Instructure Launches IgniteAI to Simplify and Seamlessly Transform AI Integration in Education

Powered by AWS, IgniteAI sets the stage for a future-ready, open ecosystem with agentic support as the AI landscape continues to expand 

SALT LAKE CITY — July 23, 2025 — Instructure, the world’s leading edtech ecosystem and maker of Canvas Learning Management System (LMS), today announced the launch of IgniteAI, 

Instructure’s next big leap in secure, in-context AI for education. Powered by AWS Bedrock, IgniteAI simplifies and streamlines the use of AI directly within Canvas and Mastery, enhancing efficiency and driving educational success. This advanced AI solution also seamlessly connects with hundreds of trusted partner tools, saving time and allowing educators to maintain confident control over the learning experience. 

Amid explosive growth in AI technologies, educators and administrators face significant challenges in navigating the role of AI in education and effectively implementing a variety of tools. IgniteAI addresses these pain points by delivering confidence, simplicity and substantial educational value, enabling educators and learners to leverage AI intuitively and safely. 

“Over the past year, we’ve listened as customers opened up about the real challenges and complexities they face in trying to deploy AI effectively,” said Shiren Vijiasingam, chief product officer at Instructure. “By embedding AI transparently into the familiar Canvas environment and ensuring full interoperability with both our native AI functionality and that of our partners, IgniteAI brings powerful, vetted AI solutions directly into the daily workflows of educators and learners. Our technology removes barriers and protects data, allowing educators to confidently dedicate more of their time to providing an exceptional learning experience.” 

Educators can use IgniteAI directly within Canvas or Mastery to conduct tasks such as creating quizzes, generating rubrics, summarizing discussions, aligning content to outcomes and more. IgniteAgent enables conversation-based completion of even the most complex workflows within Instructure products, and can orchestrate other partner AI right within the agent chat. Leveraging the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard, trusted partners can easily integrate their agents and workflows to work seamlessly with IgniteAgent. Educators will be able to generate solutions to even the most complex educational problems seamlessly across Instructure and partner products right within the Instructure learning ecosystem, with a single prompt. 

To date, many AI learning solutions are isolated point solutions confined to serving a single function within their product, adding to the noise and cognitive overload for educators. Instructure’s strategic approach to AI focuses on extending the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) framework and facilitating connections across the educational ecosystem of over 1,100+ edtech partners and leading large language models (LLMs) via the established MCP standards. Existing partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI are enabling novel use cases in education.

This results in greater interoperability, allowing AI to operate seamlessly across systems while keeping educators and learners within their institution’s Instructure experience — the hub of all teaching and learning. Institutions can combine native Instructure IgniteAI features with other AI tools they know and love to confidently and securely achieve educational success. With this deliberate approach to AI, Instructure is well-positioned as AI evolves beyond generic content creation into more autonomous support that can help users complete previously time-consuming tasks, also known as “agentic AI.”

IgniteAI emphasizes three core tenets:

• Confidence: Clear, transparent insights detailing data use, privacy compliance and model specifics, reinforcing institutional control, intellectual property and data protection compliance (COPPA, FERPA, GDPR).
• Adoption: Seamless integration with Canvas and Mastery means educators and learners encounter AI as a natural part of their routine, eliminating the need to learn new tools or ways of working and preventing fragmented user experiences.
• Value: Targeted solutions address specific time-intensive tasks such as grading, content creation, student management, system setup, equitable learning individualization and intuitive analytics, driving direct benefits to students and educators. 

"As testers of IgniteAI, we've been incredibly impressed with its potential to transform the learning experience,” said Robert Romano, IT associate director at Florida International University (FIU). “Our staff, who are keen to embrace AI, particularly appreciated features like the translation capabilities, which offer a powerful way to make education accessible for our entire student body. What truly sets Instructure apart as a partner is the opportunity to collaborate directly with their research and development team to help shape the future of the product. At FIU, we pride ourselves on a culture of testing and innovation, and we're excited to be part of the journey in shaping a tool that will undoubtedly empower educators and students alike.”

Instructure customers will begin to see the IgniteAI icon in Canvas and Mastery immediately where AI is already integrated into the product experience. Additional features are launching on an opt-in basis in line with our approach to co-creating with our customers and preserving their agency in enabling AI capabilities and include support for automating content creation and remediation, streamlining grading and feedback, and building educator and learner AI skills with novel AI assignments.

Additional Instructure product enhancements

In addition, Instructure announced several significant updates to its product suite. Canvas, the central platform for learning, offers more intuitive and personalized experiences, featuring redesigned dashboards and modules that enhance usability and provide a cohesive mobile app experience across platforms. To support differentiated learning at scale, Canvas has introduced differentiation tags that enable personalized instruction and enhanced management and discovery of LTI tools through the new Canvas Apps experience. 

Innovations in assessment include specialized STEM items, enhanced proctoring capabilities in New Quizzes and new student portfolios that showcase diverse learning progress. 

Accessibility remains a top priority, with Canvas LMS, Canvas Studio, Canvas Catalog and Impact going above the minimum standard by achieving WCAG 2.2 AA compliance as part of a recent Voluntary Product Accessibility Test (VPAT). This is part of ongoing efforts to achieve high accessibility standards across all Instructure products, ensuring equitable access to content. 

Furthermore, Mastery by Instructure now offers streamlined assessment management, AI-powered item alignment and generation, assessment experiences in Spanish and deeper actionable insights through enhanced analytics dashboards designed to facilitate quick, data-driven instructional decisions.

There are 18 new solutions launched as part of these enhancements, 10 of them leveraging AI to remove friction and drive learning success.