Expanding What’s Possible in Continuing Education: Canvas and Eduframe

How do institutions grow their short courses and professional learning business successfully, while navigating the administrative complexities that come with scaling? 

Continuing education is rapidly becoming central to institutional strategy. Institutions around the world are expanding short courses, professional certificates, workforce development programs, executive education, and microcredentials to reach new learners and support career mobility. 

As portfolios grow, institutions are discovering that scaling continuing education requires more than publishing courses. It requires operational infrastructure that can support stackable & personalized learning, both individual learners (B2C) and corporate partners (B2B), both online & in-person education, integration with institutional systems, and streamlined experiences for both learners and staff.

Continuing Education at Institutional Scale

As continuing education strategies mature, some institutions require additional operational capabilities to support their next phase of growth.

When Canvas Catalog or other standalone continuing education storefront platforms no longer meet evolving institutional needs, such as coordinating programs across multiple learner audiences and delivery formats (online, hybrid, face-to-face incl. all scheduling requirements ), growing B2B corporate partnerships, payment workflows, and reporting requirements, institutions can extend their Canvas ecosystem with Eduframe by Drieam. Eduframe is the Continuing Education Storefront and SIS that seamlessly integrates with Canvas, developed by Drieam, a highly valued Instructure partner for more than a decade.

Instructure is proud to announce its co-sell partnership for Eduframe with Drieam, providing new and more convenient ways in which institutions can scale continuing education within the Canvas environment.

Together, Canvas and Eduframe help institutions support high-quality learning experiences while aligning the operational processes required to manage continuing education at scale.

Extending the Canvas Ecosystem

Eduframe complements Canvas LMS by supporting the operational backbone of continuing education. Rather than replacing the learning environment, Eduframe works alongside Canvas to help institutions manage the administrative and operational complexity that often accompanies large-scale continuing education initiatives.

Key capabilities include:

• Native website integration through the WordPress plugin, the Drupal module, and API-based CMS connections, resulting in strong improvements in SEO/GEO, allowing for full flexibility in branding & customization 
• Diverse enrollment workflows, supporting book now, register interest, and waitlist options 
• Automates repeatable workflows using configurable templates such as course, meeting, task, and email templates to standardize processes, reduce manual effort, and minimize errors. 
• Highly configurable with custom fields 
• Personalized and stackable program structures, enabling learners to bundle courses into tailored learning paths 
• Alternative payment flows, such as invoicing, in addition to secure online payment gateways with supported payment providers 
• Deep integration with Canvas LMS 
• Private course & program offerings for your corporate partner audience and dedicated partner portals. 
• Support for face-to-face, blended, online, self-paced, and long-running programs - including resource scheduling (e.g., room bookings, instructors) 
• Open APIs that enable integration with CRM & marketing automation systems, finance tools, BI tooling (incl. PowerBI connector certified by Microsoft), and other institutional systems

Eduframe’s integration-first approach allows institutions to connect continuing education operations to the broader institutional ecosystem while maintaining the familiar power of Canvas for teaching and learning.

By aligning learning delivery with operational workflows, institutions can streamline administrative processes, automate communication flows, and enable collaboration across departments that may previously have operated independently.

The result is a continuing education environment that can grow alongside institutional ambitions.

Freeing Teams to Focus on What Matters

For many continuing education units, administrative processes have historically relied on manual or semi-automated coordination across departments. As programs scale, this can create significant operational pressure on teams of any size.

By aligning Canvas with Eduframe’s configurable workflows, integrations, and automations, institutions can streamline enrollment, speed-to-course, communication, and reporting processes. In practice, this often allows experienced staff to focus on the tasks they excel at and where their expertise provides the most value to their institution, such as program innovation, employer partnerships, and learner success.

Instead of spending valuable time managing manual workflows, teams can focus on building new programs, collaborating with industry partners, and designing learning opportunities that address workforce and community needs.

A Proven Partnership: The University of Edinburgh

Technological capabilities only create value when institutions can put them to work. The University of Edinburgh offers a compelling example of how this looks in practice.

With 25 schools offering short courses and professional programs, the university recognized that continuing education was becoming an increasingly important part of its mission. At the same time, coordinating offerings across departments required a unified structure that could support both innovation and governance. In June 2025, the University of Edinburgh launched its Canvas and Eduframe-powered short course platform at shortcourses.ed.ac.uk.

Since launching this platform, the university has:

• Supported more than 1,000 courses 
• Engaged over 7,000 unique learners 
• Processed more than 11,500 enrollments 
• Unified 25 schools within a centralized continuing education structure

Enrollment workflows were standardized across departments. Communication processes were configured and automated to support learners throughout their journey. Financial reporting gained greater clarity across programs. Schools gained the flexibility to develop new offerings while maintaining alignment with institutional systems and governance.

Beyond scale, the platform has helped the university align operational processes with its strategic ambitions for lifelong learning and they are not done yet as the University of Edinburgh has very ambitious growth goals.

By combining Canvas with Eduframe, the University of Edinburgh designed an ecosystem specifically for short courses and professional learning. One that supports innovation within schools while maintaining coordination at the institutional level.

Learning from Peers

In our upcoming webinar, leaders from the University of Edinburgh will share how they designed and scaled their continuing education platform, and what other institutions should consider when building similar ecosystems.

During the session, they will discuss:

• The strategic motivations behind expanding their short-course ecosystem 
• How they approached coordination across multiple schools 
• What they learned about integrating operational workflows with learning delivery 
• How automation and integration helped streamline administrative processes 
• Practical advice for institutions considering similar initiatives

For institutions navigating the growth of lifelong learning programs, hearing directly from peers who have implemented and scaled a continuing education platform will provide valuable insight. 

Join us on March 31st - Register here 

This webinar offers an opportunity to learn how a leading university aligned its learning platform with an operational infrastructure designed to support long-term growth.

Strengthening the Edtech Ecosystem

The partnership between Instructure and Drieam reflects a shared commitment to openness, collaboration, and extensibility.

Through Instructure’s Partner Program, institutions gain access to innovative tools that extend the capabilities of the Instructure platform. By working with partners who are equally committed to supporting educators and learners, Instructure helps institutions build environments that evolve alongside their needs. 

“Eduframe enables us to support institutions with advanced continuing education requirements such as native website integration, B2B program management, and enterprise-level customization,” said Kevin Martin, VP of Sector Strategy at Instructure. “Through this partnership, we are expanding the Canvas ecosystem to ensure institutions have the flexibility and infrastructure they need as their strategies evolve.”

“We are proud to deepen our collaboration with Instructure and support institutions as they expand their continuing education ambitions,” said Mieke Ridderhof, Chief Marketing Officer and Managing Director US and APAC at Drieam. “Together, we are helping institutions align learning delivery with operational excellence and create scalable environments for lifelong learning.”

As continuing education becomes an increasingly important part of institutional strategy, institutions need technology environments that support both innovation and operational clarity.

Through this partnership, Instructure and Drieam are helping institutions build the infrastructure needed to scale lifelong learning opportunities, support workforce development, and expand access to flexible education pathways.

Would you like to hear more about Eduframe and Canvas face to face, then please come and see us at the UPCEA annual conference 15-17 April in New Orleans. During this event two Eduframe & Canvas institutions, UIS and UC Merced will be presenting on the combination of both solutions for their Continuing Education Ecosystem.

Join the Webinar with the University of Edinburgh, Canvas and Eduframe

If your institution is expanding short courses, workforce development programs, or professional learning opportunities and exploring how Canvas and Eduframe can support that growth at scale, this session is designed for you.

Join us on March 31st to hear directly from Myles Blaney, Fiona Buckland, and Lauren Johnston-Smith at the University of Edinburgh, alongside Kevin Martin from Instructure and Mieke Ridderhof from Drieam, as they share how Canvas and Eduframe work together to support scalable continuing education ecosystems.

Register for the webinar here

Join us on March 31st to hear directly from Myles Blaney, Fiona Buckland, and Lauren Johnston-Smith at the University of Edinburgh, alongside Kevin Martin from Instructure and Mieke Ridderhof from Drieam, as they share how Canvas and Eduframe work together to support scalable continuing education ecosystems. 

• Date: March 31st 
• Time: 9 AM PT | 12 PM ET