified Classroom with our Teacher/Student work. Teachers can hand out assignments and have them edited and returned to the teacher in an organized folder, in which the teacher can review, grade, and send back to the student. Papers are never lost this way. Another way that PowerSchool Unified Classroom is used is to deliver assessments for district tests.

Incentivized

• Learning management - Even as the educational landscape rapidly shifts due to current events, Canvas is a great LMS for providing a consistent learning environment for students.
• Mobile accessibility - Students can access their courses on Canvas from a variety of devices, including their smartphones.
• Rich content - Instructors have the ability to create dynamic and engaging content for their courses.

Incentivized

• It easily makes calculations for you to come up with a mark easily.
• It allows me to put my comments on assignments into the grade so that students get feedback quickly and easily.
• It is easy to use.

Incentivized

• Their integration with Big Blue Button was a bust for distance learning. Would be great to see them collaborate with Zoom or Google Meets.
• Their "feature request" process is slow and cumbersome at times because it relies on user "up votes" to get ideas addressed by the developers.
• They seem to have a lot of turn-over with their staff. We get a new Customer Success Manager far more frequently than with other vendors.

Incentivized

• I teach 15 different sections of classes and it is hard to view sections all at once to enter grades in
• Navigating through all of the tabs to know how to view grades is hard- whether it is Assignments view, or by students, etc.

Incentivized

Several factors contribute to my "10" rating. First, our university just made an enormous switch to Canvas, after we were with Blackboard for almost a decade. So garnering buy-in was critical, and not something we took lightly. After nearly 18 months (start to finish) of training faculty, educating stakeholders, and migrating courses, I am not looking to make a change again anytime soon. But I am happy with the result and the product overall and that is also demonstrated in my rating.

The functions in Canvas are well integrated and consistent across the application, and mostly intuitive. Overall navigation and setup is streamlined through integrated features and navigation. The feedback we've gotten from our program participants is that it is easy to learn to use. It also integrates well with third party software like Google Docs and Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing software

Incentivized

I do not personally use Canvas support since we have a central office that helps us. However, our central office always has the answers we need and are always able to solve our issues - so I would assume that get great support from the Canvas team on their end. They also offer great training, which uses materials directly from Canvas

Incentivized

They are very responsive to the issues that we have and follow through with their assistance. Having a live assist that is available when our teachers need it is essential too. They also seem to listen to suggestions on making improvements and have been transparent with us when renovations are done.

Incentivized

The training sessions were broken down into several days as well as different levels depending upon the knowledge of the user

Incentivized

The online tutorials and videos are very clear and addressed the issues/questions that I had about using the system.

Incentivized

Once you purchase and sign the contract there is nothing to install or hardware to buy. You can almost immediately start using it and have courses up and going within weeks. We signed in December and had pilot courses online ready to go for the start of school in January

Incentivized

Canvas is in the experience way better than Google Classroom. Canvas has a
more robust agenda system that also allows adding in new personal
deadlines. [Assignments] can be submitted past [the] deadline (if allowed),
this isn't allowed by Google [Classroom], If you're too late you can't
submit anything anymore. In Classroom [assignments], presentations/theory, and [announcements] are all put in 1 feed instead which gets confusing way
faster.

Incentivized

PowerSchool is similar to Schoology but actually has one less component: assignment uploads. Schoology is very helpful because it also students to upload their assignments on dropbox, which syncs automatically to the grade book, which allows me to view who has submitted things on time and who hasn't. I'm able to create Rubrics in Schoology itself which also helps the grading process because it ties in directly to their overall grade after I submit their rubric scores. Powerschool is helpful because it allows for attendance and access across the board with all parties.

Incentivized

• Teachers have consolidated their content onto one platform which has decreased reliance of students on so much support staff assistance to access content.
• Canvas has helped make technology transitions more seamless for the school community.
• Once teachers have set up their page, Canvas really takes care of it all- they have much more time to focus on content creation and synthesis rather than the actual learning management system.

Incentivized

• PowerSchool has successfully helped us create a database on our students and allow staff to quickly access student information.
• We have been able to coordinate the arrival of new students to multiple teams for student support.

Incentivized