LMS Canvas vs. Blackboard: Which Is the Winner? By Ishani Vats LMS 1 comment August 5, 2024 With the rise in online learning, LMS platforms have become a significant part of the education system. Canvas and Blackboard Learn are two of the top-rated LMS systems that come with all of the bells and whistles to implement a practical yet stimulating learning experience. But, Canvas vs. Blackboard, which is the better choice? This article provides a once-over of how Canvas and Blackboard stack against one another by analyzing the features and benefits provided by each vendor. While Canvas gets the upper hand for its advanced collaboration, gamification and course management capabilities, Blackboard stands out for its reporting and compliance features, and shares many features with its counterpart. Read on for our detailed review to see how these two products battle it out! Compare Top LMS Software Leaders Article Roadmap Canvas and Blackboard Learn: Product Overview Features Comparison Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content and Course Management Ecommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Reporting and Dashboards User Management and Gamification Integrations and Extensibility Next Steps Canvas and Blackboard Learn: Product Overview Before jumping into comparing the two solutions, let’s take a look at their capabilities. Canvas Canvas LMS is a cloud-based platform that provides educational institutions with the tools to create, manage and deliver online courses and learning materials to students. Widely used by universities, colleges and K-12 schools, Canvas provides a user-friendly, flexible and customizable platform for online learning. Blackboard Learn Blackboard LMS is a teaching and learning solution that offers an array of tools to manage student information and enrollments, create and conduct assessments, measure learning effectiveness and more on a cloud-based platform. It also provides corporate training solutions to businesses in various industries like healthcare, banking and science with capabilities like course creation, web conferencing, team collaboration and content management. Features Comparison The adoption of online learning programs has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly due to the rise in distance learning and innovations in the eLearning space. As a result, LMS platforms have become a popular tool for delivering quality education. With the LMS market expected to grow to $43.6 billion by 2027, many solutions that cater to the learning and training needs of K12 and higher educational institutions, as well as corporations across many industries, have emerged. Among the most widely used platforms are Canvas and Blackboard. Both offer a range of features to support online teaching and learning, and have a U.S. and Canada market share of 36% and 19% respectively. While the two solutions serve the fundamental purpose of facilitating continuous skill development, they have a few differences in terms of functionalities, user experience and overall effectiveness. Let’s compare the capabilities of Canvas and Blackboard, examining similarities, differences and what each vendor offers to administrators. Do the Right Thing at the Right Time with Services Assessments Both Canvas and Blackboard provide a myriad of assessment capabilities. You can create, store and anonymously grade tests and assignments, and collect learners’ feedback through surveys. Both solutions allow you to set evaluation criteria and frame scoring strategies to measure learners’ performance in assessments and discussions. They allow you to build tests with options such as MCQs, drag-and-drop matching, fill-in-the-blank and essay questions. You can use custom grading scales, such as letter grades, percentages and pass or fail, to score assessments, and allow learners to capture and upload video files to submit assignments. Neither solution supports automated grading and assignment warnings. Canvas Canvas offers a quiz tool to create and administer online quizzes and surveys and can be used to conduct graded and ungraded assessments. Its New Quizzes feature allows instructors to moderate quizzes for students that require more time or multiple attempts to complete tests and assessments. Assignments include quizzes, graded discussions and online submissions like files, images, text and URLs. They can be assigned to each learner or categorized by section or user, and students can view their assignment status and weight on the Assignments page. Instructors can use the SpeedGrader tool to view submission details for each student, submit feedback, track grading progress and more using a point scale or complex rubric. Canvas allows for quick grading using a side-by-side rubric while reviewing assignments. Source The Gradebook stores all information about student progress in the course, measuring both letter grades and course outcomes, where instructors can view assignments and grades for each student. Blackboard The solution enables you to create tests for various courses with advanced features to customize the structure and display, formats and layout. It allows instructors to assess students using in-course exams and grading, or secondary rubrics available in the Blackboard Learn course. You can automatically collect test and rubric data across disciplines, and leverage the power of robust statistical analysis for individual students, courses and cohorts. It also allows you to view and edit assessment details such as due dates, number of attempts, due dates, points, descriptions and visibility for students in a single location. Blackboard’s analytical tool displays valuable information about course activity. Source Key Differences Canvas only supports point-based rubrics, while Blackboard supports both point and percentage rubrics. Canvas allows you to reward learners with extra points for responding to feedback surveys. Analyst Rating Canvas — 82 Blackboard Learn — 82 Winner: Since both Canvas and Blackboard offer robust functionality to create, administer and manage assessments, our analysts rated them both equally. Collaboration In an Eduflow survey, over 80% of L&D practitioners said that collaborative learning is important to an organization’s effectiveness, and both Canvas and Blackboard are great options if you’re looking to build a connected team. They allow learners to exchange knowledge and training-related information on discussion boards, share files and eLearning content, and communicate with peers and instructors in group chats. You can set rules to send automated email notifications to learners when they are assigned to a group, pass a course or enroll in an event. The solutions also offer a calendar that displays site, course and group events, and assignment and quiz deadlines. Canvas Canvas’ Collaboration tool allows multiple users to work together on the same document in real time, where users can copy and paste notes, share bullet-point lists or agendas, and create text-based whiteboards. You can host conferences to facilitate virtual lectures, virtual office hours and student groups, with a user limit of up to 100. Users can broadcast real-time audio and video and demo applications, share presentation slides and integrate the app with BigBlueButton. It also offers focused and threaded discussions to allow students and instructors to ask and answer questions, share resources, exchange feedback and more. Its Groups tool is a small version of a course that allows students to work together on group projects and assignments. Allow multiple users to work on the same document at the same time. Source Blackboard Blackboard’s Class Collaborate is a simple and convenient web conferencing solution designed for learners and instructors. It allows all participants to join browser-based sessions quickly without having to install Java or a launcher. Attendees can be moderators, presenters, participants and captioners in a session. A course room is an open session unique to each course. Source The solution offers a Course Room where instructors can schedule multiple sessions for different uses. The tool doesn’t require or use plugins, and all you need is one of the supported browsers. Users can chat privately with other participants in a session and receive real-time notifications for new chat messages, comment mentions and activity from other users. It also offers capabilities like breakout rooms, private chats, screen sharing and recording, and real-time feedback. Analyst Rating Canvas — 100 Blackboard Learn — 100 Winner: Both Canvas and Blackboard offer equally advanced collaboration capabilities, so it’s a tie for this category. Compare Pricing for LMS Software Leaders Compliance Canvas and Blackboard Learn provide COPPA, FERPA, SCORM, xAPI and LTI compliance. Discussed below are the accessibility standards of the two solutions. Canvas The Canvas platform is designed in compliance with a range of industry regulations to ensure all users can easily access it, including those with disabilities. It’s built using HTML and CSS technologies and is committed to W3C’s Web Accessibility and Section 508 guidelines. Several feature areas that provide special accessibility support include: Calendar: It supports Agenda View, which lists all assignments and events in a list or agenda format. Chat: Users can enable audio notifications for new messages. Font Sizing: The solution uses rem sizing for fonts so screen elements are zoomed with the browser and scaled based on custom browser-sized fonts. Blackboard Blackboard is developed with globally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria. The solution regularly tests third-party accessibility of its products to ensure compliance with industry standards. Landmarks like content area, course menu, banners, navigation and content information are based on the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite) which strives to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. Some more accessibility features it provides include: Global keyboard shortcuts Keyboard navigation within the content editor Content editor math formulas Screen readers Key Differences Canvas doesn’t comply with the Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee (AICC) guidelines. Analyst Rating Canvas — 83 Blackboard Learn — 100 Winner: Blackboard Learn takes the cake as it provides better compliance capabilities than Canvas. Content and Course Management Canvas and Blackboard offer built-in authoring tools to create courses using existing or pre-built content. Both solutions offer a centralized repository to add, store and track all training materials like handbooks and technical documentation. You can send reminders to learners of course completion due dates, create unique learning paths based on each learner’s needs and monitor their progress through a dashboard or progress report. The solutions also allow you to create or customize pre-built certificates with background images, logos and text that are awarded to learners upon course completion. Neither solution allows learners to rate courses. Canvas You can use the Rich Content Editor tool to create and edit announcements, discussions, pages, quizzes and syllabi. The Course Import Tool allows users to extract course content, like assignments and quizzes, and import them into existing courses, and from other LMSs, excluding user-generated content. The Rich Content Editor provides an intuitive toolbar grouped by common icons and interactions. Source The Files tool enables you to store course files, readings, assignments, syllabi and other documents, and also contains lockable folders to regulate access. Modules contain files, discussions, assignments, quizzes and other learning materials where items can be added from existing content or new content shells within the modules. The solution lets you organize modules and elements within them using the drag-and-drop functionality. Instructors can also create MasteryPaths to configure learning content for students based on their assignment scores. For example, students who score above 80% on an assignment could be assigned advanced course modules, while students who score below 60% could work on performance improvement assignments. Blackboard Blackboard allows you to create and edit courses, set default course properties, delegate course administration responsibilities to users and more on the administrator panel. Commonly supported file types include AAM, AIFF, mp3, PDF and GIF. You can also merge courses to become child courses and appear under a master course set. Each user in a course or organization is assigned a course or organization role. Source It also allows you to export courses and archive and restore them for reuse and recordkeeping. Key Differences Canvas requires you to integrate with partner apps to use pre-built content from third-party providers for creating courses and lessons. Blackboard doesn’t allow you to build interactive elements, such as MCQs and flashcards, into videos and presentations. Analyst Rating Canvas — 91 Blackboard Learn — 91 Winner: It’s a tie for the third time. Looks like the competition is strong! Ecommerce An LMS’s eCommerce functionality allows users to sell courses, certifications and other educational products online. It’s particularly useful for businesses and organizations that offer training or education as a service, as it enables them to monetize their content and generate revenue through online sales. Users can set prices, manage orders, process payments and track sales data, all within their training platform. Additionally, many LMS solutions offer features like discounts, coupons and promotions to help drive sales and engagement. Canvas Canvas’ Catalog option allows you to offer courses and certifications for sale online, deliver training on products and services, and engage with customers across multiple platforms. You can easily view purchase histories, offer discounts and promotions, track revenue and more from a centralized dashboard. You can market your courses and services through the Canvas Catalog. Source Blackboard The solution doesn’t provide out-of-the-box eCommerce capabilities. Analyst Rating Canva — 92 Blackboard — 0 Winner: Canvas leads this one owing to its advanced eCommerce capabilities. Compare Pricing for LMS Software Leaders Learning Delivery With remote learning becoming more relevant, web conferencing allows pupils and instructors to converse more flexibly and personally than through emails or direct messages. Canvas’ calendar displays information for all courses and groups. Source Both solutions support asynchronous learning and microlearning, enabling students to learn at their own pace and location using short, subject-specific forms of content. You can host live webinars and conduct blended, in-person classroom and virtual instructor-led training to enable collective participation by learners. Features like breakout rooms, virtual classrooms, screen sharing, on-demand session recording and interactive whiteboards are supported through partner integrations. Key Differences Blackboard automates the enrollment of learners into a course based on set criteria, while Canvas doesn’t offer this feature. While Canvas allows you to invite learners to sessions or events through emails, Blackboard requires external integrations to perform this function. Analyst Rating Canvas — 75 Blackboard Learn — 68 Winner: Our analysts chose Canvas as the winner for its ability to offer more out-of-the-box capabilities than Blackboard. Mobile Capabilities Blackboard and Canvas provide native iOS and Android-compatible mobile applications that allow learners to access new courses and complete in-progress ones. The solutions allow you to send push notifications for things like new course additions, upcoming tests and assignment deadlines, and easily view and track learner progress on a single dashboard. Both platforms allow learners to complete courses offline and synch their progress when back online from mobile devices. Canvas Canvas provides mobile apps for teachers, students and parents, called Canvas Teacher, Canvas Student and Canvas Parent. Students can manage courses and groups, create discussions, take quizzes, submit assignments and more through the mobile app. Similarly, it allows teachers to add announcements, post assessment grades, comment on assignments and edit syllabi along with performing other functions on a single dashboard. Students and teachers can view all courses and groups on the mobile app. Source Parents can easily view assignment details and course syllabus, link students to their accounts and send messages to instructors from the assignments page on a user-friendly interface. Blackboard The Blackboard app allows students to take assessments, attend virtual classes, participate in discussions, view due dates and more on iOS and Android devices. Users can read course discussions, start threads and reply to posts on the mobile app. Source Blackboard Instructor, a mobile app designed specifically for instructors, helps simplify workflows and streamline student engagement with features like mobile grading, content preview and synchronous collaboration. Key Differences Canvas doesn’t offer mobile collaboration features. Blackboard doesn’t support mobile app white-labeling. Analyst Rating Canvas — 87 Blackboard Learn — 78 Winner: While they both have highly advanced and comparable mobile app capabilities, our analysts give this win to Canvas. Its option to brand the mobile app and track courses puts it a step ahead of Blackboard. Reporting and Dashboards Both solutions allow users to apply filters to drill down on data or add widgets to monitor and analyze various aspects of learner performance and tracking KPIs on a customizable dashboard. You can schedule and generate pre-built reports on learners’ performance, course enrollment and completion, time spent per course and more, and visualize them in the form of graphs, pie charts and maps. Canvas Canvas offers interactive dashboards that offer a detailed overview of students and course performance, helping you calculate ROI, identify training needs and gaps, and improve student outcomes. Customizable visualizations allow you to compare course statuses (unpublished, published, deleted, concluded) and evaluate trends in average grade distribution, submissions breakdowns and student activity. Users can apply multiple filters to refine charts to the level of detail useful for their roles like subaccount, term/period, course and instructor. They can drill down reports to see or export course and learner details, and consolidate necessary information in a structured format. Blackboard Blackboard’s customizable data reports provide valuable insights into key training areas including student performance, teaching and leadership. You can generate interactive visualizations to analyze learner activity and engagement, course design, system usage, instructional practices and administration, and more. Here are some more aspects you can study with the help of real-time data reports: Overall activity in a course like the total and average time spent per active learner. System and course activity for all users including average logins and time spent on tasks. User statistics like the average number of users (students and instructors) per month and day. Student performance in a course against a set of goals, including data on averages for the entire course as well as breakdowns for individual students and goals. Session information for each system login within a specified timeframe, including information about each user’s time spent in the system and their courses during a session. Overall user activity summaries for all areas of the course. You can filter reports by date, time, department, user type and other sub-categories specific to your search intent, and download them in CSV and PDF formats. Its Outcomes assessment module extracts learning data from Blackboard Learn courses and facilitates a rubric-based evaluation to demonstrate the achievement of learning outcomes. Its purpose is to collect the necessary data to conduct systematic assessments at an institutional level. The ability to report on student achievement and teaching effectiveness provides access to performance data across the institution and enables stakeholders to calculate ROI based on overall participation. Analyst Rating Canvas — 97 Blackboard Learn — 100 Winner: While both solutions offer advanced reporting and analytical tools, Blackboard emerges as the winner as it allows users to build reports from scratch while Canvas doesn’t. User Management and Gamification What’s the best way to keep students engaged with learning material? Games, of course! No wonder the global gamification market size is projected to reach nearly $97 billion in value by 2030 — it takes what might seem like boring old lessons and turns them into a fun and engaging experience for learners. You can award points and badges to learners for completing activities and tasks based on set milestones, and learners can be rewarded or elevated to the next level on accomplishing a milestone. You can also create unique profiles to store each user’s personal information such as name, contact, email address and country. The solutions offer team leaderboards that display the number of points earned by learners, the top learners with the highest scores and more. They also allow you to create or customize pre-built certificates with background images, logos and text, and award them to learners upon course completion. Both programs let you create roles, define access permissions and assign them to users. In addition, you can view course transcripts that include enrollment information and course statuses such as in-progress, completed, not started, credits earned, badges and certificates. Canvas The solution offers ePortfolios that students and instructors enrolled in a course can build to collect and document their educational projects, submissions and other work-related items. They can keep ePortfolios private or share them with other people in the organization. All users can configure their profile settings to view and edit the display name, language preference and time zone, add a profile picture, upload personal files, download assignment submissions and more. Its SIS Imports feature allows you to upload and integrate data from Student Information Systems (SIS), databases and spreadsheets as CSV files. The SIS Import page supports a few formats for standard imports to Canvas. Source Blackboard Blackboard allows you to create users, enroll them in courses and assign them role-based permissions from a central location. You can add their personal information like names and email IDs, create unique usernames and passwords, and add other details like education level, address and department to each profile. It also allows you to set system, organization and institution roles and privileges to define what each user can and can’t do. Create and manage users from the administrator panel. Source Analyst Rating Canvas — 99 Blackboard Learn — 91 Winner: Canvas gets the edge over Blackboard in this category. Integrations and Extensibility The solutions provide APIs to gather, create, update or delete information and create custom integrations with third-party applications. You can easily integrate them with anti-plagiarism software like Copyleaks, Unicheck, Scribbr and Grammarly, and import and export data in various formats such as XLS, CSV and PDF. The solutions also connect with G Suite and Microsoft Office 365. Other system integrations include payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal, and video conferencing software like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. Both offer single sign-on that provides automatic access to users, without having to sign in separately, if they have already authenticated themselves into identity management systems such as LDAP and SAML2, Onelogin and OpenID Connect. Neither solution provides third-party integrations for eCommerce, iPaaS and HR systems. Canvas Canvas supports LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability), making it possible to integrate third-party or vendor tools with the Canvas platform. You can also use external apps via XML, URL or manual configuration. It helps add functionality to a course, like flashcards, quizzes and game-based elements, to help students better understand learning material. External apps help you add new features to Canvas. Source The Canvas App Center, integrated directly into the solution, allows you to add new features to the platform, link modules or assessments, and create a customized teaching experience. You can integrate the solution with popular apps like Google Drive, Zoom, Microsoft 365, Twitter and Microsoft Outlook. Blackboard Blackboard Learn easily connects with external tools and services to extend your LMS’s capabilities and consolidate your virtual learning ecosystem. It offers publisher integrations to provide centralized access to courses, content and learning tools, and supports integration with external applications using REST APIs. Its Content Market allows users to access external course-related learning materials from different providers. The content appears on the Course Content page alongside existing materials so students can enjoy a seamless learning experience. The Content Market lets you access learning materials from content providers. Source The solution’s SIS integration helps administrators integrate course, user and enrollment data with Blackboard from various sources and in different formats. You can connect your platform with third-party apps like Badgr, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. Key Differences While Canvas connects with eCommerce software such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento via the Make. Blackboard doesn’t support this capability. Canvas integrates with CRM software such as SAP CRM and Salesforce via Tray.io and Zoho CRM via Make. Blackboard doesn’t support CRM integrations. Canvas integrates with HR software such as BambooHR and People HR via Make and ADP Workforce Now via tray.io. Blackboard doesn’t support HR integrations. Analyst Rating Canvas — 89 Blackboard Learn — 73 Winner: Canvas takes the win for providing third-party integrations with leading HR, eCommerce and CRM software. Compare Pricing for LMS Software Leaders Next Steps Ultimately, in the Canvas vs. Blackboard comparison, Canvas finishes first for providing more in-depth features than Blackboard. The solution’s mobile app features, eCommerce capabilities and support for multiple learning delivery models make a strong case for its victory. That said, the two products tie in several aspects and Blackboard remains a strong contender across multiple features. In many of the categories that Canvas won, Blackboard had remarkably similar features, but only supported them with custom development or third-party integrations. But this doesn’t mean it isn’t still an exceptional LMS. Its suite of reporting tools and compliance capabilities are just a few ways it holds its own. Many may find these features indispensable for their LMS system, making it a strong choice. If you want to go deeper and see the ratings each product earned across 101 individual features, or explore how they stack up against other popular LMS solutions, try out our free comparison report. Which product is more compelling to you in the Canvas vs. Blackboard debate? If so, why? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below! Receive Advice From the Experts Top Competitors Docebo Starting at $47 per user per month Cornerstone LMS Starting at $6 per user per month Litmos Starting at $3 per user per month SuccessFactors LMS Starting at $7.04 per user per month iSpring Learn Starting at $3.40 per user per month Meridian LMS Not Available TOPYX Starting at $2291 per month Ishani VatsCanvas vs. Blackboard: Which Is the Winner?08.05.2024