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

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our next edition of our new and next showcase. There are thousands of us on the line right now with folks from dozens of countries joining us today. I wanna first and foremost thank you for making the time in your busy schedules. My name is Walt Peters, and I will be your master of ceremonies for today. We're gonna be sharing a lot of information, so please feel free to ask any and all questions in the q and a. As those come in, we'll be aggregating them.

And then after the broadcast, we'll be doing a live q and a with several members of our instructor leadership team, and we'll work 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 so that you can share all of the information that you've gleaned from today's webinar with colleagues. With that, let's dive right into our broadcast, and we'll see you on the flip side. 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. Nice be back here.

It's cooking. I know. I know. It's fun stuff. 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, I really I wasn't sure how things were gonna go with this first one Yeah. And the feedback was so positive.

I think people 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, could have 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 get 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, he 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. And that's been a shift for 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 disruptors 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 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 want to 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 AA VPATs 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 double a conformance this year with the majority hitting that milestone this quarter while also embedding inclusive design and rigorous accessibility standards into our development life cycle. 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 are 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 next 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.

Lots of exciting things to digest, and by the looks of it, there are lots of questions. So I'd like to invite several members of our leadership team to join me on this virtual stage to answer as many of your questions as we can get through. And as they're joining me, just know that we are not gonna get into pricing specifics on this webinar or get into details of individual customer scenarios. For questions about your specific contract and needs, we encourage you to get in touch with your Instructure representative. Alright.

So I'm joined by Sharon Vujasingham, our chief product officer, Rachel Orston, our chief customer experience officer, and Elizabeth DiRenzo, who leads our Canvas product teams. And you all have lots of questions, and they have lots of answers. So let's go ahead and get into it. Sharon, this first one is for you. There's lots of interest and questions about the Ignite AI agent.

Sharon, can the agent be purchased as a stand alone? And what about other AI features? Can those be purchased as stand alone add ons? Yeah. It's a great question. So we aren't building the Ignite AI features or our agent as a stand alone, add on feature. They're designed to be evolving into a orchestration layer for AI across all of Canvas. So we're building our AI capabilities to be seamlessly integrated across all your workflows in a given tier.

Right? So there are Ignite AI features in every tier of Canvas, including in core. And the reason we're building it this way is because if you have it as a stand alone, it just isn't going to be able to deliver on its promise. Right? So what do I mean by that? For example, if an instructor asks for a rubric to be generated, the agent is going to leverage the actual actual Ignite AI generator for rubrics, which is purpose built and research validated for that task. So as more and more capabilities get added, the agent will just get more powerful by tapping into that broader system. So it just fits right into the ecosystem.

Thanks for that, Sharon, and clearly articulating that integrated purpose built purpose built value. Alright. Rachel, this next one is for you. A lot of 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 those tiers. So for customers who are already using Canvas with add ons, what tier are they gonna be on? Yeah.

So first of all, as as mentioned in the video, everybody is on, you know, Canvas core. You know, you don't have to take any actions to migrate to Canvas core. You know, that is basic table stakes for for everyone. You know, if you decide to, you know, look at your add ons, although upgrading to Canvas plus and Canvas next is, you know, something we hope that people do, we're not forcing anybody to have to upgrade. So, again, as the video said, we should have a conversation with your CSM to look at what you already have, what else is included in those tiers.

Do you wanna stay where you are? Because, again, we don't wanna be disruptive to, you know, where you are, and then decide what's the best level for you to upgrade to based on, again, where you are and the other additional options that you may wanna contemplate. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah. We're we're we wanna work with our customers on the timeline that makes the most sense for them. A lot of sense.

Thanks, Rachel. And, Rachel, can I actually keep you in the hot seat for another second here? There's the next question. Of course. Yeah. The next question's for you as well.

Lots of attendees joining from outside of the US today, and they're wondering, naturally, when Canvas plus and Canvas next will be available to them. August fifteenth August fifteenth two thousand twenty six. In the US, you know, we've got the tiers are available now in the US and Canada, but global will be August fifteenth two thousand twenty six. You know? So we've also extended the Ignite AI free access period to September thirtieth for all customers outside of the US to account for the agents, you know, phased rollout. So we've got a phased rollout and to give our international customers more time to test while, you know, we finalize our international pricing details.

So, again, the free access sorry. Free access period to September thirtieth for all customers outside of the US. So that's really the I I apologize. I wanna be clear. It is September thirtieth for all customers outside of the US.

Great. And the I think the tiers themselves will be available August fifteenth, but the complimentary access period ends September thirtieth. And if there are specific questions from our international folks who are joining us today or you wanna start the conversation now as you potentially think about, you know, your procurement timelines, please do reach out to your Instructure representative, your customer success manager. We are happy to start kick starting some of those conversations now based on based on your situation. Alright.

We're gonna ping pong back to Sharon now, but then, Elizabeth, you're on deck. Alright? Elizabeth excuse me. Sharon, as we're thinking about expanding these tiers internationally, could you share a little bit more about what regions Ignite AI is available today? Yeah. So Ignite AI as a whole is available in all regions. Individual feature availability is gonna vary from region to region, and that's because of the underlying model availability, the AI model, and its availability in each region.

So all of the information about model availability by region is included in the nutrition facts. So if you wanna know what's going to be available in your region, there will be community support documentation so you can see exactly what is available for your specific region. Thank you, Sharon. Alright, Elizabeth. Continuing on the Ignite AI train here for just a moment, but shifting our conversation to, to students.

How can Ignite AI be used by students? Great question. Yeah. So we've really leaned into educator use cases for Ignite AI first. 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 in Canvas core, students can instantly translate course content and discussions into their preferred language.

They can use search to quickly find the exact materials, assignments, or concepts that they need without digging through the course manually. And in Canvas Next, we're actually releasing a powerful new capability next month called Ignite AI study tools. And this is specifically for students, and it makes it easy for them to generate flashcards, practice quizzes, and other study aids directly from their course content. And that all happens within Canvas so that they can study more efficiently and stay in the flow. And, really, Walt, this is just the beginning of our student facing innovation.

As we continue to build more guided in context AI experiences that help students engage more deeply, build confidence, and achieve better outcomes, you're gonna be hearing about it. It's great to hear, Elizabeth, how intentional your teams are being when it come when it comes to student facing AI experiences to ensure that they're pedagogically sound and moving the needle on learner outcomes. So really excited to see those tools come to life in the experience. Elizabeth, I'm actually gonna keep you here for just another moment. Yep.

Following on from students to admins now, is there a place on the road map for admin analytics for account wide information on Ignite AI usage? Yeah. So we have launched discovery into what visibility admins require to be confident in their rollout of Ignite AI, which would include analytics around how Ignite AI is being used, what is being used, and where faculty might need more support. And we'll be sharing more about that in the coming months through the Instructure collaborative road map, which is a great place to engage with our priorities and share your input on the value to you. Yes. A great plug for for the collaborative road map, which was also announced during today's new and next showcase.

Yep. So you can definitely stay up to date on the road map, how ideas and features are flowing through the product development life cycle, and for the first time, also find ways to meaningfully engage in in the development of those solutions by giving feedback. So please stay tuned on the on the progress there. Alright. Sharon, back over to you here.

There's a question coming in. A great question about Gemini. And someone wants to know, what do I gain from the Ignite AI agent as opposed to the Gemini integration with Canvas? Yeah. It's a good question. So with there's a number of these, you know, large language model, LTI integrations, things like Notebook, LM, and GEMs, part of Gemini.

What those things are really good at is thinking, or of helping users think, helping them explore, helping them create content. They're great for things like summarizing information, generating idea content, and maybe even guiding learning through kind of a companion AI conversation. Our Ignite AI agent is actually built for a very different job. It's not just about generating outputs. It's actually about taking actions specifically inside Canvas.

Right? So with a simple prompt, it can handle tasks like updating course content, managing assignments, or supporting workflows that would otherwise take multiple steps, like updating a whole bunch of due dates across assignments. So, the Ignite agent is really meant to help you move your work forward, and it's designed to help you execute work more efficiently across Canvas. So, hopefully, that helps. It helps me understand. So I I do hope it answers the question that came in from the audience.

Sharon, I'm gonna keep you here as well for I'm sorry. Actually, I'm gonna hand it over to Rachel. Got got lost in all the questions here for a moment. Rachel, how does the update that we just heard about the Canvas tiers impact the level of support that customers should expect to receive? Do customers get different levels of support if they're on Canvas core versus Canvas plus or Canvas next? Your Canvas pack your support packages will stay the same. So if you have twenty four seven, you'll stay for twenty on twenty four seven, which will cover Ignite or tier one.

So we didn't want to make any disruptive changes or add additional cost to your support experience. It will simply extend. Should you choose to upgrade, you can keep your support experience with you, as it is. So, again, that's, another benefit. Your essentially, your support experience and investment will not change, unless you decide to upgrade or change your support.

But what you have today can carry through even if you decide to upgrade, to another package. Oh, that's really great to know. Thank you, Rachel. Of course. Now back to Sharon.

So lots of folks are wondering about Canvas catalog and Parchment Digital Badges, the artist formerly known as Canvas credentials. Are these add ons included in any of the new tiers? I don't remember them being in there, but can you just clarify for us? Yeah. No. They are not. Canvas catalog and Parchment digital badges is the artist formerly known as Canvas Credentials are not in any of the Canvas tiers, so they're available purely as add ons.

Thank you. So folks can continue to purchase those Absolutely. The same way that they had been purchasing them. Okay. Great.

Thank you for that. Alright. Elizabeth, you ready? I'm ready. Alright. You shared that we'll be updating a lot of key workflows in Canvas to make them more modern, more intuitive.

It was great to take a sneak peek at about the future of content creation, I think, in in one of the demos that we saw. What tier of Canvas is going to be needed to access a lot of these workflow enhancements that you covered? Oh, I love this question. So the reason I love it is because every tier of Canvas is going to benefit from these workflow enhancements. We are committed that Canvas LMS and all of the experiences within that are intuitive. They're easy to use.

They're modern, and they address the core jobs to be done of everybody using the product experience. And so there will be improvements to every tier of Canvas. Now the specifics of which elements of the workflow are in each tier, we will will depend on the workflow itself. But what we can guarantee is that we'll always make it clear when we are releasing new workflows. But all core workflows that are required to perform your your, you know, teaching and learning duties will be enhanced and available for all tiers.

And as we are testing and releasing more enhanced workflows, we will always share what tier a new or evolve feature will fall into in the release notes and within the collaborative road map. So once a new or evolved feature is live, we'll have clear labeling in our community, documentation as well. And I'm gonna plug the collaborative road map again. We are building this evolution alongside all of you. We have a new testing space in the community where you all can sign up and volunteer to be part of our experimentation group, which is a group of users who helps us develop the actual solution itself or our early adopters who are the first to use it at scale with their organizations.

And you can volunteer to engage with us in our collaborative roadmap space and the testing opportunities. So we look forward to working with you on these new workflows. And looking at the list of attendees, I wanna thank a lot of the customers who are on the call today who have participated in early adopter programs with us as well. So if you haven't participated in one and you're interested in really partnering strategically with us to support the development of solutions and features, again, that's a great way to get to get engaged. Alright.

Elizabeth, this next one is also for you. Folks wanna know more about content. Does what was shown specifically in the demo replace the rich content editor, or is it in addition to the rich content editor? And as a follow-up to that, what tier, again, do I need for that new content creation workflow? Question. So, no, this does not replace the rich content editor. We know that there are definitely people who love using the rich content editor.

This is an evolved experience of that editor, but we will not, at this time, be sunsetting the rich content editor. And in fact, if you have used the rich content editor in the past, you're able to even convert content into the block content editor from the rich content editor if you would like to use the block content editor. How many times can I say content editor in this sentence? So At least thirteen. At least thirteen. That was a lot.

So, yes, it it is an evolution, but we're not at this time planning to get rid of the rich content editor. We are currently in the process of experimenting with the block content editor. And part of the experimentation process is also evaluating how it will go to market, which tier it will be available in. And so we will be doing that evaluation, and when we communicate with about it, when we know how it's going to scale, we will communicate that in the in the community. Thanks, Elizabeth.

Yeah. Alright, Sharon. Some questions coming in around sort of how are how are we gonna how are we thinking about investing across the tiers that we that were just announced? So what do tiers mean for future AI features? Will Core not get any AI investment? And what does this mean for any new AI features that get rolled out? Do Canvas Core users get to test these out, you know, when they're in development or in early adopter programs? Yeah. It's a good question. So we continue to build across all of our products.

Right? So I wanna be very, very clear and very explicit. Canvas core will continue to get better over time, including with AI features. And as we add new AI features, we're going to be very clear about what tier will be needed for access to those features. Right? So some some AI features will sit in core, some will sit in plus, and some will sit in next. And, obviously, as we build our capabilities, we're always looking for our customers to help us with the cocreation regardless of what tier, you currently in because it'll help us think through what's needed, as we continue to evolve and build on our road map.

Thanks, Sharon. And it's great to hear that we're gonna continue to invest across all of our tiers. Elizabeth, back over to you here. Lots of questions related to the experience. Great.

Specifically coming in about the Ignite AI study tool, which is a new feature that we just announced for Canvas Next. Elizabeth, can you just tell us more about it? I think, specifically, there's interest in better understanding what content that experience will be pulling from to support the the experience that it's providing to to students. Yeah. Absolutely. We're really excited about rolling out Ignite AI study tools to Canvas learners.

We've actually already had this feature live in Canvas career, and we've received a ton of great feedback on it, which got us very excited to offer it at a larger scale to our Canvas learners. So to start, study tools is completely contained to the course. And so it only pulls content from the information that it's provided in the course. And, specifically, right now, it pulls from files and pages as its main sources. It does not go, out into the world to pull, any content out out, outside of the course.

So what we really love about this approach and what our existing customers who are using, this tool really like is that it keeps students in the LMS and protects faculty intellectual property, instead of those students, you know, copying and pasting into third party tools. So we're certainly looking to build these tools out further, and we look forward to feedback from our Canvas Next customers about what would be valuable. It also really quality assures the responses that the AI is giving to the student, right, knowing that it's constrained to to that content. That's great. Absolutely.

Alright, Rachel. It's been a second since we've heard from you. So Let's do it. Alright. Great.

So there's some questions coming in about the add ons Yeah. And a la carte purchasing in particular. Is there anything that you want to add about the specifics of which add ons continue to be available? Yeah. Look. I yeah.

I appreciate. Everyone's gonna have lots of questions around their specific, you know, contract, and and and I encourage you to bring it to your account executive. Like, think coming out of this meeting, my hope is please have a discussion about your specifics so that we can walk those through with you directly. But I will reiterate, you know, we we really believe that the way we're approaching this with these tiers is intentional because we wanna build a more integrated experience, and we believe these add ons are meant to work better together. And so what what has been historically a la carte, we're really working more, again, thoughtfully to say, how can we continue our development to be more integrated in in how we think about them working? So we ask you know, we think that that's a huge benefit to you certainly today, but also long term.

And look. You can keep your legacy add ons. So if you've got add ons today and you wanna keep them, that is not an an that is not a problem, and, we don't wanna create any disruption for you. So those would be my kind of my three ways to to address that is speak to your account executives, you know, can go back and review a lot because we're covering a lot. Let's just be honest.

Like, think everybody needs to go back, digest it, you know, go through the details, bring some more of your targeted questions. But then just know that anything that you have today does not need to change. That's really important for everyone to walk away with. Thanks so much, Rachel. Yeah.

It is a lot to digest. It is. So much so that I'd actually wear out my ring light, and it just ran out of battery. So I'm sorry. I'm in the dark, y'all.

Alright. This next one is for Elizabeth here. So with the free access period still open for folks to be able to try a lot of those premium Ignite AI features, again, as a reminder, domestically in in the US available through June thirtieth. And then outside of the US, that complimentary access is extended through September thirtieth. There are some questions about how you can still try the agent and the Ignite AI tools today.

What what can customers do? Yeah. So all of these features must first be enabled by administrators for their institution. And administrators have full access of that in their Canvas accounts. And so that's the first step, and then that will make it so that faculty, teachers, students are all able to engage with these features. Great.

So Pretty easy. Again, if if you have more questions about that, please, again, reach out to your customer success manager. But you are able and empowered, and we encourage you to enable those Ignite AI features with your institution. Alright. Sharon, heading back over to you.

Can you just clarify for a moment here? What are the benefits of the new Impact product and experience? Does it have more or less functionality than the previous version of Impact? Well, I would certainly hope it would have more. Right? And the good news is it does. It does have a lot of new features and capabilities that actually have come from many of you who are using Impact. We've we've heard from our Impact admins things they've been asking for. Right? Things like, hey.

Can we make it so that Impact works on mobile devices on in mobile apps? Right? It doesn't work in mobile apps today. It will now support mobile apps. We've also heard requests to have it work across the Instructure platform, so across all of the products. This means you can now actually use it with all of the Canvas products and all of the additional, elements of, every tier as well as in mastery as well as in parchment. It's also gonna add really, high highly sought after functionality that we've heard about.

So in app surveys, polling, onboarding task list that you can walk all of your new users through, new features, new workflows, those kinds of things. So, lots of exciting things, that will come from from Impact. So all the great things you can expect from Impact and then so much more, and better integration across the entirety of the Instructure platform or products. Yeah. I think we're really excited about some of the ways that the new functionality supports communicating directly with teachers.

I and I'm sure a lot of admins on the line will agree. Sometimes we know that admin faculty don't always check their email, but they're in Canvas every single day. So we are excited about that additional communication layer from from the updates and and impact. And not just for teachers, but even for students. Right? Like, you've got a set of students who are disengaged for some reason, you can target them and actually send them a message to really drive and bring them back in.

So a really great tool, not just for adoption and usage, but actually really good for driving ongoing deep engagement for learners and and keeping them keeping them learning and keeping them at the institution. So Yeah. Faculty might not check their email frequently, but students are probably like, what's email? Yes. Alright. Rachel, back over to you here.

Yep. We've talked about a lot of things today, but there are some questions coming in. Really just wanting to better understand in sort of, like, layman's terms, what's the real value difference between these tiers? What differentiates them? Yeah. You know, I think Sharon addressed this a little bit as did Elizabeth, but I'll reiterate. I mean, Canvas core is great.

Canvas core is Canvas core. It's our foundational LMS. You know? It's the foundation that you build with, and so that learning is equitable and accessible, which why I'm so happy we've put the accessibility remediation tracker, you know, in there, and and I think that was a really important thing for us to do. You know, the way I think about Canvas plus and Next, I'll start with plus, is really the fact that, you know and this is what I think was addressed earlier is, like, some of the most critical teaching practices and workflows, things like feedback and grading and content creation are also really the hardest, I think, to execute consistently across learners, and courses and time. You know, they take time.

Right? And so I think Canvas plus gives you all of the tools that, you know, really elevate engagement, in a way that sustains your core teaching practices and ultimately, you know, keeps learners engaged in a responsible way. So that's why we were very thoughtful. And I saw some of the questions. So just to be clear, I'm talking about studio. I'm talking about impact.

So that's why we we really wanted to take these kind of a la carte, you know, options and really say they really should be part of a package that is very much about that consistent engagement experience. And then next is really taking it a step further around innovating, you know, what we say the the the right way. You know? What does that mean? Like, you know, doing it in responsible way, protecting students and their data, really dealing with privacy and being responsible. I think Canvas is the the option for institutions who really, you know, want a trusted partner in thinking about the agentic road map, how they wanna, you know, create the right agentic student experience. So, again, there's a lot coming.

We talked about the study tools, which is the next. There's obviously the work the educator agent. This is where I think if you've got specific use cases and questions that you wanna validate against what's in the next package, talk to your account executive for more information so that we can make sure that it really fits your needs. Thanks so much, Rachel. And I'll just re reiterate.

Canvas core is the Canvas that you know today, plus some additional innovations that are that are coming out. Particularly, I just wanna double down on the course remediation accessibility remediation that's gonna be available as a part of the core experience to any of our existing customers. Yeah. And, Walt, I will say too when I say talk, like, we're also happy to go back and do demos. Like, if you've not turned it on and now you're like, oh my gosh.

I need to make sure I understand what's here. Like, not just having a conversation. Request a demo. Like, we will go in, and we'll show you how Next works or different ways you can think about using Next. If you're not sure exactly those maybe you have specific use cases and you know you might be that person.

Like, I wanna see if it does x, y, and z. We'll talk about that. Or you may say, hey. I just wanna get a a feel for how this is. We can do a demo as well.

So just keep that in mind as you're making your decisions. Alright, Elizabeth. We got some more product questions. Alright. What is what is the and I know you've been thinking a lot about this.

What is the best way of learning about newly released features? There are a lot of channels there that we use to communicate today. There's emails. There's blog posts. There's social media announcements. And some customers, you know, are sharing that sometimes they feel like they lose track of what they should be paying attention to or potentially miss important announcements.

Like, maybe folks that weren't aware of the course accessibility remediation feature. What would you recommend? What would you pay attention to if you were a customer? Yep. Great question, and thank you to whoever asked this of us. This is really near and dear to my heart. We have an incredible customer connectivity program here that is partnership between our customer facing teams and our product teams and really focused on ensuring that we are hearing these needs and developing iterative solutions to solve them, which leads to my answer.

I feel like I keep plugging the collaborative road map, but I'm gonna plug it again. The collaborative road map, is part of a hub in the community called the product connection page. And that's what this hub is aiming to solve for. One central location that houses the collaborative road map, product blogs, release notes, testing opportunities, and more, I would encourage you to bookmark this page. I'll let you in on a little secret.

I can't even keep up with all of the changes happening that our incredible team is bringing to you, and I am constantly looking at this resource instead of, you know, sending messages to individual people to stay up to date because so much great value is moving very quickly into the hands of our customers. So I have this page bookmarked, recommend you have this page bookmarked, and it's your it's the best one stop shop at this time to leverage. And we're also gonna use this space to be 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 which tier or tiers have access to the value. And I know we're all really, really busy.

We got five minutes left before the the webinar ends. And I'm just gonna let you know, I'm not gonna be personally offended if you tune me out for a second and go and bookmark the product connection page right now. It'll take you thirty seconds. Hop log in to the community, search for product connection, and bookmark it. So if you tune me out, no offense taken.

Or in this case, you're gonna be tuning Sharon out because Sharon has the next question. There are some questions about the updates to the collaborative road map. Why did we decide to replace ideas and themes with this new experience? Yeah. I love that question. As people are bookmarking it, they can they can think about the what has changed here.

Right? So if if you've been following it, you know we've been iterating around this for a little bit, and many of you have not been shy about your feedback. And we welcome it. It's been great to to help us sharpen it. But, fundamentally, we made this change because we heard from you. The the old ideas and themes experience was not connected enough to how the product decisions got made.

It's like I submit things, and I don't really know what's happening on the road map. And you all you told us you felt that gap. While ideas and themes did a really great job of engaging, all of you in the community to participate, you could submit, you could comment, you could upvote and downvote. But the downside was there wasn't a clear connection between what you were sharing and what our teams were actually prioritizing and building. So with collaborative road maps, we've actually just flipped the model.

We actually start by showing you what we're actively prioritizing, what we're exploring, what we wanna build, And then we've invited you, our customers, to shape those priorities in a way that's directly tied to our planning process. So you can still submit your net new contributions. The key difference here is that it is actually an integrated process. Right? So you're voting, your feedback is actually directly feeding into how our product teams evaluate the opportunities every quarter. It's not just this this random signal of a vote, but it's actually being considered, alongside all of the inputs in how we're actually planning our work.

And we can also do some better segmentation. We know who's submitting the work. We can see what role, is requesting something. Is it something an admin is looking for, an educator? We know which institutions are showing, a need for it so we can help better segment it. We'll understand the breadth of your needs, not just this raw stream of how many votes something's gotten.

Right? So, so it's not that we've removed the voice of our customers. We've actually made it more actionable for you. You will still have many ways to contribute your ideas and share your use cases, but now you actually get to see the connection to how it's shaping what we're building, where it matters, why, why we're doing it, and and where in the life cycle it all fits. And you can participate in our community forums. Right? So we've had small group forum sessions built out as we're iterating on prototypes.

So you can actually keep having a conversation going with us, with your peer institutions to help us build better and better products. So, hopefully, this is a a step that gets you even closer to connection with the work that we're working, the things that we're building. Thanks for that, Sharon. Now we are down to the wire here. We have two minutes left.

We have two more questions. And so one for Rachel and then one for Sharon, and then I'll close this out. But if we can keep our answers, like, thirty, forty five seconds, that would be great. Rachel, there are some interest from customers wondering if they can get access to tiers mid contract, so they're not up for renewal this year, and some other unique scenarios. Yes.

What do you have to say to those customers? Yes. Not a problem. Talk to your talk to your account executive. You can absolutely change mid contract. And don't forget, you've got two months.

I mean, June thirtieth is we still have time to also test. Make sure you you get hands on keyboards and and make sure that it's the right whatever tier it is is the right one for you and explore and get demos. But, yes, that's not a problem. Great. Thank you.

Alright, Sharon. You ready to bring us home? Let's do it. Alright. So a lot of folks have pointed out that the DOJ accessibility deadline was recently pushed and wondering what impact does that have to our road map. And they're also wondering how will Instructure support them with accessibility going forward in light of the political and policy changes.

Yeah. Great great question. So if you didn't hear, the DOJ published a new interim final rule or IFR, yes, the twentieth yesterday, extending the deadline basically for the title two compliance on ADA. From our perspective, does not change a thing for us. Right? Accessibility for us at Instructure has never been about meeting a deadline.

It's always been about building the right way from the get go for our learn. So an extended regulatory timeline doesn't change anything about how we're building our products. It's just a reminder that this work is continuous, it's intentional, and it's a focus on the quality of what we do. We will keep doing what's right in the products that we build with everything that we're doing. We also wanna make it we recognize that many of you are navigating this challenge.

And so the tools, the capabilities that we've built into the core product to help you with accessibility to make sure that the content that you have inside of our software is also accessible. So our our VPATs, where we stand with them over the year, we've been updating all of our VPATs across our product suite, getting our products to the WCAG minimum standard, in many cases, going past the minimum to two dot two. So new and updated VPATs have been added to our trust centers. We've also got a a follow-up blog post that we'll send out today that will include, some follow ups on helpful resources in our community. So there's an accessibility hub with an accessibility toolkit, a free course in our on demand portal, lots more resources for you so that collectively, right, we're building an accessible learning experience for our learners.

Thanks, Sharon, and thank you to everyone for joining. That is all that we have time left today. Thank you for your engagement and your thoughtful questions. It is such an honor for everyone on this panel and everyone behind the scenes here to wake up and think about how we can advance your mission as institutions, as educators. And so we do not take that responsibility lightly at all.

And in that spirit, we wanna invite you to take a brief moment to let us know what you thought of this event through a short survey that we, I believe, are sharing out in the chat right now. Just a reminder, like Sharon just mentioned, we'll be following up via email with a link to the recording, to this broadcast, as well as additional resources to recap all of the information that we shared today. Take a moment to digest, and then please reach out to your Instructure representative, your customer success manager with any follow-up questions. Thanks again, and have a great rest of your day.