InstructureCon Conference Notes

July is typically the busiest month for LMS user conferences, and over the past few weeks we've attended Anthology Together in Orlando (for Blackboard Learn), InstructureCon Online (for Canvas), and D2L Fusion in Boston (for Brightspace). Today's newsletter will focus on InstructureCon, to be followed by D2L Fusion later this week and Global MoodleMoot in Barcelona in late September. 

InstructureCon

InstructureCon, held virtually on July14th with follow-on on demand access, was a one-day event with tight messaging and impressive video production. The sessions were informative and on point, and there was a consistent journey theme cleverly reinforced by the visuals of the beautiful Utah landscape.

My first question is whether Mitch Benson was really climbing in the executive overview video. I don't think so, . . . but was he?

Unfortunately, InstructureCon was a well-produced informercial, not a user conference. Everything seemed to be pre-written, rehearsed, slick, and even honest, but that is not what user conferences are about. There were games (including a DJ and trivia) that were interesting, but user conferences should be about connecting customers with other customers and potential customers, and connecting them with company staff. With unscripted hallway conversations that can be personal or directly about partnering with the vendor. No company was better than Instructure in the early and mid 2010s with using the conferences as a authentic marketing tool, letting customers in effect sell their experiences. When PowerSchool / Schoology, Anthology / Blackboard, D2L, and even Moodle are holding in-person user conferences this year, this choice by Instructure feels like a mistake. Stop telling people that they are excited, and help them be excited and share their excitement in a meaningful, non-Twitter way.

Product Portfolio

Instructure has released this year its new brand architecture, which should help people understand the different product lines. Essentially Canvas is for the learning management solutions, Mastery is for assessment management and related content for the K-12 market (largely based on the MasteryConnect and Certica acquisitions), Elevate is for data & analytics, and Impact is for adoption and engagement tools (largely based on the Eesysoft acquisition).

This portfolio and brand architecture are not just about branding - they meaningfully represent Instructure's strategy coming from Thoma Bravo's primary ownership (the company is publicly traded, but Bravo controls the vast majority of shares).

As described on this afternoon's earnings call, the most common product sales alongside the LMS are Studio, Catalog, and Impact, with Credentials coming on strong. The company expects a lot of future revenue growth will come from Catalog and Credentials. 

Product News

I find it interesting that Catalog is not heavily marketed, however. A lot of higher ed institutions are looking to break out of their traditional matriculated student boxes, and Catalog is set up to enable a continuing education / e-commerce play to reach non-matriculated students. And it is an impressive product. But there was not much information in relative terms at InstructureCon, and the pre-conference announcements gave Catalog the shorted description.

For K-12 markets, the Mastery Assessments business continues to expand.

In Canvas product news . . .

On the positive side, Instructure released revised designs for both the Discussions and Assignments tools.

• Discussions redesign: an evolved user interface now allows for quoting replies, tagging respondents with @mentions and the capability of flagging or reporting replies.

• Assignment enhancements for students: an improved submission workflow includes a progress tracker for each assignment, clear submission options, improved access to rubrics and feedback and access to each attempt if multiple are given. 

These design updates represent material improvements to existing tools. Strengths built upon strengths.

Instructure is also working to improve their support for mastery learning and CBE support, with one key component the release of Pace Plans.

• Course pacing: a feature that allows the automatic distribution of due dates with different start dates based on an instructor’s defined pace, all to better support outcomes-based, or competency-based education (CBE).

Overall, Instructure is showing its willingness to invest in the core Canvas LMS product line. I have in the past pointed out that Thoma Bravo's playbook was showing in that more focus was put on acquisitions than in longer-term core product design, but what I'm seeing this year is that Instructure has balanced this approach, leading to increased work on Canvas itself. Anecdotally, we have seen the results of the increased product development during LMS evaluations, with positive reaction from schools after sandbox testing.

On the negative side, however, there is New Quizzes. 

At 2017's InstructureCon, the company "released" Quizzes.Next, their new quizzing engine that was a new architecture - more than just updated designs. The square quotes are there as this was a limited beta release. By 2018, Instructure admitted they were late on delivery and needed to do better, with further updates provided in 2019. Much like Blackboard's Learn Ultra, the new quizzing engine (now called New Quizzes) suffers from a need for migration from the old version, and many customers are not willing to give up functionality just to get a new, sleeker design. At this year's InstructureCon (actually announced at the end of 2021 but reinforced at the conference), they announced that they have extended the deadline for schools to complete the migration to mid 2024.

Quizzing represents tricky functionality (ask any of the publishers / courseware providers), and changing underlying architectures adds to the challenge. Instructure is not the only company to hit a snag in this area, but it is clearly the worst product rollout since Canvas was released a dozen+ years ago.

With that said, it is refreshing to see Instructure's executives directly acknowledging the problems with New Quizzes as they did during InstructureCon.This newsletter focused mostly on Canvas, but there is more news available on Mastery, Elevate, and Impact. The other news can be found in this release.

Overall

Instructure continues to operate more smoothly as a company than pre-2021, with an accelerating business in terms of revenue and operating income (estimates for 2022 continue to increase over time). We are also seeing material improvements in product development, which had slipped over the past few years. In short the company is performing quite well.What Instructure is missing, however, is the ability to leverage the excitement from customers as was seen pre-2019. The competition has heated up in the past few years, and Canvas is not longer operating on its own level. Witness Schoology in K-12 and D2L in higher ed markets. The decision to keep InstructureCon virtual only presents an opportunity for Instructure's competitors, and Instructure missed their own opportunity to build further on the improvements in product design for core Canvas. It was a very good infomercial, but the decision to hold InstructureCon 2023 in Denver - I'm sure with virtual options - is important.