Canvas by Instructure

Canvas Review: Your Grades, To the Second Decimal

The Dashboard Is Whatever the Institution Built

Course cards fill the opening screen — Biology 101, American Literature 401, Psychology 302, Music Theory 337 — each with its own colour and course code, and study groups listed beneath them. Opening a course gives Home with recent activity, then Announcements, Assignments, Discussions and People. What actually appears there is decided by teaching staff, so two modules in the same term behave differently: one publishes every rubric and reading, the next publishes a title and nothing else. This is a client for a system administered by someone else, which is the first thing to understand before blaming the app.

Grades Reach the Home Screen as a Widget

A widget lists courses with their current percentages — 89.52% in introductory calculus, 83.20% in a psychology module, 96.25% in corporate strategy, and No Grade where nothing has been marked yet — readable without opening anything. Assignment Details then shows the points available, a Graded badge, the deadline down to the minute, the accepted submission types (file upload, text entry or a website URL) and a dial with the result: 89 points, 89% out of 100. The To Do list separates work due tomorrow from work with no date at all, which is the distinction that actually governs a week.

One Inbox, and What Google Play Records

The inbox spans every course at once with Unread, Starred, Sent and Archived tabs and a filter for a single module. Threads carry the group rather than one person, so a question aimed at an instructor reaches the assistants who usually answer faster. Google Play lists device IDs, approximate location, crash logs and app interactions as shared with third parties, and in-app messages, photos, personal information and approximate location as collected. There is no advertising badge and no in-app purchase badge: 10 million installs, 4.5 stars from 224,000 Play reviews, 4.7 from 2.77 million on the App Store.