Canvas Teacher App Negative ReviewsInstructure Inc.

Canvas Teacher Negative Reviews

4.6
4.63687 star

Total 83 Negative Reviews

Canvas Teacher App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2023

Canvas Teacher app received 83 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using Canvas Teacher? Can you share your negative thoughts about canvas teacher?

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Canvas Teacher for Negative User Reviews

Notification for inbox does not workI have teacher installed on my iPhone with all notifications enabled. However when I get a new mail within teacher none of the notifications come up and thus I have to continuously manually check the inbox and the app. Please fix..Version: 1.8.5

Terrible appTerrible design, no functionality. Completely appalling. This should come as no surprise, there has been no effort to rectify the faults and problems. Institutions are paying vast sums of money for this rubbish..Version: 1.7

Still full of bugsStill very buggy, especially with the grading of assignments. For example you can’t actually grab the handles if the comments windows to resize them. Also no offline option so you can’t use this to mark assignments unless you are connected to the internet..Version: 1.22.0

Annotating in full screen would make this 5*Literally the only thing I’ve been waiting for; for 2 years now, is to be able to get rid of that waste of space blocking half the screen while annotating in landscape or portrait. Even the screenshots of the app show the whole assignment as full screen, when in portrait… however I can’t figure out how I’m supposed to hide that right pane when marking. Please someone tell me they’ll put a button in to hide that pane. 😂.Version: 1.14.1

Modules viewWe need to see modules.Version: 1.6.3

Useless as it takes up all your storageAfter only 3 months of use, this app has taken up over 11.6GB of storage on my iPad. I won’t be able to mark for much longer if this issue isn’t resolved. By the end of the year this app will have used over half of the storage on my iPad which is ridiculous..Version: 1.11.9

It freezesIt’s useful but it freezes.Version: 1.7.2

Mixed viewsI am torn on this update. I am glad to finally be able to see (and edit ) long file names. I, however, no longer seem to be able to move files easily between folders. I also don’t seem to be able to adjust the course view for the students. I do not use discussions or collaborations on canvas. I had to logon with my web browser to do these things. I also needed to login to add links to pages. Having to access canvas by two means is not ideal. Also on a recent update, I am no longer able to upload files through the app reliably; this seems to be file size related. I also can no longer delete folders and files..Version: 1.7.3

Useful but fails to play Scorm uploadsMajor failing in this app is its inability to play Scorm uploads eg those developed with Articulate. So interactive packages and scoring don’t work. This means I advise my students not to use this app..Version: 1.6.3

Needs better mark bookI really like the way you can mark a student’s work and write on the electronic copy. However, this app needs a better mark book and better integration with the quizzes next..Version: 1.15.4

Course Images Don’t DisplayCourse images do not automatically display on mobile app. How absurd is that! If there is an image in the course is should automatically display in the app, period! The app is unreliable. You think you know what your students are seeing but you don’t..Version: 1.13.4

For emergency use onlyI primarily use Canvas on a computer, where I am satisfied with how it functions. When I have tried using this app, I have found it incredibly slow to load courses and randomly glitchy. Today I was trying to edit the closing date on an assignment. The original closing date was 12/16 and I wanted to extend it by one day, but for some reason, the date kept pulling back to Dec. 1, no matter what I did. It was bizarre. I also find the interface isn’t very intuitive. These are issues I have had consistently since downloading the app in 2020, and while some features have improved, it obviously still isn’t the equal of the basic web version..Version: 1.19.1

Issues with gradebook and speedgraderOk app but lacks functionality. On an ipad, the ipencil pushes the page around rather than writes on it, making speedgrading not only pointless, but actually nauseating..Version: 1.7.3

Terrible appNon functional, crashes, can’t see email threads and discussions posts..Version: 1.9.1

Annotations rotate 90degrees randomlyMajor issue, that only happens occasionally, though enough that I want to quit grading more than usual. I teach chemistry so rely on students uploading pictures of their work an calculations. I then use my iPad/Apple Pencil to grade and correct the work. When I move to a different page or a different student’s work and go back, my annotations are rotated 90 degrees. To be able to see what comments go with what question, I need to go back and forth four times to get the comments lined up with the work so I can add up the grades. Then when the students go back to look at how I graded, the markings are all askew. I don’t have time or the inclination to print out my student’s annotated work when it is all aligned, so we can go through their work..Version: 1.12.1

FeedbackYou can not access enough on this mini site , I cannot mark easily which means marking is not portable ..Version: 1.7

I cannot mark assignmentsEvery time I click on comment the app clashes.Version: 1.9.0

Used to be great but now it’s glitchyThe app keeps glitching and closing now. It was really useful to monitor student work when away from my laptop previously..Version: 1.13.1

New Update is NOT User FriendlyThe most recent update has made the app terrible to use. There are a number of issues that have made this app no longer user friendly. Most of the time it does not filter only the assignments that still need to be marked when you click on needs grading. It will randomly switch to a different student’s submission when trying to add an annotation. Sometime only some of the submissions will show up. It no longer changes the number of assignments that need marking unless you reload the page. I wish I could go back to the previous version..Version: 1.12.1

Can we have...Hi! So I just discovered there was a teacher app last night! I am ecstatic. I just finished grading some things. A couple of things I’d like to see is a way to see our comments to students on speedgrader like we can on a computer. Another thing I’d like is to be able to view “modules” for each class. It’s one of the few options not showing. And while I can view most all of it from other sections, having to go to them makes them so much harder to find and access. I’d also like the ability to view my grade books in each class. As of now, those are my suggestions. It does seem really easy to use. If it had had these features, then I would have given a 5 star rating..Version: 1.6.1

Crashes and slowness outweigh the grading benefitsI started using the app when a colleague told me how much better Speed Grader is on the app. Speed Grader is better on the app, but there are so many other problems that the benefits are lost. The app crashes constantly. Luckily, you don’t lose work done, but the time it takes to reboot and get back to your place is typically 1-2 minutes lost. The app also glitches routinely, sometimes flashing the same screen over and over again. The default pages are totally bizarre, sending you to the same old assignment every time you click the “Assignments” tab. Home Screen is not like online. Overall, not convinced that this is worth the trouble..Version: 1.11.10

More features need to availableI’d like to suggest that more editing features need to be made available for the phone app.Version: 1.13.1

Still a Major Bug On Comment Submission: Moving from portrait to landscape erases comments!Mind boggling! Even after two bug fixing updates major bugs will have you lose comments. As you type comments, if you rotate the iPad and view switches to portrait or landscape, your comments get erased! Anything you type can vanish just by tilting your iPad! Unbelievable, even after latest update: In Speedgrader while in landscape mode on iPad, long comments cannot be submitted as the submit buttons vanishes. If you then turn the iPad to portrait mode, your comments get erased! Anything you type can vanish just by tilting your iPad! Outrageous waste of time. This app dev team is utterly incompetent. I loathe this app, but am required to use it. Old (and still valid) review Needs resizing of the Grade/Comments/File column in Grading mode The app is not too bad, except for the fact that in grading view you cannot resize the column with comments. I have to grade hundreds of paper, and my eyesight is not great. It’s imperative you allow a resize of the Grade/Comments/File column. This would allow annotation with Apple Pencil on the full screen, and then typing comments in a larger space than that tiny column. This is a HUGE oversight to an obvious feature. It makes me wonder if any of these dev have any experience grading and teaching. Please fix this! Until then 2 stars..Version: 1.12.2

Really hoped this would be goodThis app would be so useful if it was good, but unfortunately it isn’t. The grading feature is so lacking in features that I end up back on my laptop for almost every Canvas function. It also crashes periodically on my iPad Pro with iOS 11..Version: 1.3.2

PDFs speed graderPDFs don’t load in speedgrader, they just show “open in”, making this pointless.Version: 1.9.2

Limited functionalityWhen editing an assignment, the app won’t let you select the time that it’s due. Instead, it defaults to the same hour and minutes as when you’re setting it. Say I’m editing an assignment today to be due tomorrow and right now it’s 1:15 pm. Then the assignment will be due tomorrow at 1:15 and the app doesn’t provide the option to edit. This doesn’t work for my purposes. A more general issue is the user unfriendly navigation. At this point, many of us teachers have been trained to set up a page as the Front Page, not to mention that Canvas calls it that too. So why on Earth is the Front Page not the first thing students see when they login? Too many clicks to get to there..Version: 1.11.10

Read-only appUnfortunately, this is a read-only app. I cannot update my page from here. For example, I tried to publish a module that was already created and I couldn’t. I had to do it via the browser..Version: 1.15.3

ModulesBig issue for me is that I cannot access modules on the app..Version: 1.7.3

Can’t mark assignments - app bugI am in the process of marking assignments - when attempting to open the submissions I receive an error that there are ‘no valid submissions to grade’ even though there are over 100 unmarked pieces of work. It is likely that the students will not receive feedback by the deadline as this app is routinely crashing- making marking take hours longer than needed..Version: 1.15.3

Sadly not a replacement for the desktop- Utterly underpowered on iOS - As a teaching tool, the integration with iOS is exceedingly poor. - Speedgrader is a frustrating mess. Apple Pencil support is jittery, inconsistent, essentially broken. Half an hour trying to use it and I’m back to the browser. I would much rather read student work on my iPad, but alas, this just doesn’t cut it..Version: 1.13.0

Can’t filter marking by groupsYou can’t filter marking by groups which makes this app completely useless for team taught modules. Shame as feedback should be a good experience with an iPad but lack of basic features from the web version lets it down..Version: 1.18.0

I wish there was more control over notificationsI really love this app except that as the person in charge of teaching in my school/college I’m a default member on many sites. Some sites we can’t auto-subscribe students to because they aren’t for a specific class (eg academic advising). Because of my role on those sites I get alerts for hundreds of students accepting the invitation! I’ve had to turn off notifications all together because there were so many alerts but now I can’t see the things I really need to see, like if a student posts a question in the discussion forum. Please create a method for teachers to select the different things they want to be notified about (or not). I guess kind of like how that one social media app lets us choose if we want to have an email notification if we have a new friend request, are tagged in a photo, etc. Thanks..Version: 1.7

Really awfulLike most other aspects of Canvas, clunky, awkward, hard to customise. If my university didn’t force us to use this heap of junk, I wouldn’t.Version: 1.6.4

So many new glitchesStarted a month or two ago. courses keep disappearing from the homepage; the notifications are broken (I have “push” turned off for grading but still get push notifications for grading); etc. Not very helpful at all..Version: 1.13.1

Great features but unusable due to slow loadingI can see how great this could be for teachers to Mark work but I found both on an iPad and my phone it jaw droppingly slow to open pages MINUTES would pass. Currently unusable.Version: 1.11.9

Unreliable & BuggyThis app frustrates me continuously. The Canvas Teacher app is essential to my workflow as the ipad is my main device and I grade with my Apple Pencil, but the app is completely unreliable. It often fails to save my handwritten comments fully, it is slow and buggy. Every other note taking app I have has zero problems saving writing, but Canvas constantly fails to save when my internet slows. I hate this app. Every day when I open it to grade essays, I just hope that it works as it should, and most days it doesn’t. Essential, obvious features take years for Canvas to deploy, development is slow, and bugs return after they have supposedly been fixed in updates. Just another example of education software that is light years behind other tech and that is unreliable and unpredictable. I never write reviews, but I finally had to write this one after years of frustration with this sub-par product. But I have to use it. Do better, Canvas!.Version: 1.15.4

Misses most functionalityAnything that you would want to do from the app, such as checking group assignments, is not easily available..Version: 1.22.0

Things I like and things I don’tLikes 1) Ability to grade papers on iPad 2) Status of number of papers yet to grade 3) sorting of papers into “graded” and “ungraded” or “unsubmitted” 4) That it is finally fixed that only my current courses with submissions are showing up as choices Dislikes 1) Some annotations become lost and I don’t know why (I will go back to a test and see part of my annotation is not there anymore) 2) Sometimes the program crashes mid-grading 3) Sometimes the program crashes when I re-grade an already graded (annotated) paper 4) Sometimes if I grade something as zero because of no submission, when I go back in to grade it (once they have submitted) the program will still tell me that there is no submission. I have to check the comments to find the submission 5) I wish there was a way to mark papers as missing like there is on the internet version. Sometimes students submit the wrong assignment, and, therefore, their assignment should still be coded as missing or unsubmitted.Version: 1.12.2

Not that impressedHonestly the only helpful part of this app is the Speedgrader. The mobile website version is easier to navigate and more user friendly that the actual app. One example is publishing items...from the app I have to go to each separate item and click edit and then click publish which only works 50% of the time and on the mobile website I can easily click publish without having to open and edit the item. There needs to be an easier navigation tool to go from an area of a course, like modules, directly to another course rather than having to hit the back button five times. An app’s purpose is to make use and navigation easier rather than logging on to an actual website. They clearly have missed the mark with this one..Version: 1.11.8

Missing features that can only be done on the PCSadly the app does not let you add new assignments and has limited features. When marking the drop down rubric comments don’t appear. I find that I have to use the Computer to do most things needed on CANVAS. I use the app to view tasks, take photos and upload images of student work samples, however, I use the computer for everything else..Version: 1.17.0

Control is glitchyI tried marking with Canvas teacher app. The control is very glitchy. If you didn’t carefully drag to select, the app would accidentally bring you back to the to-do list page, sometimes resetting your comments. When accidentally move the iPad, you can reset the marking too. The highlight button stays down every time you try to scroll down. Why don’t we have the ability to make it stay down if we want. The default option should let this button reset every time we finish highlighting. Update: new bug. Now the app does not update my markings. Unbelievable lack of support even though it was used everywhere I teach. Degrade it from 3 star to one. I hope some new startup can replace this old and buggy system. Still wonder why we have to used such a terrible system like this for education??.Version: 1.12.2

Abhorrent experienceOnce you figure out that you don’t have a Grades tab like you do on the website (for some reason) and find the assessments, you notice that not all student submissions appear in the assignments list. Refreshing somehow makes more of them disappear from the list on the app. Once the student you’re marking appears, it takes five minutes to load up the piece to actually mark. No capacity to download submissions to mark on the go. Feels like it would be more efficient to mark with a typewriter..Version: 1.22.0

Crashes in seconds every time I start itThe has been fine until an upgrade to the student/teacher discrete versions - for some reason my iPad restore installed and upgraded to the student version by default from the icloud backup even though I am a teacher. This crashed every time I started it. I uninstalled the student version and then installed the teacher version but with the same result. I have tried several restarts and whatnot but no joy. I have created a support ticket and if Instructure can resolve this I will modify my review, but until I have a non crashing app I am afraid it’s ‘nul points.’.Version: 1.5.4

Speedgrader loses annotations, horrible supportI use the Canvas app exclusively for Speedgrader since everything else is easier to do by computer. I noticed that it was often failing to save the last annotations or erasures I made on papers. This would be an understandable bug, especially given the sudden demands of the pandemic, but six months after my initial report it still hasn’t been fixed. Much worse is the constant gaslighting along the way by Instructure support: for example, they said they had never heard of the problem and tried to claim it was the fault of my network connection when six different members of my department (everyone who has used it, on many different networks including our very fast one on campus — as well as other reviewers here) see the same problem. They claimed it was a problem with the Apple Pencil (what else would I use?) and said they couldn’t obtain one for testing. I’ve sent them samples and recorded multiple videos showing the problem but then weeks go by and once I do hear from them it’s back to square one. Update: my campus Instructure liaison has told me this will not be fixed. Apparently data corruption is considered acceptable. Don’t make the mistake we did of getting locked into this platform — find a different LMS provider!.Version: 1.13.2

Useful but limitedNot the worst but lots of annoyances and limitations. I'm currently trying to grade discussion posts in the app and the readability is frustrating. Why does the text not wrap around?! Each line is juuuust too long for the screen. Sometimes it won't even zoom out so that it all fits on the screen, and the app doesn't rotate to horizontal either. So I have to move the text back and forth for every line or hold it pinch zoomed out. Even when the zoom level sticks: I have great eyesight and even I find the text too small. I can't imagine using this with even middling eyesight. Accessibility is not an unreasonable expectation from an ed tech company. Frustrating. This is illustrative of issues with the app. Has promise. Not hot garbage. But not yet truly good. More UX work pls. Make it accessible!.Version: 1.15.4

Latest update is absolute garbageCan’t swipe between homework once it’s annotated. Unbelievable..Version: 1.12.0

Wastes a lot of timeIt takes so long to load anything in speedgrader that I’m sure I’ve spent hours over this semester just waiting for the next assignment to load. I wish we hadn’t switched to canvas..Version: 1.7.2

Pretty good with one really annoying featureI use this app and generally like it. Performance has been pretty stable with a few times where upgrades screwed up the works briefly, but contact with Canvas straightened things out pretty soon. There is one thing the app does, though, that drives me bananas. They wanted it to be a “speedgrader”, so they’ve made it so that the slightest flick allows you to quickly and effortlessly move from one student to another. I don’t know about others, but this feature seriously screws me from time to time. I believe it’s important to give the students substantial feedback on their work. So I will write a rather long comment - but midway through find I need to scroll to another part of the student’s submission to finish making my point. It’s at that point that, if I don’t really carefully just scroll straight down or up, but accidentally scroll slightly right or left, that the app moves me to another student, and my long comment is lost. I have to go back and rewrite it. I can’t tell you how many times that has happened and it just doubles my work every time. I really would rather it take a little more effort to get from one student to another if it would mean I’m not having to rewrite my comments so often. Thanks for considering that tweak, Canvas!.Version: 1.11.9

Nearly unusable for gradingI loved this app as a busy graduate student. It really helped streamline my grading. However, with the most recent update it is now nearly unusable. When using speed grader in landscape orientation the left 3 or so inches are completely unresponsive to touch. This includes the annotation button, which I use a lot. When using the rubric to grade each question on an assignment, I no longer know whether the grade for each question will be remembered or whether it will be gone the next time I load the app. This makes it hard to trust the automatically assigned total grade for the assignment, which wastes my time with double grading and double checking. Also, once I’ve used the rubric or assigned a grade for one student’s assignment, I can no longer swipe to view the next student’s assignment. I have to exit the grading screen, scroll through the student roster to find where I left off grading, then select the next student and wait for the grader to reload. So much wasted time! Finally, and maybe this is an Apple problem, I could find nowhere to report issues. Absolutely no feedback option in the app or in the App Store. Besides leaving this review..Version: 1.12.0

Canvas teacher appCan’t use this app as a teacher. Doesn’t have the functionality. Very disappointed.Version: 1.9.4

Notifications Don’t Make SoundsThis app is garbage for one simple reason: notifications do not make a sound on your iPhone. The badge/banner notification comes through, but for some reason Canvas has disabled the ability to have these make a sound. What this means is if you’re a teacher, you will have no way of knowing if a student messages you unless you constantly check your phone. It is so annoying and honestly I hate it because I pride myself on being available but it makes me look like I am ignoring messages. P.S. this isn’t user error. I have contacted support regarding this and this was the reply “Unfortunately it's not possible with iOS. The setting is there, but the app doesn't support audio/vibrate prompts with notifications, just your typical banner, notification center, lock screen notifications.” So literally every other app can figure this out except Canvas Teacher? Give me a break..Version: 1.11.6

Grading tool needs A LOT of updates to be helpfulThis is my first time using Canvas instead of Google Classroom. Here are a few things that I wish were different on Canvas: 1) the grading writing with a pen- I wish I could change the thickness of the stylus. When I zoom in, the pen is so thick so it makes it very challenging to leave good comments. 2) the grading with a highlighter- I wish I could highlight student written work. I can only highlight the types text from the pdf, but I like using the highlighter so it doesn’t completely cover their work (unlike the pen) 3) the grading text. When I type comments, it doesn’t quickly/easily fit into the text box. I will type the comment, then change the box size to be more square shaped and the text doesn’t automatically change size. When I do change the font size to be smaller, the text box automatically goes back to the default size (long and skinny rectangle when I would like it to stay as a square).Version: 1.7.3

Good enough, but sometimes frustrating to useOverall it’s good enough to do what I need to, but not everything always works correctly. For example, sometimes you cannot swipe sideways to grade the next student’s assignment, and need to press “done” to go back to the list of submissions and select the next student. You can only annotate documents where the whole document is a file submission—you cannot annotate quiz questions that are file uploads and have the students see those annotations. This is very frustrating; direct feedback can be very valuable to the students, so the system not allowing students to see these annotations is problematic. (My workaround has been do save the annotated files and email them to each student individual. This is not a sustainable solution for me; it only works this quarter because I have small classes.) Update: I’ve run up against another issue that caused me to remove a star. When grading, sometimes grades and comments on individual questions simply don’t save. This is obviously a major issue..Version: 1.11.3

Can only sign in as parent even though this is a teacher appSo since the last update I can no longer sign into this app as it takes me to my login page as parent rather than a teacher. No work around at all!.Version: 1.8.3

Almost good, far from excellentThere are so many odd quirks with this application that it makes you wonder. They apparently have developed the whole app without access to iPad and Apple Pencil - this has been born out when I’ve called support and the people that answer the phone have stated that they’ve never used an Apple Pencil and can’t understand my complaints. For example, the engineers decided on a 2.0pt stroke for the pencil when grading assignments and the default can not be changed. As you scroll through each assignment you have to select the width you want; it doesn’t even remember your selection during a session! Not that big of a deal, but annoying. (The default used to be 1.0pt, but some developer changed it without providing an option to set your own default!) This tells me that the most important users in the Canvas universe are the programmers. Overall, the app works about 80% well and they have no interest in making it better. Like google, Canvas is satisfied with mediocrity. Too bad..Version: 1.9.4

Submitted assignmentsOn the app I can see the assignments clearly from my completed students but on the browser they are not in the same place and I can not see my feedback. We have to internally verify other teachers work so I need to be able to find it. The app seems to be different to the browser and a few things have changed recently and we can’t find students work..Version: 1.18.0

SyncWay to hard to Sync grades to Skyward. The main thing is getting the grades over to Skyward. Software engineers should make this more seamless and easier to use. Also when school starts at the beginning of the year, it doesn’t need to populate all semesters of classes at once. I had 14 different classes show up at once and didn’t recognize the names. Think..... teachers aren’t coder’s and make this less complex and simpler looking interfaces. I would just make the whole Canvas software way easier to use, and do some real field tests with it in action and see some of the problems that come up. Some teachers have classes of 40+ and other classes are only 5 students. So class sizes should be limited, other wise you can’t tell if everyone is learning..Version: 1.12.2

Significant problemI have been using canvas as a teacher for a major Canadian university. The product is mostly well developed and feels like a mature product. However, there is a major problem when writing comments in grading rubrics for students. When writing if you touch outside the box or miss the small send button slightly you loose all text in the comments box and you must start over. I would suggest creating a confirmation button or a save feature or just keep the text field available when touching other parts of the screen. Then you can tap back into the field to complete the comment without loosing your previous text. Also related, I would like the option to save all comments and grades without publishing for view by the student. Publishing should be a separate activity. This could also be implemented on the web version of canvas as well. Sometime grading is done over several sessions and I would like the option to grade all students before releasing grades and comments to everyone at once..Version: 1.5.1

Just easierI don’t normally fill my devices with apps that do what I can already do in a browser but this makes Canvas so much easier. Great on a big iPad!.Version: 1.8.5

The app crashes while marking too oftenThe app will crash randomly, at approximately 10% chance. There are no other apps running, device (iPad) has sufficient space. Please please fix it because every time it crashes, have to wait till the whole stack is loaded again..Version: 1.11.9

The worstLimited functions. Why can’t I post grades from the app? Instead, I have to find my way to a desktop just to click a button. Also, compatibility with Apple Pencil is awful. Annotations lag and sometime just refuses to work. Must force quit app after grading each submission because tool palette simply disappears after entering a grade and Apple Pencil doesn’t work anymore. I’m so glad I only have to grade quick ‘checkmark’ assignments using this app otherwise I bet trying to grade lengthy submissions with detailed annotations will make me want to throw my iPad against a wall. This is the absolute worst app and a travesty that’s been foisted upon hundreds of schools that will of course find it challenging to switch away in spite of the plethora of problems this system has. Shame on Instructure..Version: 1.15.3

Assignment grader is buggy for group projectsMy course is structured around many team project submissions. When I select an assignment for grading, as I expect, I see a graphic with the number of submissions graded, the number in need of grading, and the number not submitted. When I select the middle option, need grading, I get a list of the submissions. When I select team one, I get a Forrest Gump box of chocolates experience—a team submission appears, just not the one I selected. So I select done, and try another submission. Same issue, the same team submission reappears—again, not the one I selected. So I give in and grade the random submission. I click done, and note it is off the needs grading list. I select another submission and get the same submission I just graded, only this time without a grade. Darn. I click done and then back to the assignment submission summary. I note that one assignment is showing up as graded. I click on it, confirm it is the random submission I graded previously. I open it and confirm it has a grade. Click done, go back to summary, click on needs grading, select a submission, and now I either get a new random submission to grade OR the original random submission reappears—without a grade... this is not acceptable. The system worked fine 2 weeks ago and is now squirrelly. The iPad makes marking up reports so easy, but this is defeated if I can’t access the submission I want to grade!.Version: 1.9.0

Added some great features but lost othersI have been waiting for the ability to annotate student papers with my Apple Pencil for a long time. I'm so excited about that and it seems to work pretty well. I have lost, though, the ability to leave voice or media comments from my iPad. That is a feature I use with every paper I assign, so I really hope that comes back soon. I also had a hard time getting a grade to save. This particular assignment I was just marking rough drafts as complete or incomplete. I hit the + to add a grade, selected "complete" from the menu, but then had to push the + again to save it. It took me a while to figure out why nothing was saving. It seemed a little awkward. I like the direction this app is going, but I had to go back and reinstall the old SpeedGrader app in order to accomplish what I needed to get done. EDIT AFTER SOME MORE USE: I also realized after grading a whole batch of essays that some of my handwritten annotations are missing! There are times when only a few words of a whole sentence are there when I go back in or when students look on their end. NO!! Waste of time!!.Version: 1.0.3

Crashes every few minutesA piece of junk. Crashes while grading every few minutes. Then have to swipe through dozens of students to come back to where it crashed. Too bad my institution uses this buggy junk..Version: 1.11.10

Frustratingly buggyHas the potential of being really useful for marking but there are so many problems with it. It’s hard to use the highlight option without highlighting everything if we try to scroll through the document, so we have to constantly cancel that option, then if we use this option and revert to the pointer highlighter, it takes on the color of the highlighter (that is by default yellow). There are all sorts of weird things like this, that makes one revert back to the desktop browser version. Can we please fix these issues?.Version: 1.13.4

Too many classes in email!I have had this app on my iPhone for a while, but I don’t use it much. One of my problems with it is sending out emails. As long as I am replying to one of my students I don’t have a problem with this, but when I want to send out a new email, I get presented with a list of ALL the Canvas classes that we have for me, both active and inactive, and there is no way to tell them apart in the class list without going into each one and seeing if I have students in the class. When accessing this function from the website, I am only presented with a list of my active classes. So, it is easy to find the one I want. It would sure be nice if the app would do the same thing so that I don’t have to hunt through ALL of my inactive classes to find the few active ones..Version: 1.8.5

Add PDF to courseThe teacher app is ok but I have not found a way to add a pdf files to a course page. I can upload pdf files into canvas but this is pretty useless if they can’t be added to a page..Version: 1.11.2

Still some basic needsThis app seems like it is getting the attention it deserves, but there are still some basic functions that are sorely lacking. 1) I need and want to be able to download student submissions within the app instead of going to the site in a browser. Because... 2) I cannot rely on the built-in annotation system. Recently, it just simply didn’t display when trying to grade and comment on a student’s paper. There was just nothing there. I could swipe to the next student’s submission and it was there... swipe back to the previous student and still nothing. 3) I really like the inbox and messaging system of this app. Very easy to read and use and in fact, I much prefer it to using the site for this task. BUT... I can’t select text for copy and paste??? That’s insane, guys. There are so many times where I have the need to email individual students and share similar information. Copy and paste. This should be an immediate priority. Please! 4) It makes absolutely no sense to me that pressing the “Courses” icon at the bottom of the screen does not take me back to the main course selection splash page. Zero sense. Instead, we have to hit the “Back” option in the top left twenty-five times. Why is the “Courses” button there at all if not for this quick access? It would be hugely helpful for those of us with 6+ courses any given semester..Version: 1.11.9

OkHas its advantages but harder to use than the browser version. Documentation tedious to find. Does not render MathJax properly..Version: 1.14.0

Student messagesHard to find unread messages when students post to assignment dropboxes. Would be great if there were drop boxes titles class tasks and dropboxes titled assessment to differentiate the two and save having to explain this to students..Version: 1.15.3

Pretty OrdinaryThis app is pretty ordinary...whilst it’s great if a subject has been set up as a BluePrint subject, if it hasn’t, it’s buggy. For some reason I can see seven of the eight teaching groups in a subject, but I can’t see mine! It appears after I have been out of the app for a while, but as soon as I go into a discussion it then disappears from all other discussions. Images also fail to load that have been placed in the Canvas website, which means content in modules is missed. Pretty useless if a subject isn’t published in BluePrint.Version: 1.11.9

Solid, but lacks basic features.Overall, this is a solid app. However, it seems the developers did not take into account that we use this app to check-in on our courses while we’re on the go. We do not use it to facilitate our courses. Accessing your course through a mobile browser may be a better option depending upon what you’re trying to do. - There is no ability to mark a message or discussion post as unread in the app. Once you open or view it, it cannot be marked as unread. If I don’t plan on responding at that very moment, I have to make a separate reminder to check it when I return to the desktop. I’ve basically stopped accessing messages and discussions through the app for this very reason. (In most cases, I’m not going to respond as soon as a student messages me, but I do want to read their message. Marking it as unread allows me to see the notification on the desktop where I prefer to respond.) - The actual text from sent and received messages cannot be copied. Not being able to copy a portion of a previous message I have sent is frustrating. I frequently send the same explanations for assignments, etc. Having the ability to copy a portion of a message for another email - when I’m on the go - seems like an oversight on the developers’ behalf. - To be continued....Version: 1.6.4

Terrible!Displays nothing more that a blank screen after selecting school - can’t even log in to it!.Version: 1.6.1

Less than greatIt has been the biggest waste of time for teachers and students in the worst rolled out management system in training for that system, and has completely ignored how long it takes for teachers and students to manipulate it. Not to mention a complete waste of money and an overreaction to one semester and a half of zoom. I mean why go away from Google classroom. We’re all trained on that for years and they just got sprung on us and they didn’t even know how to teach it which they’ve got a lot better at so it didn’t have potential but it just takes so long to do everything so many clicks. And once was in a meeting or someone said, what do you want us to do this you know evaluation for students and to fill out these forms and how many clicks does it take to get me to where I want to be and he’s worked it out to be 11 and we talked about it in the meeting and we will get it down to seven. I did count with one point and I was over 30 and I just like are you kidding me there’s so many clicks to get some little one.Version: 1.19.1

SlowGraderThis app is a disaster, and even worse than the SpeedGrader which I am happy to say I still have in this iPad. 1. I teach by Module. Each Module has supporting material as well as the week’s assignment. Why then is there no Module I can work with in the sidebar? This I’m guessing is why my students rarely do their reading or video assignments — they seem to be unaware of them if they are using the app. PLEASE ADD MODULES TO THE APPS. 2. Where is my custom Dashboard with my system of colours that allows me to instantly recognise which class is which? 3. I am constantly losing sentences I have carefully constructed for my students as commentary on their work. Where are they going? Sometimes I want to copy something from another student’s comment field and when I come back my current comments are gone. How about a clipboard feature inside the app so we can save often-used comments, like “Please submit this assignment” and “please read the instructions?” 4. Why couldn’t I see my students’ uploads of .pngs and .jpgs on my new iPhone 8 plus? I teach digital art.I take off so-and-so many points per week late... 5. I like having access to the due date of the assignment (and the parameters) so I can make a wise grading choice. 6. I like the speech-to-text feature but it is a hornet’s nest of, um, hornets..Version: 1.19.0

App Barely Functional NowI used the app extensively last year and loved it. I never had problems and was able to grade on the go, sync grades from my phone/iPad, and do all of the other things that I could do on the desktop version. All of a sudden, now the app is a total disaster. It has stopped loading student submissions most of the time in the speed grader section, won’t allow me to assign grades for assignments, and I can’t sync my grades to our LMS from the app anymore. The option for that is completely gone from the menu. On the rare instances when I can actually get it to load a student submission for a given assignment, it hangs up after every student and makes me hit the done button and come back in to see any further student submissions. I’m sorely disappointed! This is an expensive product, and these issues are totally unacceptable; especially after using it so successfully last year. How did we go backwards?.Version: 1.12.0

Appallingly poor considering its intended useThe iPad app is almost worse than useless. Masquerading as a time-saving tool under the auspices of a speed grader, this glitch, slow, and unresponsive app actually WORSENS the quality of feedback I share with my students. The whole point of such a tool is to leverage the iPad’s mobility and pencil features, but it takes forever to load assignments even with lighting fast internet, and the handwriting engine drastically reduces the quality of text markup. While my handwriting isn’t the best, I do a lot of work to ensure my comments are legible. But each time I click “done” on an assignment, I can see all of my on-screen notes get just subtly reformatted - re-rendered, I suppose - to look like that of a two year old being electrocuted. Speed grader? Hardly..Version: 1.13.2

Cannot grade PDFsYou might as well just use a laptop to grade because this app works inconsistently. If students have assignments that require them to upload a file, it causes issues. Sometimes it will work, and sometimes you will unintentionally give a student a lower grade than they deserve because it appears as though they didn’t complete their work. This is unfair to students and only creates MORE work for the teachers because we have to go back to check assignments we thought were previously graded. For example, sometimes there are assignments in which students are to fill in answers on a PDF and then upload that PDF as their assignment. When using the app to grade these assignments, students’ PDFs look blank - not so on a laptop. Last semester, I reached out to our campus administrators. You can view their response below. Basically, the issue is known and has not been resolved 6 months later: “Canvas engineers responded back to let us know that the feature you want to use is not available in the Canvas app. Here is their response: Form data files are not designed to show on the Canvas app. Grading will need to be done within a browser. This is due to the multi layer properties of files of this type.”.Version: 1.12.1

Functionality in marking/annotationThis app does not have the functionality of an app like Notability. The window pane for marking is tiny and makes writing annotations difficult and cramped. Also, the array of options is quite limited. Finally, setting up an assignment on the app is difficult. Certain submission formats are not ‘mark able’ as the ‘docviewer’ doesn’t load on a text submission for example. Canvas is overly complex and needlessly labyrinthine..Version: 1.12.1

Frustrated, sad, and inconveniencedThis app is generally very frustrating. It’s completely different than how Canvas functions on my computer such as, the speedgrader function is frustrating when leaving a comment (it doesn’t let you scroll up in the comment nicely and I like to leave detailed comments so that’s annoying), it doesn’t have any options to change assignments or editing modules, like adjusting prerequisites or publishing things. But perhaps the most annoying part of this app is when I get one notification and I get five notifications for that same notification. So, if I get a notification that X student submitted X assignment, I get that same notification five different times on my iPhone. I’ve tried editing settings in my iPhone, editing settings in the app itself, and I can’t seem to figure out how to stop this problem. It’s just generally more a hassle to have it than it’s worth..Version: 1.11.10

No response from any Customer ServiceI have been using this up for a few weeks now. Had a number of technical issues like, submitted student’s work wouldn’t open on the app or a problem with adding new people to the course. I emailed “Help” section three times, and the only emails I received was “we’ll get back to you with your query”. That was over a week ago. Therefore, I think customer service is really poor. Good job this is a free platform. I wouldn’t be paying for this..Version: 1.12.1

All promise no deliver, unreliable, buggyIf it worked and was consistent and reliable, it would be great. Marking is very buggy, annoying, papers/quizzes disappear, submission lists incomplete and change, clunky with rubric..Version: 1.21.0

6 Gig of DataI can’t quite understand how this happened or is possible. But I had been using the Canvas Teacher app on WiFi to check recent student submissions. All good - very useful and well designed and functional. Then a couple of days ago I was at a cafe on the 4G (mobile network) to enter some grades and comments- and this app used 6.4 GB of data in less than 20 minutes! Needless to say I have no data left and all my rollover is burned. Whatever you do - only use this app on WiFi!.Version: 1.7


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