The Future of Canvas

Kevin Hogan Welcome to a special edition of innovations in Education, eSchool Media's podcast on the latest and Greatest in both K12 and Higher Ed Tech. I'm Kevin Hogan, content director for both eSchool News and eCampus News. And I'm glad you found us. Now drop the company name in structure on the average educator and you more than likely will get a blank stare in return. Now mentioned in structures, flagship product canvas and you will get a flash of instant. Founded in 2008 and structure reports having more than 6000 customer organizations with more than 35 million users around the world in both K12 and higher Ed. I had the opportunity to attend in Structure Con 23. The company's first user conference since the pandemic and meet many educators, partner companies, as well as in structures senior leadership. That includes chief Product Officer Shirin Vija Singham. Ryan Lufkin, vice president of global Strategy, and CEO Steve Daley. We hit on a number of topics that will affect the way educators and students teach and learn, including post pandemic behaviors, student security, the pursuit of equitability and education, the future of hybrid learning. And of course, AI, AI and yes, a little more AI. It was the first innovations podcast recorded in person, but certainly won't be the last. First up, Shereen, on the rise of collaboration tools and other innovations that have come about in the wake of COVID-19. Have a listen. 1st in structure conversation. Very excited to be here. Thanks so much for taking the time to. Join me today. Shiren Vijiasingam Absolutely, it's my budget. Kevin Hogan Let's jump right into the weeds. Let's get this started in terms of in structure and sort of the work you're doing in the state of play that you. The company in now and where you might see it going as we enter our hopefully our endemic or out. Of the pandemic. Shiren Vijiasingam That's right. Yeah, I I love that. So I think you. Know really important for us to start with is how we have approached what we're doing here in structure. And so one of the things that's always grounded us is the fact that we've done this in partnership with our institutional customers. Right, we've we've worked closely with them to Co create to innovate and that's. Always been true in the the ethos of the products that we've built. And so you see that as we think about sort of the the journey we've had and the journey we're we're taking next. That's embedded all the way through, right? We we build our products in partnership with our customers. We give them an opportunity to beta those experiences and bring them to life. So that when you see them right, you're going to see some reveals in a couple of days that are. Or big conference here. You'll know that those are things that we've done in partnership with our customers and then that's been something that's really important. Because focusing on our institutions, focusing on our educators and our learners has helped us build the great products that we've built today. Kevin Hogan So you know, and I have to say, you know, not necessarily being a cheerleader of the industry, but someone is like enthused about the technology itself and looking at in structure and looking at the years, what I call BP before the pandemic. Your work and the work of the of the company and your partners basically saved whatever we want to call what education was the past three years I've had conversations where people said, you know. If COVID had happened 10 years before, we wouldn't have had the bandwidth and we wouldn't have had the tools. Yeah. Now, writing about Ed Tech between 2010 and 2020. A lot of. My conversations were around teacher resistance to not only using technology, but to data to using video. Video was one thing, especially when it came to like professional development. They're like, forget it, you know, turning those cameras on COVID arrives now everybody's on a camera. I mean, there's some been some major development. If not necessarily the the technology, but user behavior, can you talk a little bit about your experience and and watching what was, I guess the greatest beta test in? In at tech history, absolutely. Shiren Vijiasingam I mean, I certainly think the last five years has seen seismic shifts in education. We've had the benefit of even, you know, sort of the BP pre pandemic time, right? We've had the benefit of building our products with educators first and so one of the things that we've really enjoyed is great distribution. And great adoption with the institutions and the educators we work with and the reason we haven't seen so much of the resistance that you might describe is because, you know, when you're building something with educators for them, you tend to get a lot of love and support the products that you've built. And I think that that gave us really good ground upon which to build right as we entered. You know those those dark years of the 2000 early twenty 20s in the pandemic because? We had established ourselves as a product that was being built for educators to be used, and it was easy to use and it and it put learning first, right? And so adopting these tools certainly became a lot easier. Now, obviously there is a plethora of tools out there. In fact, we just published our ad Tech Top 40 report and it shows that. Than the average school district on a school year. There are more than 2500 tools being used, right? And so part of what we've done as an organization is work really closely with our partners to make sure that the implementation, the use of this tool is is first and foremost centered on the learning and is easy. It's implemented deeply within our platform, the Instructure Learning platform, and it makes it really easy. So even for those for whom technology may have not been their comfort zone. Yeah, I think being able to to be forced into it by circumstances made it a little bit easier when the tools that they were using were intuitive and and organically easy to use. And I think it certainly sparked, you know, that usage has sparked a shift in how education is being delivered today. Multiple modalities is the norm. I think because there are so many tools, I think understanding what is working and looking at the data becomes really important, right? And I think there's also a little bit of sort of a need right to sort of understand of this plethora of tools. How do we manage the sprawl of tools, and how do we think about figuring out which ones are best tuned to which learner at which point in time? And I think we've played an important role in working with our partners to get to that place. Kevin Hogan One of the things that I've noticed while we watched this beta test occur was for the first time, parents becoming more involved in the dynamic of the learning process. Now, having written about Ed Tech 15 years, it was the student, the faculty member, maybe an administrator involved less than a handful of times. Where it was talking about the parent again we get into the pandemic. Every parent style of teaching or teaching assistant and and who was in there. Has that changed any of the dynamics for your? Shiren Vijiasingam It's a great question. We, you know, we've always talked about if you focus on the learner first, you'll understand all of the stakeholders and all of the participants in helping that learner be successful. And parents are one stakeholder group. Like many others, we've always had a parent app with our product because we believe parents play a vital role. Caregivers really play a vital role in the learner. And one of the things that we've worked with our institutions is to help them understand how these tools are being used in ways that help them communicate effectively to their stakeholders. It's about getting the best for the learner and making sure we're doing so in a way that's equitable for every learner and making sure that. We're doing it to to help each learner find their journey, no matter where they are in that learning journey, and some learners may need a little extra support and some learners may not be native speakers of the language, and so they need a little bit of supports here. And so having a suite of tools that helps each of these learners and being able to help our institutions tell their stakeholders whether the stakeholder. Groups can be. Administrative organizations, right, like a Governance Board or a board of Regions or a parent group, A stakeholder group like that, or the general? Like I think being able to arm them with the information that they have to make effective decisions and to be able to communicate those decisions has really helped them navigate what has been some shift in the dynamics of what the stakeholders play in the success of the learner. But everyone is pointed at the same goal, which is helping that learner be successful. And that's a a noble. Place to be. Kevin Hogan Any other innovations that came out of the past couple of years, I mean? In terms of. Wow, we we should have been. Doing it this way all along. Or any ways that you've seen schools or districts at the K? 12 or at the higher Ed. Level start to begin to. Use your platform in a way that you. May not have intended originally. Shiren Vijiasingam So we've seen, you know, a lot of our collaboration tools, right, really be used heavily because the pandemic created the conditions for which you needed to think about how to collaborate. And as a result of that, some of our institutions have found a lot of success with really scaling collaboration at a global level. We've talked to some of our institutions, we've got students dialed in from many parts of the world and collaborating asynchronously on projects using some of our tools that we have to enable the creation of authentic student work. And so it's been great. This expansion of worldviews right be introduced into the learning because it's it's helping every learner be more successful, have a broader worldview, and I think it's opened up some possibilities for educators to think about, new ways in which to bring projects to life, new ways in which to bring the introduction of content from another part of the world to life. And so I think that's been that's been great for education. And it's been fun to see everyone on this journey collectively together. We're all learning as we've been going. Kevin Hogan Yeah, it's true. Let's go back to user behavior a little bit. You know, we were forced into the into the full remote in 2020 and then so many conversations about the future of learning and what hybrid was going to mean. And so, you know, in at the K12 space, you had virtual academies and then you had some sort of in between, and each district seemed to have their own sort of flavor. Some said. Forget it, New Jersey. I know it's just like, Nope, we're all going back in person. This, that almost never happened. In the higher end space. I keep hearing the phrase high flex now where the students are going in and they have an expectation. Yeah, that this is the way. If I learn this way, the past three years, this is the way I'm going to learn going forward. Can you talk about how you've seen those? Sort of models evolve. Shiren Vijiasingam Yeah, I think the big beta, right, the largest beta experiment in the world as you described. I think two things. Two thematic things emerge from it. The first was flexibility, right. I think it introduced the opportunity for folks who might not have otherwise been able to see themselves accessing that education, whether it's a single parent who needed to work around a work schedule or it was someone who needed to come in and out of the learning as their life dictated. It introduced a level of flexibility that folks saw as an opportunity to say hey. While this might not have been possible before, it is now possible, and I think that high flex that you describe, the combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning, has opened up the possibilities for folks who might not have otherwise seen that. So I think that's a big thematic opportunity. I think the other thematic opportunity that came out of that experiment of the pandemic learning era, right? Is learners who might not have otherwise found success in one mode of learning were finding success in a new mode of learning. It was tailored. And the needs of learner variability, which in education has been a theme for a long, long time. Right. And so it really sort of brought to the forefront this idea of that variable learning experiences can actually create success for people who need to just learn in different ways. And so I think despite the trials and tribulations of that sort of pandemic learning era, these two. And their enduring themes have persisted and have really shaped how. Institutions we work with, educators that we talk to all the time are approaching the work to be able to support variable learning needs of every learner in all these different ways of consumption and being able to support the flexible learning needs of learners everywhere who might move through learning in a different pace at a different cadence, right in different modes of consumption. Then they might typically have before. I think both of those are really positive net improvements for learning at large. And I think you know, as folks has embraced that despite where you were on the continuum of learning, everyone should have adopted the learnings from those two themes in the continued learning that you're saying. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan Now of course, we have a wide spectrum of institutions and they're how sophisticated or how progressive they are with these technologies. It you know, it's still in 2023, you can see certain districts and in certain higher Ed institutions that are still kind of and especially into the past couple of years. Just trying to. Make it through right? What sort of? Recommendations do you have for those leaders to where you know they must have something, right, but it's maybe it's it's legacy, maybe it was just kind of patched together to get them through one of the first steps that you would recommend for them to take their systems, take them to the next level. Shiren Vijiasingam Going back to the the thing I mentioned at the start of our conversation of this idea of partnership, right, it starts there. It's partnering deeply with these institutions and there are some patterns that we see as we've worked with institutions, but it's really about understanding what that institution institutions strategic goals are and figuring out what combination of solutions, right and the solutions. Maybe the technology solutions that the Instructure Learning platform offers the solution may be implementation solutions partnering with their institutional faculty helping. Adopt moving through these learning modalities. These learning models that we've introduced and being able to provide them guidance, right? So we as a trusted partner are also providing implementation tools and policy guidance thinks that these institutions who are navigating wherever they are in that journey and whatever their needs are being able to tailor that. To the individual need of an institution, we found a lot of success with that and the institutions that. Work with will take different journeys. Some have moved very quickly to get to that place and others have said we want to be measured. We want to start with one grade band or we want to start with one building or we want to start with one college, one school and others have said we want to go system wide all the way and I think that's one of the beautiful things about the instructor learning platform is that it's incredibly flexible. They can meet the needs no matter what those needs are, whether those needs are just a fundamental core teaching and learning experience in an LMS, whether those needs extend into assessment tooling into data. Tooling, even into implementation, we've got offerings that help institutions, Dr. adoption help encourage folks to make the change, whatever change they're switching from. And that change could be a technology solution that they're replacing or that change could be an incumbent state that is in particular with technology driven, all of which are enabled right by this. Deep partnership and the capabilities and the offerings of the instructor Learning Plan. Kevin Hogan Now you mentioned tools and we did a pretty good job. I think we've made it about 15 minutes without saying it. Shiren Vijiasingam Yeah, but we have to say it. We have to say it. Kevin Hogan That way, AI and the AI tools that have completely overwhelmed taking the oxygen out of any other sort of conversation you're going have when. It comes to. Ed Tech would love to get instructors POV. On what it means. For your platform, what it means for your partners? Yeah, maybe. Take the temperature between the hype of this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it this is the sure sign of the apocalypse. Where do you fall in? Shiren Vijiasingam Between there, it's a great question and it's something that we've been very intentional and very methodical about, right, because we've seen lots of technology emerge. But core to what we think about first and foremost. Being very intentional, we're thinking about the learning first and foremost, and so AI, like every other emerging technology of its past, certainly we want to think about it through that same lens of as an enabler of the learning. So we, we've grounded ourselves first and foremost in the learning, but like you said it's it's hard to throw a rock and. Not hit a discussion of some kind about AI and so. Kevin Hogan At least two dozen partners are now AI. Companies where they weren't. Shiren Vijiasingam A year ago, absolutely, absolutely. And so we we spent time with our institutional partners. We spent time with educators first and foremost just listening. What is the thing that is taught most of their mind? What are the things that they're excited about? What are the things that they're anxious about and deeply understand those needs? In fact, we'll be sharing. Some research right? We've been running some research around the useless AI. And how that helps across a different number of populations, from students to educators to administrators. But thematically, one of the things that's jumped out from the research from every single conversation and every single customer panel, we've been convening, it is, generally speaking, optimism for what AI is going to bring. It's optimism for the role AI is going to play the fundamental. Shift in in education. That's going to be driven. So you talk. About you know the changes of the last two 3-4 years, this is just yet another sort of cherry on that cake of of the change that's coming. And I think really positive change in general is sort of what everyone's going to do. They may be places where there is some anxiety, but what folks are looking for is clarity on what it is, clarity on the intentionality of the use of AI. Clarity on the intentionality of putting the educator in the center, and that's the most important thing, right? AI is a tool like every other technology. And so having the educator be at the forefront and having the learning experiences and the learning outcomes be at the form. Front is going to allow us to use this technology in an effective way to help advanced learning and create all sorts of interesting things. Engaging content for learning, engaging ways to deliver content, engaging ways in which to have activities and assignments in the classroom, all of which we can certainly we can chat more about in the conversations we're having with our partners. But yeah, I think it's. It's positive impact for education and I think folks are understanding that as as organizations take the approach we do, which has been intentional with the educator, it creates comfort with our educators as we take a position of safety first and foremost of the student information we need to protect education organization. Our institutions get really comfortable with that as we talk about equitability, which is a really important theme for them. We've been talking a lot about the role AI needs to play in creating equitable classrooms, equitable learning and paired with that, the role AI can play in actually helping create more equitable learning experiences. All of these thematic areas of being able to be intentional about the educator being safe, with the information being equitable, have resounded really well with our our customers with our educators that we've been talking to. And so we're excited about what's bound to be a the things we're talking about today will probably no longer be true in a week, right? As rapidly. As it is. Kevin Hogan Well, it's amazing because it it just infiltrates every aspect of. Shiren Vijiasingam Everything I mean. Kevin Hogan If you go beyond education, right, but then if you bring it in there, one of the things I think that has in my conversations to fuse some of the anxiety is when. There's an understanding of what large language models are, and that you know what do you have, especially in the. Higher Ed level. That Cornell University decides they're gonna develop their own large language model using their own data and and knowing it's like that walled garden. Then you know, then there's much less of a worry in terms of leakage or false information or. Yeah, that, that. That's the one that. Really kind of freaked me out. There for a while and you know. That's when you start thinking Star Trek. Shiren Vijiasingam Right. That's right. That's right. What will the holodeck generate? But I think you know that's exactly right. And that's why, you know, safety, one of the the key pillars we focus on has been about. That exactly that point right is the safety of the information. Are you keeping it contained? Are you keeping it walled off from an open model? Are you making sure that queries aren't containing information that you don't want to go into the model is that is that something that is in a great place for the classroom? Is it a great place for the institution? It's thinking about things like privacy, right? So we have been working with our Privacy Council, made-up of customers to the. About guidelines for institutions right to think about things like privacy, how do we implement AI? How do you create institutional policy for ethical use of AI? And those are the kinds of guidance that our institutions have wanted and needed. And it's the role that we've been playing for so long, right? It's providing them insight, providing them with tools, providing them with information. Connecting them to partners and so it's a natural extension for us. AI is just another flavor of extending the kind of relationship we've had with our customers and our prospective customers and really helping them sort of navigate this brave new world of emerging generative AI. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan Now I know the toughest part of this interview was gonna be. To end it and. There's so much to sure. About how we're getting and we haven't even gotten into some of the official announcements that this structure has coming on as we're having this conversation before news is breaking. But maybe you know to kind of finish things up, you can give us a little bit of. A horizon thought. About, you know, thinking about the immediate announcements going to have over the next couple of days and where your hopes? Are for the next couple of years, all things being equal and again endemic. Shiren Vijiasingam Yeah, absolutely. We've, we've got some really exciting things that we'll we'll be announcing in a couple of days here, which will have been announced right by the time we're hearing this. But really, we're focusing on those core needs, right? Those core learning needs making sure that we're continuing to innovate and learning. We keep pace with pedagogy and with technology, right, and so we've to spend a bunch of time talking about the technology. Competitive AI, but making sure that we're thinking about the pedagogy. So lots of innovation in that space. We're thinking a lot about the use of data and how we can make it. Accessible and make it available to institutions to use in productive and thoughtful ways to help drive learning experiences. You'll hear a lot about our partnerships that we have with lots of other creators of educational solutions. I mentioned that sprawl, but working with them creating tools for them to help streamline how easy it is to use their tools and working with institutions to help understand how to navigate those tools. And of course, we couldn't have a great product in us without a suite of AI offerings, housing things that we've built and things that we are partnering with others to build because they're really focused niches and all of these things together culminate in strengthening what has been this cohesive platform of products, right, the Instructure learning platform and continuing to keep us at the the top of the. Educational landscape right where we enjoy our our. And really helping, focusing on our customers needs and making sure that we're continuing that deep partnership that grounds everything we do and reinforces everything we're going to announce and and the sessions that we, we. Kevin Hogan Alright, we'll have a suit. Bets in in structure AI, new branding. New Canada. I with those just my. So we'll do the over under on those to see what happens on Thursday. Shiren Vijiasingam We'll take those into consideration. Kevin Hogan When you go from Twitter to X, there's nowhere to go, it's. Shiren Vijiasingam That, yeah. Shiren Vijiasingam Right, right, exactly. Kevin Hogan But thank you so much for your time and for your insights and looking. Forward to the rest of the show. Shiren Vijiasingam Absolutely have enjoyed this conversation and yeah, looking forward to looking forward to. Kevin Hogan More exciting, excellent. Next up, Ryan Lufkin, vice president of global strategy, shares some post pandemic best practices from around. As well as some insights regarding devices upgrades and the importance of teacher assistance. OK Ryan, thanks so much for meeting with me today. It's great to see you again, like one of the great things about being able to do these podcasts now in meet space versus over zoom. I could see you before we had a good conversation before. There really is a difference. And you mostly about. Remote learning versus in person, yeah, this is another example. So you can't. Kevin Hogan Peter, right? That's why, you know, hybrid learning really is the ideal. That idea that you spend time in person, but you've also got that ability to access your coursework online and your your resources online. Yeah, even interact occasionally on zoom online, but. The in person is is hard to. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan And as I'm understanding, this is the first. In structure post COVID. Ryan Lufkin Yeah, we're getting back. Together, our last in person event was in 2019 in Long Beach and so this is we've had a couple of virtual and then we're back in person and it's it's exciting. You already kind of feel the excitement that as people are showing. Kevin Hogan Today and feels a little bit like a high. School reunion of sorts, right? Ryan Lufkin It's funny. We had our partner session yesterday and it really was like high school reunion that, you know, I've been in Ed Tech now for over 20 years and the number of people that either worked with in structure or I worked with other companies that are here, it seems like when you get into education technology. You really stay and I think it's because it it's such an impactful meaningful space. Yes, I think people get addicted to it. Like you're helping teachers, you're helping students. There's a purpose and mission to it. They don't necessarily find in other verticals. And so you see those people year after year, changing jobs, maybe moving companies, but yeah, really still focus on that same. Business. Yeah, yeah. Kevin Hogan Staying in space and one of the exciting things for me too, was last night meeting some of the partners was the international yeah Vibe. And as I said the last night, it's like, you know, when I first. Got into my first bet and going to the first bet was like first my first World Cup match where it's just like wow goes right up. Ryan Lufkin Yeah, yeah. Kevin Hogan Such a yank centric, you know as a lot. Of Americans are. Yeah, it's like, well, and our readers that are. And again, before the Internet, before you could. Track your Internet. Yeah, it was like, well, we're focused. On North America and it's like no. But there's there's a. Big wide world out there. Ryan Lufkin A lot of instance, I think American companies have a real tendency towards being US centric and yeah, it's something we've really strived not to be and you know we were we were talking last night and the you know that companies from Australia, this companies from Amsterdam, this companies from Brazil like we really have fostered those partnerships because we understand that that you. Even if we are being a a bit US centric with something, there are partners in region that are maybe filling gaps and you can partner with them to provide exactly what that region needs and that's always something that our open ecosystem is supported. Kevin Hogan Yeah, well, you're around the world, you. Look at these. And you are focused on the strategies for in structures globally. Over the, you know. And again, I'm sick of talking about the pandemic. It's still kind of. Ryan Lufkin It's still we're we're in the we're in the hangover, you know. In fact I I talked to an analyst that was supposed to be here this week and she got COVID at another vendor conference. So cool. It's not done. We're still seeing that pop up every once in a while and that's again we talked about, even though we're in that post COVID world. The need for that technology and and maintaining that level of of use of technology in the classroom is incredibly important, right? Whether it's natural disaster, whether it's pandemic, yeah. Whatever. Whatever that disruption is, we can't be in the world where again, where 1.5 million billion students are impacted by an event and are suffering learning loss because of that, right. We've got to be pro. Paired and we have the. Tools too, so and yeah. Kevin Hogan Because the tools are there and they were there going into. Yeah, the pandemic which was helpful and kind of saved as whatever education was over the past three years. What are some of the innovations that you saw of schools both in K12 and in higher at around the world doing with your stuff? Yeah, that was. But particularly innovative that our readers, our listeners might be able to to yeah get some. Ryan Lufkin Ideas I mentioned I thought Australia New Zealand was really well positioned for COVID because they had already moved down the competency based education. Path, right? Yes. They would be more with mastery based education for K12 students and things like that, so that when we moved into the digital space, it was easier for them to measure potential learning loss and and how soon we're doing as part of that, I thought they were, they were well positioned for that. I think some regions were able to set up technology incredibly quickly and and really have minimized that impact and some. Whether it was because of regulations or things like that struggle a little to move as quickly and I think we've seen some of that hangover from that and there's a lot of headlines around learning loss. Yeah, but I. Think the the accessibility issue. The access to the Internet access the devices we saw it in the US, but we saw it globally as well and we as we look at how educated. How students actually access their learning materials? Right. Well, times, it's. On the phone. Right. And so if you're not designing it for an app or things like that, if you're designing it for a desktop computer, that can be really impactful for students who may not have the resources. So it was one of the interesting things. It was so. A mixed reaction across the globe. Yeah, it's it's. I think there are going to be studies about it for. Some time on. On how the different reactions, the different approach to analogy will have long. Term impact? Absolutely. Kevin Hogan Now what about for again for our readers and our listeners, who probably maybe put together a hodgepodge from the legacy. Management systems. When March of 2020 comes, everything goes to Hades, everybody goes remote and now they're kind of coming out of it. And you know they're looking. Upgrading or maybe making some things they had to. Do part of their. New normal. Do you have any suggestions? For them from, yeah. Ryan Lufkin We we actually see a lot of that like with schools saying, you know, we've adopted inconsistently all of these tools now post COVID, let's do a real analysis of what we've adopted and maybe keep some of them. Did some of them upgrade some of them and and search canvas? Was the the first fully SAS open source LMS on the market and that's one of the reasons it grew so rapidly. That it was easy to stand up was scalable. Yeah. And that's why during during COVID that that initial back to school in the fall of 2020, we didn't have any major outages. We, we, we. For the only LMS that I don't think did, it's because we didn't have any of the on Prem highly customized legacy implementations that a lot of them had right and they're really suffered under that scale. Yeah, I all of a sudden you're adding four to five times more students and concurrently your hardware is not going to not going to support that we were designed. On AWS to start using their scaling services and so we were seeing massive bikes and usage and we were able to you might have slowed down a little bit but you just didn't crash and that was. That accessibility, that that reassurance for educators that that new technology was going to be there, yeah, was huge, yeah. And so I think there are there are institutions that cobble together approaches and made it through and that are looking now to say, OK, maybe we need to, we need to move on to the next piece, but that should be sass. That should be systems that are scalable and work together well through the. The implementations and things like that. If you were still writing custom code to, probably your your different systems together, you're probably gonna be in trouble if we run. Into something like that future. Kevin Hogan Right. Well, now as you look out to the future, right on the horizon. I mean, there's some such amazing acceleration. Actually, yeah, I. Mean in the adoption and the use of this? I mean, does that spike continue? Does it? But no off. And also we've almost been 10 minutes and you or I have not said a. Ryan Lufkin I I knew nothing. We're, you know, we're it's like we're tracking how many times people say. AI is such so much. Talked you out of the room since December. Since J GBT. Was released and for good reason. I mean, there's some really valuable time saving powerful applications that we're already discovering that will be discovered coming down the pipe. Yeah, it's unfortunate. The initial reaction was this is a cheating tool. Let's ban it. You know, for a lot of institutions, we've already seen a lot. Of those bans that were put in place. Early in 2023, being lifted as they, as they say, you know what that was? A knee jerk reaction. We're. We're gonna step back. We're gonna train our educators. We gotta train, you know, really provide guidelines for our students. We're already seeing that happen, but it's I think there was a stat that like something like 1000 AI apps a day. Not in education necessarily, but across the board are being released. So that myriad of different tools. I think we're just kind of scratching the surface of of what? Makes sense to be used in education. That's going to streamline a lot of the tools, a lot of the interactions. The goal should always be, you know, we talked about there's there's we're kind of looking at 3 pillars intentional. So really focused on the human driven aspects of the classroom and making sure that the software we develop and our partner softwares are focused on that. Safe, so making sure we're protecting students information, making sure that we're protecting educator and institution intellectual property and then equitable. That's one of the big looming aspects of this is not a lot of people are looking at the cost of the eye and the the processing cost, the the different pieces that could in long term. We get less equitable for students to access and we want to make sure we're laying the foundation for that. So I think there's we're seeing a change in what's being adopted where I think we'll, we'll continue to see. Technology, you know the the LMS is still of that. Heart of that classroom, students. Need that digital classroom? They need to go know where to go to start their day. They needed To Do List. They need a calendar, they need to understand what the assignment is, and that's where both inside the classroom and in the digital. Space having a consistent LMS is key and we, you know, we talked to our our partners at Google and Microsoft. And it's all about providing that space and and plugging their tools in to make sure that students can navigate that easily. Now it's about how we save educators time. How do we make sure we personalize and deepen the impact with students and that's where I. Think we're headed? Yeah. Kevin Hogan Well, never a dull. Ryan Lufkin Never, ever. You know it's funny. Cuz it's it's you. Do you think we're getting back? To our ball that we. Get hit with the next big thing and you know, and I think you know, we'll continue to deliver that next big thing. And if you're not comfortable with change, I think post COVID it's it's. It's going to be. A hard world. It's tough. Yeah, but but it it's an exciting, you know, most of most of the developments. These are tools that we can use to help address problems like learning loss and equity gaps. These are, if we look at the positives instead of kind of focusing on the negatives. Yeah, it's an exciting time to be. An education, I agree. Kevin Hogan 100%. Now last but certainly not least, CEO Steve Daley on the state of play. When it comes to Education's biggest learning management system. Steve, thanks so much for meeting with me today. This is a really exciting and thanks for allowing me to tag along here on your show. As you said in your presentation, first in person, Yvette, since I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it anymore. But the pandemic and and all the rest of that, maybe we just start off talking a little bit. I think you came on in July of 2020. Right. What's it like? Starting as CEO of a multi billion dollar company in the middle of. Steve Daly A pandemic. Yeah, it was interesting, right? Because at that point. I don't think we really had figured out the whole remote thing and how to do it. For me, my typical MO when I would start a new job was I I'd go, I'd get on the road, right and go visit. And I talk to people. I talked to an employee. Is the nice thing I think about starting in the middle of the pandemic was that I didn't have to travel to meet these people, right? And so everybody's willing to do a zoom call. So I was able to hit I think in the first six months I hit 200 customers. Yeah, that I was able to go. Listen to ask him, you know, ask him what they would do if they were me as well. As probably that many employees as well. So from that perspective. It was. It was kind of nice, but as we all know, right that face to face and just not you know, so there were some some employees that I hadn't met you. Know for the. Whole first year that that I had been CEO. Speaker Right. Steve Daly So yeah it was challenging from that perspective. Kevin Hogan Yeah, but at the same time, you have a product, you have a service that essentially along with the rest of the education industry, not I'm a cheerleader, but really did save of whatever you want to talk about, what level of education happened. I mean, we could talk about the learning losses and the gaps, but it's these technologies. Especially platforms like that that actually. Maybe were put to the test for. The first time as like. The biggest beta test in. The world right. That that ever occurred. Yeah, you're right. What did you see as you came in and you saw your customers, the districts and the colleges and universities using this, what? What sort of innovations did you see coming out of that that maybe weren't intended? Before the pandemic or seen some some things that were happening before, like how well this is, we, we, we. Steve Daly Should it's a, it's a great question. You know when when we we. Have the California Community College system is all standardized on on canvas, and I was. Talking to them. And they said, look, if if it hadn't been. Canvas and and zoom. Yeah, right. We would not have been able to meet our Charter to to educate rural California and there have been a loss one to two years for all of rural California. So that's super rewarding as we think about that and and the fact that the technology in place like that could have that kind of impact. Yeah, but when we when we're in the. Heart of the. A pandemic, our our main focus was. Let's keep this thing up and running. Yeah, we. In fact we we. Carved back as an organization and said OK, we've got to figure. About how we. Implemented machine learning on the back end so that we. Could predict loads, right? And and ramp capacity before the load hit. We went from, I think it was just just over 1,000,000 concurrent users. Was our kind of our peak usage to just over 6 million in the course of three months. Some of the innovations were. Just those types of things. Let's keep this thing. Let's allow it to scale. Let's keep. It up and running. Make sure it's reliable. Make sure right cause you can imagine if if our system goes down during finals, when the in the pandemic, that would be a disaster, right? And so. So we we saw. A lot of innovation, I think coming. Out of it, it's now become much more about the student experience, right? And how do we, how do we make sure that through technologies like canvas, some of the partners that we have, we have the best experience for the student and we can cross through those different modalities, right? So the student is on campus, right, or? They're off campus. How do we come? Right you can you. Can connect in in class. You can you can have a conversation afterwards. How can we create a virtual environment that allows you to do that kind of connections? And so we're putting a lot of effort in how do we create that sense of community, for instance. We know a lot of innovations around how do we get real time feedback into the hands of the teachers as far as learning and where are students along the path of their learning journey and then how do we. Give them the ability to kind of change the path for each student, so create different learning paths for different students depending on where they're at. Maybe it's it's something as simple as saying for this student, I'm going to give them an extra week to complete the assignment or or maybe for for this segment. It's not gonna. Be worth as. Many points, you know those types of things. I think came out of recognizing that when you are teach. Thing remotely and you have the technology in place, you can get a lot of feedback that's hard to consume as a human being. But when you have that feedback, it's your. It's your fingertips, right? Because the technology is is where you're using to deliver. Then we can start to help teachers take some of that cognitive load off teachers. And help them in figuring out how. To help individual students. Kevin Hogan Have you noticed a difference when you talk about the teachers and you talk about the users? And and user behavior. And the the pivots that we all had to make during the pandemic, is there still any resistance? I mean, so before the pandemic especially, you know when you're looking at higher Ed, I think as much as K12. You have professors who would say. This is the way I've always done it for 30 years. Don't give me this stuff. Yeah, I don't need this stuff. This is how I do it. March 2020 comes along and. They need to use it. Steve Daly But they like it. Kevin Hogan Or not, right, right. Yeah. So I mean, do you think there's a kind of an overall change? Do we not have to convince users to subscribe to LMS's? Steve Daly Yeah, I think it's the normal distribution, right. There's on on the tail, there's the group that is like I had to do it during the pandemic. Going back, yeah, to the. Way I did it before, that's a pretty small. Group, right? Yeah. I think what we're seeing is that the couple things happen is is one, I think tragedies of the of the pandemic was. There are a number. Of teachers that, you know opted out right, they finally said. I'm done. Yeah, right. So, so you had that you had a cohort that left teaching, and now we're trying to backfill that with new teachers, right? We're trying to catch up, but what we're finding is that teachers that are coming out of school and coming into the teaching profession, right, they've grown up now with this technology, right, with they've used canvas when they were in. Case well, system right? They used it when they were in college, and now they're coming in and they're saying look. That's how I learned. Right? Right. I I'm not gonna go, you know. You know, stacked this 4 door file cabinet at the back of my classroom with all the lesson plans. Right, right. I'm used to having all this online. I'm used to being able to say OK for this semester, we're. Gonna start on. This day and allowing it to, you know. My all my syllabus is updated all. That kind of stuff. So yes, so we're. Seeing actually just this kind of move in general. As as new teachers come into the fold towards the use of technology because that's their digital natives, right? They're raised on it, right? And then you're right, there was. There was a I was meeting with a A. Middle school teacher about a month ago. And she came up and said, look, she she had left teaching to go raise a family. She came back, she was late 40s, early 50s. When she came back and she said my my, my district was all in on campus, right. And then she said I was super intimidated and scared. But she said. Since I took the time to kind of under. And I would never go back the amount of time that I've saved, right? The the ease and then most importantly, she taught a leadership and a mindfulness class. And she said I can. I can reach students wherever they're at, right. They may not be able to show up to class, but I can still touch them through the the LMS. And that was for her, the most rewarding. Part of it right was that she could meet him, meet the student where they're. At with with her? With what? Kevin Hogan She's trying to teach. So we get through. The literal pandemic wave and things start to kind of get back to. Normal. And then we're. About 12 or 13 minutes into this interview, but neither. Of us has said AI, yeah. But it was pretty good. It's almost a record. And then so then. We have this other thing that is just taking the oxygen out of the room and spins. The spectrum of. This is the best thing since sliced bread to this is the sign of the apocalypse. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan There's no. Steve Daly Back no more learning is gonna happen. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan We're back to this whole thing about their teachers being replaced by robots or machines, or, you know, this kind of the the, the weird science. Fiction thing. Talk a little bit about where you see in structure on that spectrum and like and because you will have influences over how these things are applied, you and. Steve Daly Your partners, you know, 100%. You know, I think we, we've, we've. Kind of walked through the spectrum with our customers, right? The the initial reaction was. Ohh no right, yeah. Then everybody's gonna cheat, right? It's gonna be, you know, their tool, that they're gonna use cheat. Nobody's gonna learn anything ever again. Type of. Thing the the reality. Is people could use it to cheat, but people could use Google, people could use. Kevin Hogan The calculator that you had staged. Steve Daly The just dinner and run that my programs and there's the reality is and the best way I've heard it. Is we're meeting with Miami-Dade College and. The the Provost there, she said. These tools are available rather than. Them we gotta figure out how we alter our teaching in a way that understands they're gonna use these tools. Yeah, they're gonna use it when they get in the workforce, so why wouldn't we teach them how to use it as part of the educational process? Right. So, so I do think that it's going to be an accelerant to innovation for the Ed tech community. As a whole. Because there were some kind of sticky problems like how do you how do you really tutor a student that needs help? And we we kind of approached it in two ways. We say that we're gonna throw humans at it. Yeah, we're gonna tutor, right. Or we create these systems that have the answers to questions and you know you subscribe to them and you get, you get the. Answers. You know some people. Could cheat with them, or they could use them to learn, but it was like an all or nothing. Yeah, right. And so I think these systems and. The where they. Architect it will. Allow us to use technology to create these tutors. That will allow. It to scale. Yeah, right. It allows that district that doesn't have the money to go pay a tutoring company or pay tutors humans to do that, to be able to. Do that through technology. So I think it's actually gonna create some more equitable access. For students across the across the board. I do think there's some. Chance to abuse. It, yeah, but really. Content creation is going to become much simpler, right? That's a super manual, very intensive process. We're going to use it because we we create item based of of content aligned against against standards. We're going to be able to use the the technology to to take some of those item banks and go across the country, right. And every standard across there which used to be just huge, very intense, you know, human intensive process. And we can simplify some of that. Right. It won't be. I mean, we'll still have our psychic psychometricians, right? Still have the. People to make sure that you know and and manage that. But yeah, it will allow us to scale much faster. So I'm super optimistic. Yeah, I think in the next five years you're going to see the amount of innovation that's coming out of the Ed Tech community is going to accelerate dramatically. And so I I am. I'm a I'm. A fan? Yeah. As long as we do it, you know, with an eye. That you can't. You can't sacrifice privacy. For instance, right, right. In pursuit of, you know, really cool technology. Right. And and as long as we're intentional about it, I think we're we're gonna see some really cool. Kevin Hogan Stuff. But then you have. An extra layer of responsibility, almost as the the public utility. So when you look at 250 partners, I think you. Said that they were here today, but there's over here. Steve Daly Day 808 hundred. Kevin Hogan Yeah. So yeah, they're integrating. Steve Daly 50 class partners. Kevin Hogan Is there some sort of vetting process that goes on with that in terms of the technologies that are used that that? Can be used on the platform and I think. So just controversy says surrounding course hero is 1 where it's just. Trying to figure out what's right or what's wrong. I mean it's just another kind of dilemma that happens with new technologies, right? Where from your point of view, where does that responsibility land on in? Steve Daly Structure so you know I I don't think we should be judge and jury for some of these technologies, but I do think we can provide the visibility to the decision makers so. So you know, part of with our acquisition of learned platform, they have a storefront. And essentially there's a a vetting process that goes through right and says these are our security policies. These are our privacy policies, policies, et cetera. And they get qualified against those things. So we can publish and say, you know this vendor, this is just so, you know, this is this is what their their privacy looks like. This is what their security looks like. Right, this is what their accessibility looks like, right? And so our goal is to create a place where it might be, you know, administrators where educators can go. And get the information that they need to make the decision about whether or not they want to allow that into their to their ecosystem. OK, rather than to say you know what, I don't think those of course there should. Be here in our marketplace. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan Right. So a little bit. Speaker And we don't want to be. Kevin Hogan Of Apple store like the Apple App. Steve Daly Store kind of to. Speaker Kind of. Kevin Hogan That right a little to the common. Sense media, maybe. Exactly. Exactly. Steve Daly Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We think and and you know as. We talked to particular higher Ed institutions. They've they've got these armies of people that are, that's. Their whole job is. Just to try to vet some of this. Sure, privacy, security, accessibility. And so we think we can take some of that load off of them. Yeah. And help kind of get some quality, you know, and and every institution is going to have their own requirements. But there is base 80% that everybody agrees to has to happen. Kevin Hogan So we we got AI. Out of the way, yeah. You look at the feedback, it was some incredible numbers that you were talking about in terms of survey. Results and in the millions from. What would you say are the biggest worries or challenges amongst the folks in, in terms of those responses and how do you see Instructure responding to those? Steve Daly Yeah. You know, I think. That the challenge for education right now is people are starting to question whether or not the outcomes that we're seeing out of education meet. What we believe are the needs right as society. And I think that manifests itself in a couple. Couple symptoms right. In higher Ed, we're seeing declining enrollments. Mm-hmm. Some of that's demographic. But you know, when you look at? The data that says you know the number. Sort of graduating seniors that are not going to go pursue a four year degree. You look at the number of states that have said for year for all of our entry level jobs at the state, we're not going to require a degree, right? I think that's a symptom of the fact. That we're saying that. The value of that degree is not meeting what I need. In the in the workforce. That's right. I think there's a similar, you know, a similar symptom is showing up within within the K12 system, right, is? Are we preparing? Our kids are we teaching them the things that they need in order to be successful when they finish that their senior year? And so we're, I'm seeing a lot of educators asking the. Question how do? We how do we go after those students and how do we how do we help them in their educational journey in the way they want to be helped, right and not in the way that we've done for the last 812 hundred years. So I see a lot of, you know, I'm. I'm I'm actually I see that as a as a challenge I I'm also optimistic that the education community. That's rising to the challenge and meet that right. We're seeing a lot of institutions at the higher in the higher Ed. That are looking at OK how do I how do I get to that non traditional student, right? How do I create evidence of progress without the only evidence being a bachelor's degree, right? That diploma, right. So how do I create credentials or certificates and how do I stack those and how do I? How do I reach that student? We're seeing the same thing in K12 system. How? Do I get them ready? How do I? Either you know, concurred, the number of concurrent enrollment programs right is is is on the rise, we're seeing. How do I prepare that student? That's that's not. Gonna go to college. Speaker Right. Steve Daly Which which used. To be what I thought about, you know. Get him on to. Take the SAT. Get him to. Get him, get him into school. So again, I think I think we can play a role as that because you know that one of the advantages we have as in structure is we are in about 1/3 of all US school districts. We're in an almost 40% of all US higher Ed institutions. We have a lot of students that their entire educational journey is with canvas, right? And being that kind of system of record as they go through this thing, I think we have an opportunity to bring together the right technologies at the right. Time through either our own or through, you know our partner system to meet the needs of those of every student on their lifelong journey of learning and and that's what's super exciting for us. That's that's the role. We think we could play is, is to be that common infrastructure that everybody uses as they're going through that educational journey and be. The system record. Right as they go through. Kevin Hogan That which makes a lot of sense. Now when I hear the news about the ASU Thunderbird program and 100 million learners that that you can kind of be the. Steve Daly The yes, the the structure for. Structure that. Yeah, the structure that allows them to extend that to you know. To a underserved population. Kevin Hogan And there you have it, big thanks to the folks at Instructure for allowing me the time to tag along and learn from its educators and partner vendors. Again, zoom and teams are great, but nothing replaces the chance to meet and speak to people in person. Now keep your. Ears open for the next innovations and education podcast that will be coming to your feed soon.