Brightspace vs Canvas: A definitive comparison [August 2025]

Brightspace and Canvas are two popular LMS platforms, catering to millions of users at universities, schools, and businesses worldwide.

But while testing both platforms side-by-side over a couple of weeks, we noticed subtle differences in their workflows and capabilities, leading us to believe they’re actually designed for specific user bases.

Canvas is for large educational institutions looking for a full-fledged EdTech ecosystem with a course marketplace, white-label course pages, personalized learning pathways, and institution-wide analytics. On the other hand, Brightspace is for businesses and L&D teams looking for an LMS to design, manage, and track employee training programs.

We came to this conclusion while comparing Brightspace vs Canvas on the following criteria:

• Course creation
• Course management
• Grading & feedback
• Analytics
• Integration

We’ve summarized our findings in the table below, including a short overview of the pricing section.

Brightspace vs Canvas: Comparison summary

What is Canvas?

Canvas LMS was founded in 2011 by Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley as an EdTech ecosystem for educational institutions. Today, it caters to over 20 million educational professionals and students globally.

Canvas’s complete solution comes with a course marketplace, user-friendly interfaces, personalized learning pathways, customization options, and institution-wide analytics. Educators can create lessons, assignments, and discussions and host them in branded Course Homepages. 

The Course Homepage is where students and educators can access course-related activities. Students can take quizzes, participate in discussions, and submit assignments, while educators can grade, comment, and share feedback using the SpeedGrader tool. They can also use the Gradebook to manage and organize student grades. 

Canvas also has an analytics tool to track participation, weekly activity, reports, and attendance. You can also connect third-party tools through LTI or native integrations to enhance the educational experience. 

Canvas LMS is perfect for universities and school districts looking for a full-fledged EdTech solution that connects every department, program, and educational institution under a single banner.

What is Brightspace?

D2L Brightspace LMS was founded in 1999 by John Baker as a learning management software for the masses. In the last 25 years, Brightspace has grown to serve over 14 million users globally.

The platform uses a template-based approach to course building, allowing educators to create structured learning experiences organized into manageable units. The platform emphasizes flexibility in course design while maintaining an organized, textbook-like structure that makes content easy to navigate and update.

D2L Brightspace provides robust administrative tools for managing enrollments, learning prerequisites, and classroom groups. It also supports custom learning pathways and branding options to personalize the learning experience. But the platform's strength lies in its extensive integration ecosystem, offering hundreds of third-party connections to enhance the learning experience.

Its comprehensive grading system with multiple assessment options allows educators to provide personalized feedback on assignments and submissions. Educators can also track student progress and course effectiveness using insights from Brightspace’s analytics feature. 

Brightspace is ideal for businesses and L&D teams looking for an LMS platform to deliver and track employee training programs.

Brightspace’s course creation workflow is straightforward once you get the hang of it.

Brightspace operates on a template system. Educators can create new course templates from scratch, build from existing templates, or reuse previous learning materials. You can also customize the course layout with custom navbars, groups, logos, etc.

Courses are structured like a textbook; divided into individual ‘Units.’ You can add a new ‘Unit’ to your course content at any time, making it easier to update or add sections. 

However, the ‘Unit’ building tool offers very basic content types like text, video, audio files, and external links. We also found its testing and collaborative question types very basic with just simple discussion frameworks, quizzes, and surveys.

Canvas Courses tab is the command center for course creation and hosting.

The Courses tab has all the core features you need to manage course-related activities, including course creation tools like:

• Course syllabus to expand on your course structure, objectives, and expectations.
• Pages to create and host interactive page content, including blogs, videos, and links to other files.
• Outcomes to set measurable goals for individual students or groups in a course.
• Grades (or Gradebook) to manage and organize rubrics for all your students.
• Assignments to create, assign, and grade quizzes, projects, and other submissions.

Something we found lacking in Canvas while testing was question types—they were basic like multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc. with very little interactive and collaborative elements. 
They’re great for reinforcing topics. But if you’re looking to train your learners on soft skills, we recommend integrating external products and applications.  

NOTE: We’ve only covered the essential course creation tools here. If you want to really dive into Canvas’s course creation features, check out Canvas’s Instructor Guides.

Looking for more interactive question types to engage students?

According to the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report (2025), employees must balance hard and soft skills to succeed in corporate businesses.

And the ideal place to learn these skills is educational institutions like schools and universities, where collaborative discussions play an important role for a well-rounded learning experience. 

However, Canvas and Brightspace only offer question types and discussion frameworks that encourage individual and asynchronous learning. And the few collaborative learning experiences available aren’t very engaging.

To incorporate those collaborative learning experiences, we recommend integrating with Wooclap! 

Wooclap offers 21 interactive question types and discussion frameworks that encourage live participation during lessons. You can create the events yourself or choose from event templates available within your organization or other Wooclap users.

Canvas breaks down course management activities into individual tools within the platform.

Canvas caters to major educational organizations, usually with very large class sizes and departments. To make things easier to manage, its comprehensive LMS platform offers a variety of tools to manage your learning courses and enrollments across departments and teams. 

The Canvas Catalog lets students search, register, and pay for courses through an online platform, while administrators handle enrollment, performance reports, financial statements, and registrations.

The Course Home Page houses all course-specific resources and tasks, like the Course Modules section, Course Assignments area, and Course Syllabus. You can also find the Course Activity Stream here, where instructors and students can monitor real-time updates, communications, and alerts for individual courses.

Canvas Student Pathways allows you to design personalized learning pathways that incorporate both scholarly and extracurricular experiences. Learners can track their progress through achievement badges and progress markers, motivating students to perform while cultivating positive academic rivalry.

Brightspace offers similar course management features under Course Administration. 

Brightspace’s Course Administration serves as the primary hub for course management. Instructors can enable or disable specific course tools, rename tools, manage course offerings, import course components, and import learning outcomes.

They can also set certain requirements for courses like: 

• Create approval workflows for self-enrollment using the Discover tool. Instructors can set enrollment rules, and manage enrollment requests through a dedicated interface.
• Set release conditions that learners must meet before accessing or viewing a module. It works with Assignments, Awards, Checklists, Content modules, Topics, etc. 
• Specify submission file type and number of submissions to ensure students meet the rubric criteria set by the instructor. 
• Divide classrooms into Groups and Sections to make them easier to assign learning pathways, assistants, and grades by cohorts.

Canvas and Brightspace provide two tools to add grades — in the submissions and the grading tool.

Canvas offers two ways to grade assignments and quizzes, Gradebook & SpeedGrader:

1. Gradebook allows educators to view, edit, and track student grades. They can filter grades by students or by assignment, making it easier to focus on specific submissions in a large classroom.

1. SpeedGrader is primarily for leaving feedback on assignments (more on this later), but it also has a box to grade assignments, quizzes, and discussions. The grades added here are automatically updated in the Gradebook.

Brightspace also lets educators assign a grade in the assignment submission page. For more in-depth grade management, it has a separate Grades tool where educators can:

• Enter grades to grade student submissions, review student grades, and import and export gradebooks for further analysis.
• Manage grades enables creation of new grade categories and grade items.
• Schemes provide access to view, create, and edit grading schemes that have been shared from higher organizational levels.

But Brightspace takes its grading overview a step further than Canvas with Mastery View. It lets educators identify exactly where the learner needs to improve with qualitative metrics. So you can track how well employees are picking up on soft skills.

Brightspace and Canvas have simple feedback systems that focus on sharing educator feedback with students.

Canvas and Brightspace allow educators to leave feedback on submissions via a comment box or a comments database. Additionally, they can also leave video or audio feedback, for more in-depth feedback.

However, both platforms only focus on providing feedback to students from educators, and not vice versa. Moreover, their feedback tools are asynchronous. Students need to connect with the educator after the class to clarify any doubts.

Can I provide feedback on Canvas or Brightspace if I’m using third-party tools for submission? 

Yes, you can provide feedback on submissions made via third-party integrations on both Canvas and Brightspace, but you need some serious technical expertise to set it up.

So if you lack technical expertise or need a platform that offers real-time feedback tools, we recommend using Wooclap. Along with the question types that naturally award points for correct answers and the option of Competition mode, it offers multiple features for educators and students to interact with each other:

• Wall feature to build a community feeling by leaving messages and comments.
• “Correct answer” button (1) to display the right answers on the student’s screen during a quiz.
• “I’m confused” button (2) which allows students to “digitally” raise their hands during a class or discussion without disrupting the classroom with messages, pings, or emojis.

Brightspace focuses on student participation metrics.

The Class Progress tool tracks four performance indicators for each group or section: Content Completed, Discussions, Logins, and Grades. You can click on the individual users for a more in-depth progress summary for each student:

• Login history tracks when students log into Brightspace, but it doesn’t track if the student accesses a specific course. 
• System access records each browser-based Brightspace access or Pulse app launch. 
• Absent period indicator shows days since a student's last Brightspace login, helping identify potentially at-risk students.
• Standards displays submission and assessment history against learning outcomes aligned to course activities.

Canvas provides a more complete overview of a student’s performance and engagement in the classroom.

Canvas’s New Analytics displays essential student performance data like grades, weekly online student activity, reports, and online attendance (for online courses). The data is compiled into individual tabs:

• Course grade displays the overall grade along with grades by individual assignments like discussion, quiz, essay, and so on. 
• Weekly online activity shows course page views and the number of participants for a specific week.
• Student analytics displays student activity data like participation, number of page views, on-time submission rate, and more.
• Reports display reports on course-related metrics like missing assignments, late assignments, excused assignments, course student data, and course activity data.
• Online attendance report tracks online course attendance requirements for students.

Unlike Brightspace, Canvas offers more in-depth insights, taking into account both student participation and performance. Educators also get access to detailed reports that they can share with relevant stakeholders.

But both Canvas and Brightspace analytics have their limitations.

The limitations in Canvas and Brightspace analytics features may impact the quality of insights available. 

1. Canvas only updates its analytics feature every 8 to 40 hours, so educators may find it difficult to make accurate decisions in real time. 
2. Brightspace doesn’t include inactive courses to the overall analytics data, meaning instructors and decision makers may be working with incomplete information.
3. Canvas and Brightspace don’t account for student-teacher interactions and projects on third-party tools, underrepresenting actual engagement.

This means you won’t get real-time, accurate insights, especially if you’re using third-party tools to create better learning experiences at your business or university.

How can I share third-party data in real time
with Canvas or Brightspace more easily?

You can share data from your LMS (like Brightspace and Canvas) and third-party learning tools in two ways:

1. Import data manually

You can upload grades and feedback manually in both Canvas and Brightspace. Just download your results in the required format and import them into your LMS. You may need to format the file to meet your desired platform’s uploading requirements.

2. Use integrations

Canvas and Brightspace integrate with external tools via LTI. 
For example, you can integrate Wooclap with Canvas via LTI 1.3. Once the integration is set up, educators can import results, attendance, and participation after the Wooclap event. The only manual part is selecting the datapoint (1) you want to include in your Canvas report.

Brightspace offers both native and third-party integrations.

Brightspace supports three ways to integrate with third-party platforms:

• IntegrationHub, an integrated app catalog with 400+ integrations that allows users to easily discover and implement partner solutions from a wide variety of educational tools and applications.
• Native integrations are limited to a select few that are directly built into the platform. 
• Custom integrations with external applications using OAuth 2.0, D2L's proprietary ID Key Auth system, or LTI Advantage (v1.3) for seamless tool interoperability.
• D2L Link is an advanced integration solution offered by D2L (parent company) that enables organizations to integrate Brightspace with any tools that have an API, providing complete activity tracking across platforms and delivering a comprehensive view of learner engagement and progress.

NOTE: Many specialized extensions, such as CopyLeaks for plagiarism detection and Credly for digital credentialing, are available only as add-on purchases that require contacting your account manager to acquire.

Canvas offers three ways to integrate apps into your courses.

Canvas lets you integrate via LTI in three ways:

• Using the Canvas App Center: You can easily integrate teaching tools to your Canvas account or Canvas course with one click.
• Using the Edu App Center: If you don’t have Canvas App Center, you can check the Edu App Center for the latest list of Canvas-compatible External Apps.
• Using vendor integrations: You can also check the vendor’s site for instructions to configure and use their platform with Canvas.

Wooclap integrates with both Canvas and Brightspace!

Wooclap supports integration with Canvas and Brightspace via LTI 1.3. Educators can incorporate Wooclap’s 21+ interactive question types, discussion frameworks, and share results with your preferred LMS with just a click of a button. 

You can check out our detailed LTI integration guide for more information.

Brightspace vs Canvas: Pros & cons

Final verdict: Brightspace vs Canvas

Brightspace and Canvas LMS offer very similar learning management features, but there are subtle differences that make them ideal for completely different use cases:

Canvas LMS offers comprehensive course management features that higher education institutions can use to connect every department, program, or institute. On the other hand, Brightspace focuses on course creation and management tools that businesses and L&D teams can use to make training and onboarding more accessible. 

Use Canvas if:

• You’re looking for an LMS for a university or a large school district
• You need an LMS solution to manage all your departments and programs on one platform
• You want a thorough analysis of student performance and engagement

Click here to get started with Canvas!

Use Brightspace if:

• You’re a business or L&D manager working on employee training programs
• You want an in-depth course management platform to host your training activities
• You are looking to create and track employee submissions and course completion rates

Click here to get started with Brightspace!