We are excited to share the Prioritized Themes that Instructure’s Product and Engineering team will be digging into in the first half of 2024.
Without further ado, here are our themes:
- Automate and Streamline Group Membership
- This theme was selected because it is strongly aligned with our desire to support large courses and non-traditional use cases. We aim to streamline existing processes and introduce new functionality to save users time.
- Admin Data Management for Studio
- This Canvas theme aligns with long-standing needs expressed by Administrators. Equipping them with a holistic view of their media usage and allowing them to manage their storage will help them support Studio at any scale.
- Improved Flexibility in Catalog Listing Management and Reporting
- This Canvas theme was based on its strong alignment with Catalog's vision and strategic objectives for 2024. We intend to enhance the enrollment process and streamline administrative tasks, aiming to significantly improve user experience and operational efficiency.
- Course and Term-Based Messaging
- This Impact theme received the highest number of votes during the most recent voting window in the Instructure Community. It embodies our vision and future state of more deeply integrating with Canvas, as well as reaching and supporting more users.
- Improve Quiz Analysis Through Robust Reporting
- In support of this Canvas theme, the Data & Insights team plans to add metrics for New Quizzes pageview & participation usage within Admin Analytics.
How were Prioritized Themes selected?
From October to November 2023, Community members voted on 15 themes. Based on these votes, the Instructure team took the past few weeks to thoughtfully review and research the themes, and work together to understand the complexity and capacity, as well as the alignment with our overall vision and strategy. We also took into consideration which themes would be feasible for our team to take on based on resourcing. Based on these factors, we selected 5 themes.
What does it mean for a theme to be prioritized?
This means that our team is committed to researching the problems that exist within the theme and delivering on the value over the next 6 months. It is important to note that we will not address every idea tagged to the themes. As we work through the discovery, definition, and delivery of these themes, our team will use the Prioritized Theme discussion area to pose questions to the Instructure Community, provide updates on progress, and involve you in the process.
What happens to the themes that aren’t selected?
Although we aren’t about to tackle all of your fantastic ideas, the themes that weren’t selected will get a chance to be voted on again in our next voting cycle in early 2024 (March-April timeframe).
We know that transparency in our decision-making is incredibly important to the Instructure Community. For each theme that was not prioritized, we will provide context within the theme about why it was not selected.
Does this mean that we will only work on the Prioritized Themes?
No! Our new process has enabled our teams to have even greater insights into the challenges and areas that are important to Community members. Throughout the year, you will see our team make progress on individual ideas or aspects of various themes. We will continue to call these out in our release notes as we make progress.
