NET+ Canvas Newsletter

June 2021

In this version of the NET+ Canvas Newsletter, learn about the latest updates from Instructure about Canvas, comments and feedback from the Canvas Advisory Board, as well as best practices in Canvas use around the Internet2 Community.

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Instructure Updates

Updates from Instructure regarding Canvas product offerings. 

Utah State University

See how Canvas helped USU faculty buy-in to a CBE model and provided unexpected benefits during the pandemic. Find the full story here.

Keeping Accessibility a Top Priority During Times of Rapid Change

While the world at large scrambled to adapt to a mainly remote format, we quickly worked to support that transition for teachers and learners. What has emerged is a spirit of advocacy and an even greater commitment to our shared purpose: to build and maintain inclusive products that meet the diverse accessibility needs of our users. Learn more here.

New Instructor Coaching Program: Panda Pros 


Instructure is launching a new program, called Panda Pros, that is targeted at helping instructors get coaching sessions for free directly from Canvas experts. 

Starting next week (July 6 - September) Instructure will be offering free 25 minute coaching sessions with Instructure experts to any educator who is interested and using one or multiple of Instructure’s edtech tools. Experts will be available from 6 AM to 6 PM MT Monday-Sunday, to help answer instructor questions. 

This is a great opportunity for instructors to have coaching sessions about a variety of topics: module best practices, instructional design, Speedgrader, strategies for formative assessments, Canvas Quizzes, accessibility, and so much more. Instructors can sign up today, so feel free to distribute this to your faculty as you see fit.


Click here for all things Higher Education by Instructure.

Save the Date: InstructureCon 2021 | October 7 2021 | Canvas LMS

Save the date! InstructureCon 2021 will take place on October 7, 2021. Get the chance to expand your Canvas LMS skills, catch the latest news, and connect with educators and education experts.

More Info here.


What does InstructureCon Online 2021 have in store?

  • Get Inspired


  • Connect With Community


  • Catch Up With Instructure


  • Upgrade Your Skills


  • Partner With Our Partners


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Canvas Advisory Board Updates

Upcoming Meeting: July 7, 2021


The next Canvas Advisory Board meeting will be on July 7, 2021. The June agenda will be finalized on May 26th, but current meeting agenda items include:

  • Institutional Profiles
  • Webinar Update: Instructure Partner Program


A complete listing of all Canvas Advisory Board meeting agendas can be found here.


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June Meeting Recap


The agendas for all our 2021 meetings have been published, including our June meeting. Please note, these are working documents and subject to change so please check back for any updates.

Instructure Updates - Online Offering "Panda Pro’s"  

Melissa Loble from Instructure kicked off the meeting with an announcement about a new Canvas special online offering to improve knowledge regarding how to use Canvas & specific features, and answer important user questions. These mini events will take place over the months of July-October 2021 and the format will include several "office hour" style simultaneous online sessions. Feedback will be taken upon completion of the event from users via email. Please see the Instructure update section above for more details.. 

Prepping for Fall Start

Melissa also gave several updates describing how Instructure is busy at work ramping up support and preparations for Fall Start 2021. Members of the advisory board provided very positive feedback regarding the Canvas live chat, reporting that it has very fast response times and points the user in the right direction. 

Canvas Catalog 

Melissa also shared that Instructure is reinvesting in Canvas Catalog, and the following link discusses important upcoming items with regards to Catalog. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Canvas-tl-dr/Big-Things-Ahead-for-Canvas-Catalog/ba-p/467582 

With respect to these updates, a more detailed discussion of Canvas Catalog has been added to the agenda for next month's meeting (July 7th).

Support Request Overload

Melissa also briefly touched on the high volume of customer support questions being received by Canvas, and specifically the major spike that occurs at the start of fall semester (August-September). Several ideas were proposed to try and manage/reduce this support volume, including how-to tutorials, a community-wide training course, and extended FAQ websites. Karin Roberts shared that based on surveys performed at UW, users tended to prefer office hours-style support options as opposed to workshops, which can be time-consuming and difficult to attend.

IPEDS data 

Matthews discussed the recent uptick in institutions that have submitted complaints that IPEDS data is outdated and no longer a fair method of determining pricing, particularly those universities that have recently experienced a decline in enrollment or are hurting financially from the pandemic (the current IPEDS numbers being used are from 2019). Discussion amongst the advisory board concluded that IPEDS is likely the most reliable source of data to determine pricing, given that the vendor (Instructure) relies on revenue that is calculated based on IPEDS for their staffing and operations. 

Thank you to all who participated for your insightful feedback, ideas, and discussion! Should you have any questions or want further information around the work being done by the NET+ Canvas Service Advisory Board or a copy of the Partner Program Report, please don’t hesitate to visit us at https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/7BOJCQ or contact us at netplus@internet2.edu and we will be happy to respond.

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NET+ Canvas Program Update


Temporary Business Model and Pricing Update

Over the past year, Internet2 and Instructure have been working together on a temporary program to bring some relief to struggling institutional budgets due to the pandemic.  This program was temporary in the onset and scheduled to conclude June 30th, 2021.  We are happy to announce we are looking to make these changes a permanent part of the program’s business model in an ongoing effort to aid in the ever shrinking university budget.

The program allows for pricing discounts for institutions that are going to begin a new Term.  If an institution is able to commit to a longer Term length, then they will be able to take advantage of such discounting.  If you have any questions about this, please feel free to email us at netplus@internet2.edu and we can share the specifics.


Service Advisory Board Goals for 2021

These are the goals that the advisory board is looking to perfect at the January 2021 meeting: 

Goal #1

Develop with Instructure a customer success culture that:

  • identifies service and support best practices and next steps
  • benchmarks Instructure's service and support appropriately for universities
  • aligns Instructure's  service and support to best help universities achieve their  strategic goals for teaching and learning 

Decision: Quarterly check-in, beginning in February, with a focus on how we measure success for Instructure's customer success culture. 

Goal #2

Develop a foundational construct with Instructure that outs in place a predictable process for the board to advise and offer insights on future product development or acquisition including cadence, structure, and practice for exchanging ideas.

  • Deliverable: 3 “exchange” activities using/iterating this process on things that Jared, Shaun, or product owners are thinking about during 2021 
  • Deliverable: one of these “exchange” activities is to initiate a Contributing Team for Canvas Data/Live Events


Goal #3

Continue to develop and refine, with Shaun, a strategy and process for I2 and R1 Peer universities to provide Instructure with actionable information on pain points and unmet needs.  The strategy and process should be synced with Instructure's product development cycle and allow Instructure to clearly communicate status and progress back to the universities.

Goal #4

Decision: Instructure cannot reasonably do the actual data sharing piece at this point, and universities are likely not ready to use/share de-identified data.  And, we're all waiting to see what Unizin is doing in this space.  So, we've decided to refocus on (a) what questions we want to answer with Canvas data, and (2) the best way we might answer those questions with the data.  We'll tackle this topic in March with Oxana's replacement. 1/27 update: We may also want to explore a de-identified data sharing program thorough I2.




Around the Community

Commentary from I2 Canvas users: advice, best practices, feedback.

R1 Peers


The Canvas Peers Research Universities Group (or R1 Peers Group) brings together representatives from large public and private research universities to share best practices around using Canvas and the surrounding ed tech ecosystem to support teaching and learning. They also collaborate closely with Instructure (Canvas vendor) and sit on the Internet2 NET+ Canvas Service Advisory Board to improve the Canvas platform and user experience for research universities. This group represents more than 250 members from 45 institutions of higher education and research across the United States, and around the world.

For context, recently the R1 Peers Group has collaborated in the following areas:

  • Tier 1 support
  • Archiving
  • 3rd party integrations
  • Pain points
  • Data privacy


LRS Standards SIG


The Learning Records Store (LRS) Special Interest Group (SIG) assembles use cases for an LRS, creates an LRS reference architecture, and develops implementation/engineering best practices. The SIG promotes open standards that enable data from a variety of teaching and learning tools to be included in the LRS.

This group is chaired by the University of Washington and meets monthly on the fourth Wednesday of the month.  For more information or to join this group, please reach out to Matthew Buss (mbuss@internet2.edu).  Thank you.

Most Recent LRS SIG Meeting Agenda - 3/24/2021

Brown University is collaborating with Unicon on efforts to provide the infrastructure, visualizations, process and expertise to faculty and administrators so that they can use data from multiple digital course tools and university systems to gain insight about how their decisions impact learner engagement.  Roland Hall and Katerina Stepanova at Brown shared their work on the data infrastructure with this group. Brown is now ready to continue the discussion LInda Feng from Unicon initiated in the fall on data retention policies.

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