iSpring Suite vs CANVAS: Which is a better fit?

Rick K.: I'm Rick, and I am Training and Systems Manager for a company that provides staffing for the hospitality industry. I give iSpring Suite five stars. For more reviews, click below. Prior to using iSpring Suite, the only way that we delivered electronic documents or materials was through our HR program. The issue that led us to look at a learning management system and a content creator like iSpring Suite was expanding our delivery options, especially in light of lack of face-to-face delivery methods. Researched a number of LMSs, and the very first thing I looked at was the mobile functionality. Many of our users, many of our employees would be accessing the content via a mobile device. So I looked at reviews, and iSpring Suite had the highest reviews hands down for the mobile platform. From day one, when I had a sample, which was actually full access to the material, their customer service, customer support folks were excellent in helping any type of setup issues that I needed. Once we went ahead and purchased the product, getting set up was as easy as a few clicks and I was ready to go. There's a couple of things to consider. Number one is the content creator is PowerPoint based. So if that is something that you're familiar with, using PowerPoint, it's an excellent interface. That said, if you want to use something a little bit perhaps more advanced or more robust, that might not be the best way you want to create content. Secondly, the LMS that I use was for a small company, so even though there were tools to be able to onboard large numbers of employees, I never used those tools. I did it all by hand, and that worked quite well, but I would definitely recommend checking out how you could bring in large numbers of folks into the LMS.

Jose : My name is Jose. I'm an inside sales transferring to outside salesman at an industrial distributor company for all types of industrial parts, mainly conveyor parts for the agriculture industry. And I would rate Canvas a five out of five. So the other software or company I've used before is Blackboard. I used it for when I was at Cal State University. And the reason why we... Actually, [inaudible 00:00:28] we were only using that company for I think for one semester, and then it was always down. It always had technical issues, people [inaudible 00:00:36]. It was hard to onboard students, and that's basically why the university basically decided to ditch Blackboard and start using Canvas. And they've been using it. That's when I was a freshman. I'm already graduated, so they only use it for about one semester and they've been on Canvas for the past five years. I like Canvas because it's really easy the way it's laid out, whether you have your different courses, and then you get the link to your different courses and it shows you basically all the homework that's due or all the assignments that you still need to do. And I really like how everything's in one spot, so you literally just hit your class and then it shows you your grades, your assignments that you still have to do. And then what I really like about it is the fact that you're able to view old assignments. So it basically saves it onto its database. So if you ever want to look at an old assignment, you could just hit that assignment and then hit what you submitted so you could always see what you submitted. And instead of most companies where you submit something, and that's it. It's just like, "Thank you," and you can never really go back to what you submitted. So that's probably the biggest thing that I really like about Canvas. I think it's pretty easy to start using Canvas because like I said, everything's there, so it's not like you have to go looking for anything. It's all laid out. You hit the class link. Well, most [inaudible 00:02:01] professors will send you a link. You use the link and then it automatically signs you up to their course. You don't have to have a sign-up a code or anything like that. You can just hit the link, you're in the class, you've hit your class, and then everything is laid out to my grades, my assignments, to the [inaudible 00:02:21] that shows you what's going to be due within the next... Basically the whole semester, you just hit the week that you're in and it shows you is due that week. And then if you want to see what's going to be doing three weeks, or you can also check that. So I think it's really easy. One recommendation I would have for anybody that's going to be using Canvas is always double check your work because sometimes you might've forgot to attach a link or something and it'll still let you submit an assignment. So you always want to check that you actually submitted something because I know a few students who something would happen with their computer. I know it wasn't Canvas because it never happened to me, but they would submit an assignment and they would find out that they never attached the PDF or the link, so then there would... It still lets you submit an assignment, but you wouldn't have anything there. And I would just say double check your work because the one thing I really like about Canvas, too, is you can always go back and resubmit. So you can always resubmit an assignment. So you're not stuck where it's like most companies, you submit something, and then that's it. There's no... Can't even view what you submitted and you can't resubmit. So Canvas, really like that about Canvas where it's like you messed up, but you still have time where your assignment's due, you can still submit something else. That's what I really like about it.