NET+ Canvas Newsletter

August 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. 

Instructor Coaching Program: Panda Pros

Instructure has launched 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.

Four Ways Canvas Catalog Solves Your Skills-Based Learning Challenges

Check out these 4 solutions for your course marketplace and see how Canvas Catalog can take your skills-based learning initiatives to the next level. Learn more here.


5 Ways to Increase Student Engagement with Video (Canvas Studio)

Click here to view the webinar.


Eesysoft Welcomed Into the Instructure Family

Instructure recently announced their acquisition of Eesysoft (now titled Impact by Instructure), an edtech adoption platform focused on driving engagement with and usage of edtech tools. Click here to learn more.

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: September 8th, 2021


The next Canvas Advisory Board meeting will be on September 8, 2021. Our most recent meeting (August) included the following items:

  • How will Instructure manage the transition in the near-term to being a public company once again?  What will change?  What will improve or be different?
  • What is Steve's longer-term strategic vision for Instructure?  What does he want the company to focus on and achieve?
  • How can the NET+ Advisory Board partner best with Instructure to help achieve both the near- and long-term goals?

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


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August Meeting Recap


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

This month we had the pleasure of hearing from Instructure CEO Steve Daly to provide some important updates and commentary at our meeting. He started by addressing some concerns about changes related to Instructure’s return to being a public company. Many members are aware that some public companies can start to head in a “growth at all costs” direction, but Steve confirmed that Instructure is committed to not spreading itself too thin and maintaining their focus on education and customer experience. Instructure’s selling off of the Bridge service represents their decision to dedicate the company’s resources to higher ed rather than the corporate sector. He also mentioned the company’s intention to improve the authentication process for tech partners as well as continue to relieve higher ed customers of manual and repetitive tasks via their service offering. He additionally mentioned that Instructure is having similar market challenges as many companies globally are experiencing around filling engineering vacancies, but expects this to improve given that Instructure’s new public status is likely to attract and better retain talent. We are looking forward to a strong start to the fall semester with Canvas as well as the platform’s upcoming growth and development.

Thank you to all who participated in this month’s meeting 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


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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