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Thoughts on InstructureCon 2016....

rgibson1
Community Champion
‎07-23-2016 11:15 AM

Some of my very high conference highlights.... (Accuracy of my notes may vary.)

  • Instructure now has ~2000 clients. (I think we were around #1000 three years ago.)
    • Penn State and the Penn State World Campus are now clients (70K+ students)
    • University of Miami is adopting.
    • Instructure now has world offices in 5 countries + Chicago and SLC.
    • Astonishingly high approval ratings for Canvas Mobile in the Play and Apple Store.

  • Some really nice product enhancements right around the corner: 
    • An updated Speedgrader that improves usability, utility, and workflow. (Q3)
    • Some nice visual enhancements. Course 'cards' can now be replaced with images. (Similar to https://www.canvas.net/) (Q3)
    • An updated quizzing engine that runs outside the core code base so that it can be scaled to support huge classes without impacting product functionality. (Q3)
    • Outcomes is undergoing a much needed facelift and improved features. Ties back to accreditation. (Q4)
    • ARC video. (A Canvas native competitor to Kaltura.) Still in beta, but very promising. Streamlines video asset management in Canvas. (2017?)
    • An optional "simplified" Canvas UI/UX for K12 schools. Strips out 50% of the features that are unnecessary for K12 environments. (Q3)
    • Several improved usability improvements on the horizon, such as improved test bank management.

  • Product integration
    • A big announcement regarding O365 integration (in beta). Students and faculty will be able to develop and access Office products, cloud files, etc. directly from within Canvas. Students and faculty can team-develop live files. Microsoft was there to unveil. They are also working closely with Google for the same type of integration.
    • Amazon is launching a deep textbook/ebook integration with Canvas. Simplifies the textbook purchasing process.

  • University of Central Florida is developing several cool utilities
    • UDOIT was launched a year ago, but very cool. It checks the course for accessibility issues for students with disabilities.
    • UDOIT Mobile checks the course for mobile device compatibility.
    • ProctorHub - a free course proctoring utility that records students while they take the test.

  • Several universities are really diving into course analytics.
    • Utah State has integrated Civitas data visualization to determine areas of courses where students are spending the most time.
    • The University of Washington has engaged a data scientist to explore features that faculty use most in order to determine improved course design and student experience. (They developed their own code base that attaches to the APIs. Freely available on Github.)