Canvas vs. Senior Systems

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,...

Senior Systems school software is great for small schools looking for a software package that can be implemented across many departments in the school at a reasonable price. Senior Systems does offer on boarding and training to help learn the system but continuing training is difficult though also necessary. Senior's admissions software modules leave much to be desired though they have purchased Ravenna which offers a top-of-the-line option that blends very well with Senior.

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

• A broad-based, unified platform that can be used in many areas across campus.
• Robust database that is very customizable.
• A web-based platform that can be used on any device.

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

• Outdated look and feel for internal and external customers.
• Somewhat complicated and tough to learn; it's not very intuitive.
• Customer service response times and support leave something to be desired.

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

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

On the admissions front, SchoolAdmin beats the Senior Admissions module hands down for ease of use, performance, customer service, and reliability. We have had no downtime issues with Senior but regularly experienced downtime issues with Senior. School Admin is also very intuitive and easy to learn and use. Senior has a much steeper learning curve.

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

• A fairly priced system.
• [The] convenience of having to manage only one system and database.
• Senior is long overdue for an update and refresh to make it look modern and to make it more easy and intuitive to use.

Incentivized