New & Next Showcase: The next generation of Canvas and beyond

Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome to our latest edition of new and next showcase. There are lots of folks on the line from countries all over the world joining us today, and I wanna thank you for making the time in your very busy schedules. My name is Walt Peters, and I have the pleasure of emceeing today's virtual event.

Gonna be sharing a lot of information today, and I wanna encourage you to please submit any and all of your questions via the q and a feature. As those questions come in, we'll be reviewing and aggregating them. And after we finish today's broadcast, we'll do a live q and a with several members of our Instructure leadership team to get to as many of those questions as possible. We'll also send a follow-up email with a link to the recording and a summary blog post that you can share with your colleagues. With that, let's dive in.

Hey there. Welcome to the two thousand twenty six new and next showcase, our biannual series that gives you insight and perspective on what's happening here in the structure. Thank you for joining us. I'm Rachel Orson, and I'm here with Sharon Vigesingam. Hey, Sharon.

Hey, Rachel. Good to be back here. It's cooking. I know. I know.

It's fun. Can believe it's been several months since we did our first one? I know. It's time flies, really. And a thousand people tuned into that, and now we're here again. I cannot wait.

I'm so excited. That's incredible. We have such an engaged community. It's so much fun. You know, really I wasn't sure how things were gonna go with this first one Yeah.

And the feedback was so positive. I think people just they really appreciated some of the clarity, knowing where we're going, what's coming. And we heard that coming into today that you wanna hear more about how we're going to market with AI and all the packaging. So get ready because that is definitely coming. That's exciting.

Really exciting. And I heard we got a ton of questions too. We did. We did. I thought the q and a was really interactive.

I mean, we could've kept going. It was a lot of good questions. So definitely stay tuned because we are gonna do some q and a at the end. Excellent. So with that, let's just jump right in.

I'm gonna hand it off to you, Zach, to us going with Ignite AI. Welcome. I'm Zach Pendleton. At the last showcase, we took a close look at Ignite AI features. Those features are all now live, and institutions are already putting them to work, using Ignite AI to generate content, streamline workflows, and set the semester up for success.

If you haven't tried Ignite AI yet, there's still time. US based institutions have free access to all live Ignite AI features through June thirtieth. And for customers outside the US, access extends through September thirtieth. And remember, anything you create with Ignite AI is yours to keep, even if access to certain features changes for you later this year. We shared in November that some features would be included in Canvas long term and others may carry additional costs in the future.

We have answers for you and we'll get to those shortly. Let's look specifically now at the Ignite AI agent, which is available for educators and administrators in several regions. Note, if you don't have access today, stay tuned. We're continuing to expand the agent's availability across the globe. Ignite AI agent is a conversational assistant that can automate complex tasks in a single prompt, all while keeping your data and interactions securely within Canvas.

Our early adopters have been using the agent to do all sorts of things that are normally tedious and time consuming. Everything from keeping course modules organized with consistent naming and formatting, to adjusting multiple assignment deadlines in one sitting, to giving course pages full makeovers with custom HTML. That's what makes the agent so compelling. People aren't using it like a chatbot, they're using it like an assistant that helps them serve students better. Let's hear firsthand from one of our early adopters about their experience with Ignite AI agent.

We've been spending a lot of time thinking about AI. What it means for teaching and learning, and how we actually bring it to our faculty in a way that makes sense. I think what stood out to me with Ignite AI agent is it doesn't really feel like a separate tool. Because it's inside Canvas, people don't interact with it the same way as a generic AI tool. It just feels more embedded in what they're already doing.

I think one of the bigger shifts for faculty has been realizing it's not just for generating ideas, they can actually take action. What we started seeing pretty quickly was people using it for real simple practical stuff, like sending the same message across multiple courses without having to copy and paste everything. I had one instructor who was trying to do that mainly said, there got to be another way to do this. I was like, yeah, try the agent and they handled it right away. From a rollout standpoint, I think what really helped us was giving people control.

Faculty can choose to use it. It's not forced on anyone. And the way the agent is designed, it's always asking, is this what you want to do before it actually does anything. So it's always building trust. A lot of it has just been helping people realize that you can actually exit to do things for you because at first people weren't thinking about it in that way.

That's been a shift for us. It's not here to replace what you're doing, it's just a tool to help you out. If I had advice for other institutions, would say don't overthink it too much. Give people access, communicate clearly, focus on the folks who want to use it. For instructors who are trying it for the first time, same thing.

Just start small, ask it what it can do, try something simple. And then you kind of build from there once you see how it fits into your workflow. Our approach to AI has always been human centric and rooted in transparency, which our customers love. And we know that transparency means you also need clarity about how Ignite AI features fit into Canvas and how to pay for them. And that's led to additional questions that we'd also like to address.

How can AI make the LMS more modern and easy to use? How do we continue delivering meaningful AI innovation while keeping it practical, affordable, and keeping administrators in full control? And how do we use AI to build for where learning is going, helping you to accelerate outcomes and transform learning? What we were really asking was what does it mean to provide the industry leading LMS today given the pace of change we're all experiencing? And it became clear that the opportunity wasn't just AI. It was a chance to simplify Canvas overall from the way it works day to day to how you access its value. Starting this year, not only will we be refreshing the user experience, but also the purchasing experience to bring Canvas into the future. To put it simply, the future of Canvas is modern and accessible, easy to adopt and implement, and AI forward while keeping AI transparent and optional. Let's start by sharing with you how Canvas will be packaged to meet institutions where they are.

Rachel? We've heard your feedback over the years. Too many add ons make budgeting and procurement complex. So we're excited to introduce three Canvas tiers for our institutional customers: Canvas Core, Canvas Plus and Canvas Next. This approach allows you to purchase the Canvas tier that makes sense for your institutional needs and appetite for AI. If you're a Canvas customer today, you're already on Canvas Core.

It just has a new name. I want to be very clear, you won't be forced to make a switch. Nothing about your contract or functionality is changing, and there's no migration required. The Canvas Core tier includes our Core LMS functionality for consistent and accessible teaching and learning. You get all of the capabilities you have with Canvas today and will continue to add value over time.

You can upgrade to Canvas Plus to unlock more value on top of what you have today and accelerate engagement and outcomes. This is the tier for you if you want access to our advanced analytic dashboards, interactive and distraction free video capabilities, and engagement tools to drive best practices and outcomes at scale. This is also where you'll unlock a number of our AI capabilities that support teaching and feedback, helping instructors focus more on what matters, engaging learners. And for those of you who are looking to stay on the forefront of innovation, we have Canvas next. This is the tier that has everything included in Canvas Core and Canvas Plus, along with our most cutting edge agentic AI features.

So where do our recently launched AI features fit in? Here to share the specifics is Elizabeth DiRenzo Etsy. Elizabeth? Thanks, Rachel. I'm Elizabeth, and I lead product management for our Canvas portfolio globally. Let's get really crisp about how current AI functionality lands in these tiers. With Canvas Core, you get the features we've already committed to including for all customers and AI for driving accessibility.

So that's Ignite AI summaries for discussions, Ignite AI search for courses, Ignite AI translations for discussions, inbox and announcements, Ignite AI question authoring assistance for quizzes, and our newly released Ignite AI course accessibility remediation in the course accessibility checker. The AI included with Canvas plus is related to teaching and feedback workflows. So it currently includes all the AI features in Canvas Core, plus Ignite AI Insights for discussions, Ignite AI Generator for rubrics, and Ignite AI Grading Assistance for SpeedGrader, a new feature we demoed last showcase that drafts assignment scores and feedback based on the rubric you've provided. You'll need access to Canvas plus to keep these features after June thirtieth in the United States and after September thirtieth outside of the US. With Canvas Next, you get all previously mentioned AI capabilities, full access to the Ignite AI agent for instructors and admins, ask your data, which is a premium feature that our intelligent insights customers already know and love, providing the ability to explore and share Canvas data with conversational AI.

And Ignite AI study tools, a completely new feature coming later this quarter that makes it easy for learners to safely use AI to instantly generate flashcards, practice quizzes, and more based on their course details. Across tiers, admins will remain in control of whether AI features are used at their institutions and at what level. So that's account, subaccount, or course level. To avoid any confusion, let me share a couple of clarifying points. One, these tiers are specifically for Canvas, and they simplify access to functionality that has historically required purchasing a Canvas add on product.

These tiers do not affect our mastery or parchment brands. Additionally, there is no impact to Canvas Career, our recently launched LMS solution for delivering skills aligned learning for continuous education and workforce readiness. You can purchase Canvas Career on its own or alongside any Canvas tier. Two, if this update has you thinking about your existing contract renewal, know that you have flexibility. If you don't change anything, then you're on Canvas core already.

If you currently have Canvas with an add on or two, you can absolutely leave it that way. We're ready to answer your questions and provide you with a quote if you're interested in upgrading. But you can absolutely renew your current Canvas contract with any add ons you have today without change. We're so excited about these new tiers, but our priority is making them available without disruption to your institution. Three, these tiers will be available to our customers in North America first, and we're finalizing the specifics of their availability internationally.

If you're a customer outside of the US and are interested in upgrading to these tiers soon, please reach out. And again, there's absolutely no migration needed. We know you have questions about these tiers, so if you're joining us live, please feel free to drop them in the Q and A and we'll address as many as we can live at the end of this broadcast. Now, let's move on. We also said we'd be reinvigorating the Canvas user experience.

Elizabeth, tell us more. I am so excited to share that within all of these new Canvas tiers, our product team's focus is on evolving Canvas in a way that makes teaching and learning feel more simple and innovative. Over time, Canvas has grown to support more learners, educators, and use cases than ever before. That growth brought powerful new capabilities, but it also introduced complexity to the experience. This is why throughout twenty twenty six and beyond, we're focused on simplifying workflows, making everyday tasks intuitive.

Let's take an example of how we'll be simplifying workflows by looking at how instructors create content in Canvas. So here's today's experience. We know delivering consistent learning experiences can be a challenge, especially because to create content, customers need to be able to code. So this is the new version we're building. With this evolved experience, you'll be able to deliver a more modern, flexible and accessible learning experience, easily refine existing content using AI, and maintain creative control while preserving consistency.

Our goal is to make key tasks like this take fewer steps and ensure essential actions can be completed quickly to reduce friction in the day to day work of teaching and learning. In cases where AI can help with that, we'll be crystal clear about which tier it's available with. And we aim to make it look really slick too. Let's talk timeline. Over the next year, we'll be updating nearly thirty key workflows in this way, like the entry dashboard experience, content and course creation, and end to end learning evaluation, just to name a few.

As these workflow improvements become available, you'll have visibility into each updated experience and the ability to explore what's new before committing to any changes. You'll be able to opt into individual workflows when you're ready and test them in a safe environment. And it'll just take a click. Not ready to adopt? Just turn the workflow update back off for your account until the time is right for your institution. We're building this evolution alongside our customers, using your feedback to shape what comes next and how these updates are enabled.

Our team would love your partnership. So sign up in the testing space in the community if you'd like to get involved. And if you have questions, please feel free to ask in today's q and a. Now let's have Casey talk briefly about accessibility. Casey? Hi, everyone.

I'm Casey Sato, and I've been a leader on the Instructure customer success team for almost ten years. We wanna take a moment to call out accessibility explicitly. Ensuring that learning is accessible is even more top of mind than usual for our US based customers right now, given the ADA compliance deadline coming up this week. Our commitment to establishing Canvas as a market leader in accessibility remains strong. We published our WCAG two point two double a b pads last summer and are continuing to make big strides towards rapid improvement.

We sincerely value and appreciate the active participation and support of our customers in identifying areas for continued work and collaborating on effective solutions. We're ensuring that all remaining Instructure products meet WCAG two point one AA conformance this year, with the majority hitting that milestone this quarter, while also embedding inclusive design and rigorous accessibility standards into our development lifecycle. This supports equitable learning and experiences for all users. Next, we want to share an update to our Impact product that I'm super excited about. And we just announced to our current Impact customers a few weeks ago.

Impact enables institutions to deliver targeted, just in time communication precisely when the teaching and learning community needs it. Imagine this, timely messaging in Canvas reminding users that course registration is open for the next term the moment it becomes available. While this product has been available for several years, we're relaunching it on a brand new platform. Let's take a look at the new experience. Back to you, Elizabeth.

The new Impact goes far beyond the previous version. With expanded personalization through theming and branding, institutions can now drive engagement and critical communications with their unique institutional identity. One of the most exciting things about this update to Impact is that it means targeted, just in time communication can be leveraged across Instructure products and apps. The resource center gives you built in onboarding checklists to support your new learners and faculty and get them up to speed quickly so they can focus on learning and teaching instead of software. Guided multi step walk throughs can be launched from the resource center to support users at exactly the right moment.

And real time feedback is supported thanks to built in survey and poll functionality. Going forward, this functionality is baked into our Canvas plus and Canvas Next tiers. And it can also be purchased as an add on to Mastery, Parchment, or Canvas Career. And if you're a current Impact customer, you can continue to renew the license you have with all the enhancements I just shared. And that about wraps it up for this new and next showcase.

Much of today was about clarity. Clarity on where Canvas is headed, where AI fits in, and on our tiered offerings. If you're looking for more information on what we shared today, there are a few easy ways to dig deeper. If you're interested in exploring the new Canvas tiers, connect with your instructor team. If you want a personalized quote, have renewal questions, or want to understand what upgrading can mean for your institution, we're ready to help with whatever you may need.

You can scan the QR code on the screen to fill out a quick form. We'll also include a link to the form in a follow-up email if you registered for this event. We've also published a blog post that includes a link to this broadcast with more detail about what we've discussed today. It also notes some exciting updates we didn't have time to cover in today's presentation, such as enhancements to Canvas Career, a refreshed learner dashboard in Parchment, and improvements across mastery, including predictive assessments. And finally, check out what else we're working on and even help shape what comes next.

In March, we released collaborative road maps in our user community. This is where you can see in detail what we're actively building and what's recently been released, find opportunities to cocreate with us before wider rollout, and influence prioritization by voting and submitting contributions. Now when we announce work you're excited about, you have an easy place to follow our progress and get involved. I love that. I'm so excited about that.

Look. The pace of change in education isn't slowing down nor is AI or expectations around accessibility outcomes or simplicity. Our job is to make sure our products and teams evolve with you. We're incredibly excited about this chapter, and we're grateful you're building it with us. From everyone at Instructure, thank you.

And now let's head into q and a. Wow. Lots of exciting things to digest. I'm sure you're taking it in. And, also, by the looks of it, there's lots of questions.

And so I'd like right now to invite several members of our leadership team to join me on virtual stage. And while they're joining and before we jump into questions, just know that we're not going to get into pricing specifics on this webinar or get into the nitty gritty details of individual customer scenarios. For questions about your specific contract and your specific institutional needs, we definitely encourage you. Not just encourage you, we want you to get in touch with your Instructure representative. Alright.

So I'm joined by my colleagues. We have Rachel Orsten, our chief customer experience officer, Elizabeth DiRenzo, our Canvas product portfolio leader, and Sharon Vujasingham, our chief product officer. And, Rachel, are you ready? This first question is for you. Bring it. Let's do it.

Alright. Let's dive in. So what I'm seeing here in the q and a Yeah. Are some people are wondering what tier are they on today, and what would it mean to switch from their specific set of products to one of these tiers? So for example questions. Everyone's like, I've got this, but I've got this.

Where am I? So here's Exactly. And and I wanted oh, go ahead. No. No. No.

Here's the simple answer. Everyone, every customer starting is on Canvas core. Okay? Even if you've got add ons, you're still on Canvas core. You're on Canvas core with your add ons. You choose if you wanna switch.

That is the key. So you don't have to take any action to migrate to Canvas core. It's just the new name of the Canvas that you already have, and that really doesn't change no matter what add ons you have. You're on Canvas core with those add ons until you decide you wanna upgrade explicitly. Obviously, we are excited.

As you just watched, there's a ton of, you know, amazing capabilities that we think are really exciting and worth exploring, but the financials, you know, need to make sense for you. And so, you know, if you've got questions about your specific scenario, I definitely encourage you to reach out to your Instructure account executive. Thanks so much, Rachel. And shout out to Carl for that question, by the way. Rachel, I'm not gonna let you go quite yet.

We got another one for you. Yep. Someone from a k twelve school is asking about being on a three year agreement with two years still to go. Can folks who have time left on their existing contract get access to these new tiers? How would their access to Ignite AI features, for example, be affected? Yeah. No.

No. No. Absolutely. You're not you're not stuck in that sense. We, know, we we definitely appreciate the complexities of of having to reopen contracts.

But if you're in the middle of your current contract, we can absolutely work with you to find the right solution. So, again, I would say, don't feel like this is you know, you can't do anything. You're you're frozen for the remainder of your contract, please reach out to your instructor representative to discuss this, and we will work to find a solution one hundred percent. We absolutely want to be able to get Ignite and these other integrated features into your educator and your students' hands. So please please reach out.

Even if you're mid cycle, we'll we'll find a way to make it work. Rachel, one more for you before I hand it over to Sharon, if that's okay. Sure. Sure. Sure.

Starting off strong. There's lots of attendees joining from outside of the US, and good morning to those of you that are joining from the APAC region in particular. And they're wondering when can they expect Canvas plus and Canvas next to be available in their local regions? Yeah. It's a great question. So for all the global customers outside of the US and Canada, you know, this is a a really my response is targeted to to you in that question.

So we've been rolling out our capabilities globally, and and we're making them they're available now and will continue to be available globally by August fifteenth. So that's, you know, what we're working toward. And then because of that, we've extended the free access period to September thirtieth for customers, again, outside the US to account for because we've done this phased rollout and to give, you know, our international customers more time while we finalize the pricing details. So, hopefully, those dates help. And, you know, again, definitely, though, we hope on the heels of this webinar and this conversation, you know, my advice would be even though the the period has been extended, definitely engage with us if you're interested now for a conversation again with your account executive.

And that's actually a you just reminded me, Rachel, that we are in the middle of a complimentary access period. Right now, all of our Ignite AI features, including all of our premium features, are available to any customer for free. You just have to turn them on, and that's both in North America and internationally right now. And that complimentary period runs through June thirtieth for North America and through September thirtieth if you are outside of the US. And on that note, I'm actually gonna hand it over to Sharon now.

Sharon, as we're talking about Ignite AI, can you specify what regions Ignite AI is available? Yeah. So it's a great question. Ignite AI as a whole is available in all regions. Right? Individual features within Ignite AI, that availability is going to vary region by region. And it's really based on what model a specific feature is built on, what large language model it's built on.

And all of those model information items are included in the attrition facts on a given piece of feature. So you can see specifically what feature is going to be available in your region in our community support documentation. We're currently working through, some limitations in the model. So many of our AI products are built on models that are hosted by Amazon, AWS. That's who powers and hosts a lot of our infrastructure.

And so there are some specific customers who host on host their Canvas instances in the AWS Singapore region. And AWS in Singapore does not actually have access to some of these models. So the models that are not available, we will not be able to offer the capability. So for example, the Ignite AI agent is not available, in the model for the AWS Singapore region. So we will not be able to offer it, Canvas next or the agent to many of our customers in Asia.

We're working really closely with Amazon, to find alternative solutions, to figure out how we can do alternative hosting for these models. Thanks so much for that, Sharon. And I'm gonna keep you here for just a moment for our next question as well. There is a lot of interest and questions about Ignite AI, specifically the agent in the q and a. We're seeing this question a lot, Sharon.

Can the agent be purchased as a stand alone? And what about other AI features? For example, we've had one customer write in and say, we already have a multiyear contract with a major video hosting platform, so Canvas Studio would be superfluous. But it seems like we'll need to take on Studio with no real use case in order to get the advanced Ignite AI features. Is that correct? So let me talk about the agent first, and then I'll answer the the Studio specific question. So we aren't building the Ignite AI features or the agent as a standalone add on. Right? Because they're actually designed to embed directly to be orchestrated directly into all of the parts of Canvas and all of the products.

And so we built our AI capabilities to seamlessly integrate across all the workflows in a given tier of products in all of the capabilities within a given tier. So there are some Ignite AI features in every tier of Canvas, including in core. So the reason we built it that way is if you have it as a standalone, it doesn't really allow you to take advantage of the full capability. So for example, if an instructor is trying to create a rubric, the agent is actually calling on the, the rubric generator, the ignite generator for rubrics directly within Canvas. And that has been purpose built and research validated to solve for that task.

Right? So as more and more capabilities get added, the agent's gonna get more powerful by tapping into that broader system. So it it really is important for, these tiers to operate together. And specifically on the question of studio, think one of the things that, we've heard a lot about is some of the value for, customers is the fact that with Studio, you can actually have distraction free video. So if you're playing video from a a place outside like YouTube, Studio actually built in some of those capabilities. So you actually get some value with it being embedded directly in the plus tier.

Thanks for that, Jen. I think it's really helpful to better understand that these packages aren't just sort of the sum of individual parts. They are they're built with integrated functionality. Absolutely. That that makes a lot of sense.

Alright, Rachel. I'm gonna go back over to you for a moment here. We have a question asking, how does this update about the Canvas tiers in particular impact the level of support that customers receive? For example, does a customer get different levels of support if they're on Canvas core versus Canvas plus or Canvas next? Yeah. It's a great question, and and the answer is nothing changes. So if if you were on twenty four seven as an example, you'll and you wanna up you know, move to a different tier, your twenty four seven will cover will cover that tier.

Same thing with tier one, depending on if that's an option that you are currently on. So, again, our twenty four seven or tier one support covers all the functionality within the tier. So if you decide to switch tiers, that support will stay consistent with what you have today. Thanks for that, Rachel. And, Sharon, back over to you here.

We have a couple of folks writing in asking about Canvas catalog and Parchment digital badges. That's the artist formerly known as Canvas credentials. Are these add ons included in the new tiers? Good question. And the answer is no. Canvas catalog and Parchment digital badges, you described it, formerly known as Canvas credentials, they are not in our Canvas tier.

So they're purely add ons. Right? If you if you don't have them, you can add them on. If you already had a have them, they stay as add ons. Also worth calling out Canvas career, which we announced, earlier this year, is also not part of the the Canvas tiers. It's not a feature of Canvas, but it's really a full experience for anyone doing, you know, kind of continuing ed or TV ad use cases.

So you can certainly buy Canvas career alongside a Canvas tier or independently on its own. Thanks for clarifying, Sharon. Yeah. Alright. Elizabeth, you awake? Finally.

Sharon and Rachel are hogging all the questions. I know. I know. Alright. Well, we have one for you.

Great. Elizabeth, you shared in in the broadcast that we'll be updating a lot of key workflows in Canvas to make them more modern. Right? We've I know internally, we call this our next generation Canvas initiative. What tier of Canvas is going to be needed to access the workflow enhancements and and the modernization that you covered in the broadcast? I love this question because I love the answer. Every tier of Canvas is going to benefit from our modernized workflows.

So there will be improvements to the user experience regardless of the tier that you're in of Canvas. The specifics of the workflow access will depend on the individual workflow. But what we can absolutely guarantee is that we're always gonna make it clear. So as we test these workflow enhancements, we're always going to share what tier a new or evolved feature will fall into. We'll share that in our release notes and also within the collaborative road map, a great place to follow along with the work that our teams are doing from opportunity identification to experimentation and all the way through general availability.

So once a new or evolved feature is live and generally available, we will have clear labeling in our community documentation as well indicating which tiers have access to the feature or workflow. These workflows are opt in. So if you have access to them, you will see the ability to opt in to them in your experience. And we're building this evolution alongside all of you. And so please sign up in the community space.

We have a new area called the product connection hub. And within that, we've got a testing opportunities area where you can volunteer to be a part of our experimentation cohort for a feature workflow or an early adopter cohort. So please check that out to stay in touch with what we're doing. Thanks, Elizabeth. And we're not gonna give it back to to Rachel or Sharon yet.

We're gonna keep you here for just another moment. Someone asked, does the new AI powered content editor replace the content editor that they trialed in an early adopter program a few months ago, or is this something new altogether? And it's a two part question. The second part then is, and what tier do customers need for that new content creation workflow is the second part of that. Fantastic. So this this is the evolved experience of the rich content editor.

So if you are using and loving the rich content editor today that, we do not have any immediate plans to sunset the rich content editor. In fact, the block content editor and the rich content editor work hand in hand, which is very exciting. We are if you've previously been a part of testing previous iterations of the block content editor, yes, this is an evolution of that work. And, frankly, the pace of change around content creation with the boom of AI and all of the opportunities it's brought for us to really drive an incredible user experience around content creation has led to us going back and iterating on our experience. And so we are thrilled to bring this iteration to market very, very soon.

So, yes, did I answer everything? I feel like there were a few questions in there. Oh, no. Most important? Where how do they get it? Which tiers are they gonna be in? Most importantly, the new block content editor is bringing value to every tier of Canvas. The experience will evolve as you move across the different tiers, but there will be new value in every tier of Canvas. Wow.

That's really exciting. So can expect improvements in core, in plus, and in next. Yes. Absolutely. Alright.

I'm gonna hand it back to Rachel, but don't go too far, Elizabeth. Rachel, someone just wrote in, when will Instructure customer success managers have information available and ready to share with customers? It sounds like we have a few folks who wanna learn more about upgrading. They are ready to go. We have been preparing for this day and getting all of our teams excited and and ready to discuss all of this with you. So please reach out to them.

They're ready to have that conversation and and also bring in additional resources, look, not just to talk about it, but to demo it. And so some of you may wanna just discuss it, but some of you may wanna see it or learn as as mentioned before, Walt, you know, if you've not taken advantage of the of the complementary period, you know, your CSM is there to help make sure that you are able to see firsthand how these features are being used, talk about how their customers are using them, and help you activate Ignite in this complimentary period if you haven't done so. So all of that should be absolutely handled, and I encourage you to reach out to your CSM one hundred percent. Yes. Everyone's standing by.

Very excited to have these conversations, and definitely take advantage of that complimentary access period. Always nice to try it before you buy it. Sharon, this next one is for you. At the University of Auckland, and I'm I'm speaking on behalf of someone who wrote in who works at Auckland, We have implemented some Canvas baseline practices which define the university's expectations for the structure and design of all Canvas courses. Would there be an ability to train Ignite AI to assist instructors to specifically implement the practices that they've defined in those instructional design expectations? I love this question.

So first, I love this question because you have those practices because I think it's so great for learning. And second, you are in amongst a handful of institutions who have already started to think about how to really push AI to do meaningful, valuable things for you in education. So let me start talking about how we built Ignite AI first, and then I'll get to that. So when we built Ignite AI, we designed it with institutional data privacy and security as just a foundational principle. We recognize we need to create comfort and confidence, and so we do not train any of our models on your institutional data.

Looking ahead, we've had some institutions like, University of Auckland here asking us for ways that we could do more interesting things with AI. And so we are gonna explore some opt in approaches. So if you're interested and you wanna participate, that would allow customers like you to benefit from, us being able to do these controlled training of your institutional agents with your own data. But that's always gonna be transparent. It's always gonna be entirely under your control.

Right? So nothing for right now, but we definitely wanna engage, in a conversation with you. And what we think is really powerful about this platform approach is how each of these components are gonna reinforce each other. Right? So with Canvas Next, you can use things like Impact, for example, to deliver timely contextual guidance so that instructors can align to those institutional best practices you've laid out. And then from there, these instructors can immediately act. They can use the agent.

They can use these inline tools, block content editor, to drive and implement those practices directly in their workflow. So I love how you're thinking about how to bring this to life and and bring it to practice. Super excited and happy to chat more about what that future state might look like for you. Thanks, Sharon. Elizabeth, this next one's for you, and I can actually really personally empathize with the spirit of this question.

Someone's asking, is there a document or a list of faculty workflows with AI? I'm still not clear how it could help me in my class. And I just empathize with this because I think the use cases for AI are expanding every single day. And I wake up sometimes wondering, you know, does everyone else know something that I don't know? Am I using it to its fullest potential? So, Elizabeth, how can we get those faculty workflows and best practices front and center for our faculty? Absolutely. It is a great question, and things are changing so rapidly. It's hard to keep our arms wrapped around it all.

I totally understand that and share that feeling myself at times. So there are so many use cases ranging from rubric rubric generation to discussion summarization to really open ended possibilities through the agent, which can access over five hundred Canvas APIs. So the world is your oyster with the agent. We have tons of great documentation in the community, and I would recommend that you start with exploring the Ignite AI page in the community. In particular, our team just released a new community prompt library where we use the agent to crowdsource ideas on how to use the agent.

So our community is actively engaging in crowd crowdsourcing ideas. I personally am going to for my own AI, use TikTok and Reddit all of the time to learn from other people. So this is a really focused place that our Canvas community can learn from one another. So definitely recommend that community prompt library. Start with the community before going to TikTok, but you gotta I don't know if they're covering Canvas agents on TikTok yet, but if they are, we've made it.

Or maybe someone here would like to start that channel. That'd be great. Elizabeth, this next one's for you. If we take up and, again, I'm I'm reading this from the perspective of someone who wrote it who wrote it in. If we take up the free trial of Ignite AI, can these features be turned on at the subaccount level for testing as we would not wanna make it available to all users while they're trialing it? Totally understand that you may want to test features with a smaller group before rolling them out more broadly.

So all Ignite AI features are configurable down to the course or for the agent even to the role level. So we're seeing admins create custom roles just for the individuals that they want testing with the agent, in fact. So you know best what works for your institution, and we absolutely encourage you to take advantage of this flexibility and configurability to do what is best for you. We absolutely wanna provide for that flexible deployment of AI. We know that some departments, it sort of makes more sense to lean into AI powered use cases.

Others, it doesn't. And so we absolutely give both the admin and then also the faculty themselves the ability to manage manage those features. Alright. Sharon, back over to you here. One clarifying question.

What are the benefits? And this is a little bit of a left turn. I know we've been talking a lot about AI, but we wanna talk about Impact for a moment. What are the benefits of the new Impact? Does it have more functionality than the existing version of Impact? Yes. In fact, it's actually got many great new great new capabilities that our Impact admins, those who've been using our product, have been asking for for a while. So some of the top things we've heard are, can you integrate across more than just Canvas, right, across the entire Instructure platform? Yes.

The new impact will do this. Can you support our mobile apps, right, for for Canvas? Yes. We can absolutely use this, but you can also use this with mastery and with Parchment now. We've also added some of the most requested top things, things like in app surveys, things like polling, being able to create onboarding task list that help your users to walk through new features and workflows. And it's built not just for onboarding capabilities, but actually powered by lots more data.

So you can actually use it to drive, you know, ongoing student engagement, keeping them engaged in the learning, driving triggers to to get them to come back and and complete the task that they need them to do. So lots of exciting stuff in Impact. Super excited about it. Thanks, Sharon. Alright.

It looks like we have three more questions. So, Elizabeth, this next one is for you. Actually, the next two are for you. And, again, I can really relate to this one as well. Someone says so many product updates.

What's the best way of learning about newly released features? I feel like there's so many emails, blog posts, social media announcements that sometimes I just lose track or even miss important announcements. What would you recommend, Elizabeth, if you were a Canvas customer, where would you go to stay on top of all of the goodness coming out from our product teams? Okay. I'm excited about this question because I'm actually working with both Sharon and Rachel and many other people on our team on this problem. We know that this is a space for us to improve to support the changes that are impacting our all the organizations that you all are working with. So we have partnered with customers over the last year, and we have developed the collaborative road map and the product connection hub, which is a step in the direction of bringing everything into one place.

And we hear you. We're moving really fast. We hear often that there are so many updates across products. It's it's hard to keep up. So the new product connection hub is in the community, and that's what this is solving for.

It is one central location that houses the collaborative road map, product blogs, release notes, and testing opportunities, and more. I can't even keep up with everything that the teams that I work with are doing, and I have this bookmarked just so I can stay on top of things, honestly. It's the best place for me to go. So I hope it's the best place for you to go as well. I think it will be.

We use this space to be super, super clear about the impact of releases on tiers. So when availability decisions are made, it will be clear on the collaborative road map card for that feature and in the release notes and in the community documentation. So if you haven't checked out the new collaborative road map and product connection hub, that's my answer, Walt. If I was a Canvas customer, bookmark it. And we have about ten minutes left in this webinar right now, and I will not be offended if you tune me out for, like, fifteen seconds and go and bookmark the collaborative road map right now.

I bet we can get a link drop too. We got a link drop. There's no excuse. Yeah. Great.

Awesome. Elizabeth, while we're on the topic of talking about feature rollouts, someone's asking, is this a setting is this setting a pattern for further tiered feature rollouts moving forward? How are we thinking about these tiers and how they impact where we are releasing new product updates? Great question, and I briefly touched on this in my last answer. Let me just double down so it's super clear. We know how important it is going to be going forward for you all to have clarity into not only which tier you're on, but as new features get released, which tiers they're included in. So going forward, we will clearly indicate in Canvas release notes which features are available in which Canvas tier.

We'll also clarify in the Canvas collaborative road maps, but just note because, you know, I I don't I don't wanna be too precise, right, that something happens and it's not as exact as we anticipated. But one thing that I wanna say is that for some releases, we may not be able to confirm their avail availability into a specific tier until we conclude our experimentation with customers. And I wanna explain the reason behind that, why we don't know sometimes we don't know right when we start the work. With some of our features and workflows, we need to use experimentation to determine the compute costs, and this will influence which tier feature ends up in. And the best way for us to do that accurately is authentic usage through experimentation.

So some features we may not know until then, but the minute that we know, we do publish it onto the collaborative road map. Thanks for that, Elizabeth. Yeah. For clarifying. Yep.

Alright. Just a couple more here. We got some some last minute submissions. We wanna make sure that we answer as many questions as possible. This next one is for you, Sharon.

Someone wrote in, could we assume that all of these new features, I think specifically the AI features, will not require the institution to provide access to another AI platform for students and staff for academic purposes. And, you know, I think the spirit behind this question is, if I'm if I'm reading it correctly, is can Ignite AI replace other AI platforms that an institution might currently be subscribing to? Yeah. It's a good question. I think the short answer is potentially, especially as our AI capabilities continue to evolve and expand. Right? So we we recognize that many institutions, may have invested in some point solutions specific use cases, whether that's a student study support or instructor productivity tools.

Today, particularly on the educator side, Ignite Agent is intentionally flexible, and it addresses a broad range of needs that are often met, by your point stand alone solutions, things like lesson planning, generating discussion prompts, creating course content. So it is a pretty comprehensive solution, that can encompass all of those point solutions. And what will make this fundamentally different is that the agent is built natively into Canvas. Right? It's not another experience to learn. It's not something that just generates ideas on the side.

It can act it can certainly generate things and deploy content, create them directly within your courses, which will reduce friction and save time. But it also can do functional workflow things. It can build courses. It can update due dates, those kinds of things. So it does a lot of these things.

That all being said, this isn't a one size fits all. Right? So we really encourage you to work really closely with your Instructure rep Instructure rep to assess your specific needs. They'll help you determine whether Ignite AI already is covering a lot of your use cases today and where some of the things that we're working on, things that are in our road map that Elizabeth just talked about. These capabilities might future consolidate more of your e AI ecosystem in the future. So, definitely stay tuned and connect with your your partners.

We'd love to hear, hear more about it. Thanks, Sharon. Elizabeth, someone just wrote in, and and we touched on this a couple of times, but it seems like there's some some carrier curiosity around the the complimentary access period for our Ignite AI features. And so with that free period still being open, some questions are coming in about how they can try customers can try the agent and Ignite AI tools today. Could you just could you just clarify for folks? Absolutely.

And, really, it's pretty easy. All of our release AI features features have been available for a bit of time and are absolutely available right now for every Canvas customer. So what has to happen in order to get access to them? First, as an administrator, you must first enable the Ignite AI features for the institution before instructors and faculty and learners can access them. So that's really the first step, and it's in the feature management where you currently manage access to all of your features. There's not a new area for it.

So, hopefully, you know where that is, and you're using it to add new value into your experience regularly. So the free access period makes these features available until June thirtieth in the US and September thirtieth inter internationally. I'll just say it one more time. They're available right now. As an admin, go ahead and enable it for your faculty and students.

Alright. I think I think this is our last question. I say that, and I feel like by saying that, someone will write in another really thoughtful question that that we'll want to answer. But for now, this looks like it's our last one, and this is for you, Sharon. Some folks have pointed out that as recent as, I think, just a couple of days ago, the Department of Justice here in the US extended the accessibility deadline, and it's been pushed out about a year.

And we're wondering what impact does that have to our road map where we've had several accessibility priorities for a variety of our products for quite some time. Yeah. So Just generally wondering how how will Instructure support customers with accessibility moving forward? Yeah. It's a good question. And and so if you missed it, in the US, the Department of Justice published a final interim final rule that talked about the the compliance deadline that was for April, originally, and they pushed that deadline out even further.

But for us, fundamentally, that has not changed a single thing that we're doing. Right? At Instructure, accessibility is not has never been about meeting a deadline for us. It's really about building the right way from the start. It's about building for our learners. And so while there may be an extension in the regulatory timeline, particularly for our North American customers, that hasn't changed and it's not a signal for us to slow down or to do anything different.

It's just a reminder that the work that we do here is continuous, is intentional, and continues to define the quality of everything we build, our software, and also building the capabilities for you, our customers, to be able to make your content more accessible so that the entirety of the learning is equitable and accessible for all. So we are gonna continue to keep doing what is right for our learners, for you, our customers, regardless of what any regulatory guidelines say. We have, these VPATs that we've been publishing over the past year. We've been updating the VPATs across our entire product suite, obviously, getting to what we hold as the minimum, which is the WCAG double a two dot one standard. But in many cases, we're going past the minimum standard getting to two point two.

So all of these new and updated VPATs are all over our trust center. And there's lots of other great resources. Right? So we'll send out a a a blog post that will follow the session and include it, in your follow-up email, but it's gonna have a ton of great information as well. All these great resources in our community. So within those accessibility hubs, you'll have things like toolkits for accessibility, a free course in our on demand portal, lots more great content for for those of you who wanna build accessible learning.

And because I said it, that actually wasn't the last question, but this one absolutely is. And I'm so glad that we're ending this with this question because it's focused on the reason why we are all in education. It's focused on the learner. So, Elizabeth, bring us home. How can Ignite AI be used by students? What student features are or will be available? Saving the best for last.

It's also getting very dark where I am, so I'm trying to use the white Google Doc to light me up. So apologies if I keep going in and out of lighting. Okay. We'll send you a ring light, Elizabeth. I know.

I need a ring light for this in the future. I didn't properly prepare, and I didn't wanna get up and go turn my office light on. Okay. Yes. It is true that we've really leaned into the educator use cases for Ignite AI first and foremost, but there are actually several ways that students can use the power of Ignite AI to improve how they're learning day to day.

So let's talk about a few of those ways. Within Canvas core, students can instantly translate course content, discussions into their preferred language. They can use search, which is AI powered to quickly find the exact materials, assignments, concepts even that they need without digging through the course manually. Within Canvas Next, we are actually releasing a powerful new capability next month called Ignite AI study tools, And this feature makes it easy for students to generate flashcards, practice quizzes, and other study aids directly from their course content all within Canvas so they can study more efficiently and just stay in that flow. And the best thing about it is it's completely contained to the course material, which really provides us opportunity for safe AI use and students not taking content and putting into third party tools.

This is really just the beginning too of our student facing innovation. We are continuing to build more guided in context AI experiences that help students engage more deeply, you know, build confidence with their learning, and ultimately achieve better outcomes. So I'm glad I got the last question because that's a good one. Thanks so much, Elizabeth. And that is all the time that we have left for today.

I wanna thank all of you so much for your engagement and your really thoughtful questions. Please take a brief moment to let us know what you thought of this event through a short survey that we just shared in the chat. And just a reminder that we'll follow-up via email with a link to the recording as well as additional resources to recap what we shared today. It is truly an honor to be able to wake up and focus our time, effort, and attention on making sure that we're setting you, your institutions, your educators, and most importantly, your learners up for success. Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful rest of your day. Take care.