IgniteAI in Action: Highlights from the November New & Next Showcase
This week, I had the honor of sharing all of our highly anticipated new features with my friend and colleague, Zach Pendleton, via our first-ever New & Next Showcase. Over one thousand educators, administrators, and edtech leaders joined us for a look into the evolution of the New & Next product update series that unpacks the features and ideas shaping the future of teaching and learning. What a thrill it was to be in front of the camera, sharing with you all the great work the team has been putting into IgniteAI. It was an exciting moment for me, for sure!
The reality is AI is moving fast, and institutions are navigating high expectations and real pressures. Much of our presentation focused on how IgniteAI is designed to meet this moment. Its focus is to make AI work for education by grounding it in transparency, trust, and clear instructional value.
Whether you’re new to Instructure or exploring what AI can do in the classroom, this recap highlights how we’ve designed IgniteAI to simplify teaching, create efficiencies, and keep the educator in control. And, I need to take a moment to mention how your input and feedback, via the early adopter program, have helped ensure the tools we are building drive very real and valuable results for both educators and learners. So, a heartfelt “Thank you” for your partnership and collaboration.
You can watch the recording here.
What IgniteAI features are available now in Canvas?
Here are several highly requested IgniteAI features in Canvas that educators can begin using today.
Generator for Rubrics
You can now provide more timely and meaningful feedback by generating clear, consistent rubrics based on assignment details. Instructors can skip tedious setup work and focus on the most impactful parts of assessments while maintaining full control over the final criteria and scoring. Note: To enable this feature, you must also have Enhanced Rubrics enabled.
Insights for Discussions
Insights for Discussions allows educators to understand the quality and relevance of student conversations quickly. This feature evaluates the alignment of student comments with the original prompt and gauges the strength of engagement. As a result, instructors can quickly spot replies needing follow-up, identify emerging themes or misunderstandings, and pinpoint students who may require additional support. By surfacing the most critical information, discussion insights save time and enable educators to guide richer, more meaningful classroom dialogue, with streamlined targeted feedback possible via SpeedGrader.
Translations for Discussions, Inbox, and Announcements
Translations for Discussions, Inbox, and Announcements break down language barriers so every learner can fully participate. It interprets content with contextual awareness to make communication clearer for multilingual classrooms. This more inclusive experience means that students can engage confidently, and educators won’t need to manually translate or modify content.
- How-to guide
Release notes (includes full list of languages supported)
Coming soon: smarter assessment and help with IgniteAI
Between December and early 2026, we’ll launch these additional IgniteAI features in Canvas. Here’s a look at where we are headed:
December 2025: Question Authoring Assistance
Question authoring assistance helps educators create high-quality assessments without starting from scratch. By drawing on course materials and academic standards, it generates draft questions that provide you with a strong foundation to build upon, while still maintaining control over the final content. The feature lightens the load of quiz creation, reduces repetitive work, and makes it easier to deliver assessments that measure the right skills and concepts. This feature will also be made available in Mastery.
Early 2026: IgniteAI Agent
IgniteAI Agent is a conversational AI assistant that helps educators complete complex, multi-step tasks with a single prompt. It works across more than 500 Canvas API, turning time-consuming workflows into quick, automated actions. Whether an instructor needs to adjust deadlines, generate course materials, or take bulk actions, IgniteAI Agent handles the heavy lifting while keeping the educator in control. By removing manual steps and streamlining everyday tasks, it frees up time for teaching and student support.
Early 2026: Grading Assistance for SpeedGrader
Grading Assistance for SpeedGrader helps educators move through open-ended assignments faster while keeping them firmly in charge of final decisions. It drafts feedback and suggested scores, giving instructors a clear starting point they can review, edit, and personalize. Instead of spending hours writing repetitive comments, you can focus on the moments that require deeper insight and human judgment. The result is more timely, consistent feedback for students and more time for instructors to concentrate on teaching and support.
A note on IgniteAI availability in Canvas
We understand institutions are navigating a fast-moving AI landscape while balancing real constraints around policy, training, and trust. To make this transition manageable, Instructure is taking a phased, thoughtful approach to IgniteAI availability so every campus has the time and space to explore what works best for their community.
We’re committed to offering some level of IgniteAI for every Canvas customer, because we believe all institutions (regardless of size or resources) should be able to bring meaningful AI capabilities into teaching and learning. At the same time, we’re still learning how generative AI tools are used at scale, and usage patterns are a major factor in predicting long-term cost. Ensuring financial sustainability for both institutions and Instructure means being thoughtful, data-driven, and transparent about how these capabilities evolve.
All Canvas customers will have access to a set of high-value IgniteAI capabilities at no additional cost, including:
- IgniteAI Summaries for Discussions
- IgniteAI Search for Courses
- IgniteAI Translations for Discussions, Inbox, and Announcements
- IgniteAI Question Authoring Assistance for Quizzes (starting December 2025)
To give institutions the time and flexibility they need, additional IgniteAI features released between now and January will be freely available to all Canvas customers through June 30, 2026:
- Rubric Generator
- Discussion Insights
- Grading Assistance in SpeedGrader (when released)
- IgniteAI Agent (when released)
This early access window is intentionally designed to give your institution space to experiment, gather feedback, and understand how these tools can best support your goals—without pressure or premature commitments. After June 30, 2026, essential, access-focused features that support equity and inclusion will remain free long-term. More advanced capabilities that require substantial compute power may carry additional cost in the future, but only after we understand real-world usage and can design pricing that is fair, transparent, and aligned to actual needs.
Over the coming months, we’ll work closely with institutions to shape a commercial structure that feels predictable and equitable, and we’ll share all details well in advance—including during our April Showcase—so your teams can make informed, confident decisions about long-term adoption.
Throughout this transition, base Canvas will continue to improve year over year. IgniteAI is one area of innovation, but we’re as committed as ever to strengthening the core experience educators rely on every day!
Join us in shaping the future of teaching and learning
Again, on behalf of Instructure, I want to thank you all for joining the New & Next Showcase, and especially those who asked thoughtful and valuable questions during the broadcast. We’re looking forward to the next Showcase in April, where we will be sharing roadmap details, commercial packaging, and new innovations shaped by your feedback.
And if you’re exploring Instructure products for the first time, this is just the tip of the iceberg! From Canvas LMS and IgniteAI to Mastery Connect and Canvas Career, we’re dedicated to creating and refining tools that help educators in every learning environment.
Let’s continue building the future of teaching and learning—together.
