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MindTap vs Canvas

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

Our analysts compared MindTap vs Canvas based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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Product Basics

MindTap is an online learning software owned by Cengage that provides educational content and some class management. Among its assets are coursework, textbooks and print with over 1,300 options. The subjects it covers span across business, economics, humanities, math, professional disciplines, science, social science and technology. Some of its educational modules include grading, testing, homework submissions and a mobile app. Instructors can inform students of due dates and encourage underperforming class members.

Canvas helps you create and deliver engaging courses to your students and track their progress in real time. It allows you to post course materials, assignments, quizzes and grades. Students can access these resources, submit their work and communicate with other team members.

You can host discussions through discussion boards and chat rooms, provide personalized feedback using SpeedGrader and track student progress with built-in analytics. Canvas integrates with third-party apps like Zoom, Webex and GoToMeeting, and offers three mobile apps, one each for teachers, students and parents.

User reviews about Canvas praise its smooth interface, real-time collaboration tools and course creation capabilities. Since pricing details aren't mentioned online, you can contact the vendor directly for more information.

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Product Insights

More Confident Students: Give learners more tools to succeed by increasing core competencies. Personalize materials and deliver feedback to reach people by highlighting text and annotations. Increase completion rates and security through smartphone accessibility and the ability to identify at-risk pupils.
Saves Time: Access information in one unified location. Automate grading processes to save the time of tediously entering grades. Integrate with other tools to ensure all needs are met without needing to hunt down individual applications.
High-Quality Content: Find and share interactive textbooks or create a resource library for employees so workers and students can peruse information at their leisure. Create a shareable, professional-looking collection of assets.
Greater Engagement: Increase students’ motivation to learn and boost engagement through improved coursework. Establish clear communication lines between trainer and trainee. Use StudyHub to follow notes, bookmarks and selected text. Students can also create study guides.

Ensures Continuous Learning: Experience minimal disruptions with a 99.9% uptime. Say goodbye to unexpected crashes and keep your educational ecosystem reliable and accessible at all times.
Enriches Learning with Unlimited File Size: Upload as much audio, visuals and video content as you need to courses. File size is not limited, so you can provide comprehensive and engaging materials without worrying about storage constraints.
Strengthens Collaboration: If you’re looking to create collaborative learning experiences for your team, Canvas is the perfect LMS for you. Based on our analysis, it provides a variety of collaboration tools fully out of the box, such as discussion boards, content sharing, group chat, two-way messaging, and notes and annotations.
Ensures Consistency in Evaluations: Create centralized repositories of questions at account levels. For instance, you can create sub-account question banks to store assessments like basic grammar rules across various courses. This ensures consistency in evaluations across different classes, making it easier to access and administer assessments.
Offers a Flexible Pedagogy: Enable instructors to design classes around their preferred learning methods. That could mean standards-based grading, traditional grading, flipped learning, project-based learning and more.
Streamlines Corporate Training: Use Bridge LMS, Canvas’ corporate training solution, to meet your employee training needs. Create and track training programs, use built-in performance tools, integrate with HR systems and more.
Award-Winning LMS: Canvas ranks among our top 10 LMS software, alongside LMS giants like LearnUpon, Absorb LMS and Moodle. In the SelectHub Awards 2024 for the LMS category, it won best-in-class honors for assessments, collaboration, compliance, user management, gamification, and integrations and extensibility.

Course Management: Instructors can grade and curate content, facilitate online discussions and walk students through sample assignments. Provide quizzes, assessments and interactive homework. Let learners see current and upcoming homework as well as individual progress. Clone courses easily to repeat units for different classes, adding information, copying and changing dates.
Learning Path: Create a path by selecting material to customize a course. Add or delete material when needed and move activities around for personalized experiences. Encourage pupils to track progress and reach out to trainers.
Mobile App and eReader: Give employees and students access to an ebook that works on or off the internet through the smartphone app. Use interactive elements to keep people engaged. Take attendance with geolocation and polls to ensure learners are present. Provide other tools like online flashcards, practice quizzes and alerts for homework and due dates. Make annotations and notes in the online textbook. Embed videos into the reader, share highlighted notes and emphasize key text to demonstrate what’s important in testing. Give students access to a text speaker that reads aloud.
Suggested Content: Customize information for specific students to increase engagement with education guides. Suggest videos and assignments that reinforce learning, offered by class or by chapter.
Integrations: Connect with more full-service LMSs like Blackboard, Brightspace, Canvas, Moodle or other solutions. Integrate with other Cengage platforms such as SAM, WebAssign and Cengage Unlimited. Use the same login to access material. Some major products auto-sync grades, so instructors don’t have to duplicate work. Communicate with various programs with IMS Basic LTI standards and additional functionality for more common products.
Reporting: Dig deep and understand where students are failing or succeeding with real-time analytics that measure 12 different metrics and deliver actionable insights.
Subjects: Let learners consume content, software and textbooks that cover a variety of topics like agriculture, anthropology, art, astronomy, biology, college skills, communications, counseling, early childhood education, film, history, humanities, human services, mass communication, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, social sciences, theatre, world languages and more.
Aplia: Connect concepts to real-world situations. Elevate critical thinking with feedback, algorithmic questions, review problems and other elements.
Pathbrite Portfolio: Showcases learner work through videos, images, documents and other assets. Give a visual representation of accomplishments and skills.
Cengage Unlimited: Work with several Cengage learning solutions aimed at specific subjects, including:

CengageNOWv2: Study for accounting, business statistics and taxation. Complete assignments, study for exams and succeed academically. Give workers and students practice opportunities to help them master content.
OWLv2: Save time with coursework in chemistry classes. Help finish assignments, study for exams and give learners other tools to help with success.
SAM: Cover Microsoft Office and computer concepts. Practice and apply skills to prepare for the Microsoft Office environment. Auto-grade assignments and use flexible reporting to report the outcomes.
WebAssign: Study STEM technology. Acquired in 2016, it has former educators on its development support teams to ensure the pedagogy of the experience.
Discontinued Programs: The iLrn, eSAM and iLrn Advance products aren’t for sale for students and can’t be accessed as of December 31st, 2020.

Course Creation: Create new courses using built-in interactive tools. Add specific details like name, course code, due date, language, grading scheme, modules and sections, description and more.
- Announcements: Share key course information with everyone. Remind students of dates and tasks, point them to valuable resources, celebrate achievements and highlight events. You can include text, multimedia and files.
- Grades: Show grades as points, percentages and complete/incomplete. Filter and arrange Gradebook entries, automatically apply grades for missing/late work, and hide grades until you're ready to release them.
- People: Depending on permissions, add students, teachers, assistants and observers. Create student groups for group assignments, discussions and file sharing.
- Pages: Create interactive content like weekly updates, collaborative wikis or resource lists. Include text, multimedia and links, and allow students to contribute to specific pages.
- Files: Easily insert files into modules, assignments, discussions or pages. Share files with students or lock them until ready for download.
- Quizzes: Use the New Quizzes engine for diverse question types. If unavailable, use Classic Quizzes to achieve your objectives.
- Modules: Organize content by weeks and units. Add files, discussions, assignments, quizzes and more. Set prerequisites or lock modules until specific dates.
- New Analytics: Use the New Analytics tool to monitor who has viewed content and participated in assignments and identify students needing extra support.
Dashboard: View published/unpublished courses, access the calendar and upcoming events, start new courses, view grades, enable notifications and more.
Assignments: Include quizzes, graded discussions and various online submissions (files, images, text, URLs media). Assign to everyone or set different due dates for specific groups. Organize assignments into groups, weigh them by percentage, and enable Peer Review for student feedback.
Gradebook: Easily input and distribute grades using various methods, such as points, percentages, pass/fail, GPA scale and letter grades.
- Use SpeedGrader to assign grades and provide feedback efficiently.
- Automatically create columns in the Gradebook for assignments, discussions, quizzes, surveys and attendance tracking.
- View grades by grading periods, sort by due dates or student names, and apply specific filters for streamlined management.
- Download and grade assignments offline and calculate totals.
- Monitor grades across all courses, notify students of graded assignments and manage grade history.
- Customize grading curves, message students based on assignment status, leave private comments and excuse assignments when necessary.
Rubrics: Set custom or outcome-based assessment criteria to communicate quality expectations. Use rubrics to align learning outcomes, assess submissions in SpeedGrader and support non-scoring assessments for comprehensive grading.
Canvas Catalog: Integrate with Canvas Catalog to streamline course offerings.
- Easily bundle multiple courses into programs and enable registration for community education and professional development.
- Create branded sub-catalog listings for specific departments or organizations.
- Customize page templates for FAQs, contact info and individual course landing pages.
- Set up personalized certificates and automate their distribution.
- Allow students to track their progress with customized dashboards.
- Generate reports on course progress, registrations, revenue and enrollment trends.
- Offer hassle-free self-registration and self-paced courses with automated enrollment, payments and certificate distribution.
- Build, manage and customize courses and programs.
SpeedGrader: Quickly grade student submissions in one place with SpeedGrader. Use a simple point scale or detailed rubrics to assign grades, and accept various document formats and URLs to mark up assignments directly for feedback. Sort submissions by student, hide names for anonymous grading and track your progress. Easily view submission details, handle resubmissions and manage moderated assignments.
Intelligent Insights: Enhance teaching and learning effectiveness with Intelligent Insights, a premium analytics solution tailored for admins.
- Use AI and analytics to gather actionable data.
- Leverage conversational AI for quick ad hoc data requests and pre-built analytics for tracking goals such as course effectiveness and student success.
- Customize insights to pinpoint best practices, optimize LTI usage and address learning needs.
- Build custom dashboards and automate SQL queries to streamline data management and improve learner support.
- Identify courses that need improvement, notify instructors promptly and foster continuous improvement across teams.
Roll Call Attendance: Manage attendance in courses using the Attendance (Roll Call) tool, an external LTI app suitable for both online and face-to-face classes. Enabled at the account level, users can access it across all courses within your Canvas account.
Discussions: Communicate about course topics anytime. Create graded or casual discussions for idea exchange and problem-solving. Use threaded discussions for detailed topics and focused discussions for short exchanges.
Assessments: Administer assessments in the form of assignments, quizzes and discussions.
Assignments
- Allow students to submit assignments online through text entry, file uploads, media recordings, external tools, URLs or Canvas pages.
- Assign to individual students, groups or sections.
- Include a due date for Not Graded assignments, without providing points or grades.
Discussions
- Grade student responses to discussion topics.
- Assign to individual students, groups or sections.
Quizzes
- Conduct surveys or assess student comprehension of course content through quizzes.
- Assign to individual students or sections, but not to groups.
Collaboration: Teachers can communicate with individual students, groups or the entire class through messaging, audio notes, video and more. Students can work together via chat groups, video and other messaging tools.
Mobile App: Provide equal access to curriculum and instruction with native mobile apps for students, teachers and parents on iOS and Android devices.
Canvas Student: Enables students to access courses anytime, anywhere. They can:
- View grades and course content.
- Submit assignments.
- Keep track of coursework with a to-do list and calendar.
- Send and receive messages.
- Post to discussions, take quizzes and watch videos.
- Receive notifications for new grades and course updates.
Canvas Teacher: Helps teachers manage their courses anywhere, both in and out of the classroom. This app offers quick access to three main tasks:
- Browse submissions and give feedback to students with the enhanced mobile SpeedGrader.
- Send announcements and messages (like "Message Students Who..."), and join course discussions quickly.
- Change due dates, publish assignments and correct misspellings directly from your phone.
Canvas Parent: Allows parents to see their child's educational details easily at a glance. They can:
- View assignment descriptions and due dates
- Set reminders for assignments
- View assignment and course grades
- View course announcements
Outcomes: Set and track learning goals. Focus on skills and activities, not just grades. Assess progress using the Learning Mastery Gradebook. Import existing outcomes and align them with course rubrics.
SIS Imports: Upload and integrate data from SIS using CSV files or through the Canvas API. Manage users, accounts, courses, enrollments, logins and more. Use IMS Enterprise Specification XML zip files or Banner Grade Exchange Results XML for automated imports.
Canvas Studio: Create, deliver and organize video content in various formats within your media library using Canvas Studio.
- Upload videos directly from devices or integrate them from YouTube into courses.
- Monitor student engagement by tracking views, duration and interactions.
- Connect with platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts.
- Engage students with interactive video quizzes, real-time feedback and integrated Gradebook.
- Provide personalized feedback using SpeedGrader and customize learning paths with MasteryPaths.
- Encourage student participation through video creation and peer feedback.
- Integrate instruction, assessment and additional learning opportunities directly into the video experience.
Conferences: Integrate with BigBlueButton to host lectures, office hours and group meetings. Broadcast audio/video, share slides, and demonstrate applications and resources.
ePortfolios: Create ePortfolios to display and discuss your students’ submissions and experiences. Allow them to collect and document educational projects, assignments and more. Keep ePortfolios private or share them with peers, instructors and future employers.
Video Assessments: Create engaging video quizzes where students answer questions as they watch. Give instant feedback and automatically submit grades to the Gradebook. Review videos and provide comments. Use SpeedGrader to apply rubrics and offer quick, personalized feedback.

Product Ranking

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Analyst Rating Summary

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User Sentiment Summary

92%

of users recommend this product

MindTap has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 13 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

91%

of users recommend this product

Canvas has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 5849 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Improved Student Engagement: MindTap offers a variety of interactive activities and assessments that can help to keep students engaged with the material. This is in contrast to traditional textbooks, which can be passive and unengaging.

Personalized Learning: MindTap can be customized to meet the individual needs of each student. This means that students can focus on the areas where they need the most help, and they can learn at their own pace.

Accessibility: MindTap is accessible from any device with an internet connection. This makes it easy for students to access their course materials from anywhere, at any time.

Data and Analytics: MindTap provides instructors with data and analytics that can help them to track student progress and identify areas where students are struggling. This information can be used to improve instruction and better support student learning.

User-Friendly Interface: According to 60% of users who mentioned this pro, Canvas offers an intuitive and navigable interface, and is easy to use for both instructors and students.

Mobile Accessibility: The Canvas mobile app, praised by 72% of users, offers a responsive design and on-the-go access on various devices.

Best-In-Class Integration Capabilities: 55% of users said Canvas integrates well with a wide range of third-party tools and services, and helps create a customized learning environment.

Effective Communication and Collaboration Features: 45% of users appreciate Canvas’ communication tools, specifically discussion boards, announcements and email.

Personalized Course Design: Canvas offers flexible course designs, allowing instructors to create personalized learning experiences for their students, said 40% of users.

Cost: Students have expressed concerns about the additional cost associated with purchasing access to MindTap, especially when required course materials are already expensive. This can create a financial burden for students, particularly those on a tight budget.

Technical Issues: Users have reported encountering technical problems with MindTap, such as glitches, errors, and compatibility issues with certain devices or browsers. These issues can disrupt the learning process and cause frustration for students who rely on the platform to access course materials and complete assignments.

Learning Curve: Some students have found MindTap's interface to be complex and not intuitive, requiring a significant investment of time and effort to learn how to navigate the platform effectively. This can be a barrier for students who prefer a more straightforward and user-friendly learning experience.

Integration Challenges: Integrating MindTap with existing Learning Management Systems (LMS) can sometimes present challenges, leading to synchronization issues, broken links, and difficulties in accessing grades or assignments. This can create confusion and inconvenience for both students and instructors.

Technical Glitches and Bugs: Nearly 40% of users report experiencing technical issues, such as system crashes, data loss and bugs.

Steep Learning Curve for Complex Features: According to 30% of users, while the overall interface is user-friendly, more advanced features have a steep learning curve.

Rigid Due Date Policies: Some users mentioned that Canvas's rigid due date rules can be challenging for students who submit work late due to technical issues or other reasons.

Let's tap into the minds of MindTap users and see what they have to say. User reviews from the past year suggest MindTap offers a robust platform for learning and course management, but it's not without its quirks. Reviewers frequently praise MindTap's ability to integrate seamlessly with learning management systems (LMS) like Blackboard and Canvas, making it a convenient hub for accessing course materials, assignments, and grades. The platform's interactive features, such as quizzes, flashcards, and simulations, receive positive feedback for enhancing engagement and comprehension. However, some users find the interface a bit clunky and overwhelming, especially for those new to online learning platforms. Technical glitches and occasional syncing issues can also disrupt the learning flow. Despite these drawbacks, MindTap stands out for its comprehensive content library and alignment with Cengage textbooks, making it a valuable tool for students seeking additional support and practice. Ultimately, MindTap is best suited for students who prefer a structured learning environment with readily available resources and are comfortable navigating a feature-rich online platform. Those who value simplicity and a more intuitive interface might explore alternative options.

Canvas is an eLearning solution used for online, in-person and hybrid learning in a variety of educational settings. Users praise its smooth interface, mobile accessibility and integration capabilities, while also highlighting some technical and usability challenges that may require attention.Users found the system easy to use and navigate, and were happy with its vast suite of features, especially the grading, assignments and assessment tools. Most reported that it’s budget-friendly and had positive experiences with customer service.On the downside, users said they encountered bugs and glitches in the program. They requested a more flexible due date policy and more ease of use in advanced features.All things considered, Canvas is a versatile LMS that provides a modern platform and industry-specific features to make learning more engaging and personalized. It may require some initial investment in training and customization, but it delivers a positive overall experience for both instructors and students.

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