InstructureCon 2025 kicked off in Spokane with powerful themes of community, innovation, and impact. From a heartfelt welcome and local service project to learning about Ignite AI, the opening session set the tone: amplifying human potential through education and technology.

In a world where learners move from early education to career advancement in increasingly complex ways, the fundamental question persists: Are they ready for what’s next? Especially in an era of AI transformation, readiness—whether for a new grade level, higher education, or the workforce—can be a compass that guides meaningful educational progress.

As the Academic Strategy Team, we’ve spent the past year researching trends, attending conferences and gathering insights with customers and educational leaders across the educational landscape.

Artificial Intelligence is transforming how students learn and prepare for their futures. This session explores how two universities launched two AI-driven student engagement series that both leveraged Canvas.

Ever wonder how to deliver value and justify the ROI for Intelligent Insights? Sometimes it takes some out of the box thinking to figure out how data and analytics can and should be used. In this session, we’ll discuss the top 10 ways we got creative and delivered measurable return on our investment in Intelligent Insights.

In this forward-looking panel discussion, join education technology leaders from Instructure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as they explore how AI agents are poised to revolutionize teaching and help educators take back their time.

How do you meet the diverse needs of all your learners? With the transformative potential of modern classrooms, how do you use technology in purposeful ways to get you to the core of what learning is about - connection, interaction and relationships?

Over the past school year, Union Schools has utilized "Ask Your Data" to enhance student support and monitor teacher efficacy. Principals and counselors have used custom pinboards to monitor low performing students and provide timely support.

As AI continues to shape higher education, institutions need effective ways to showcase innovative uses of AI in teaching, research, and administrative work. In this session, we will share our AI Showcase, a publicly available Canvas course designed to highlight faculty-led AI initiatives. The showcase features exemplary work submitted in two categories: course-specific applications and broader AI use cases, including administrative efficiency, creative scholarship, and research.

This session explores Instructure’s intentional, integrated AI approach to foster confidence, drive effective adoption, and create educational value for institutions. 

What makes a “good teacher” in the eyes of first-year undergraduates? This session dives into a fascinating case study viewed through the lens of the TPACK model. Discover how students’ perceptions challenged traditional ideas and added unexpected dimensions to the model. Join us to explore why these findings matter more than ever and how they can inform teaching practices.

Discover how the University of Michigan’s U-M GPT Maizey transforms teaching and learning by seamlessly integrating with Instructure’s Canvas. Designed for educators, Maizey leverages Canvas’s LTI 1.3 framework to embed powerful AI-driven tools directly into course environments. With Maizey, instructors can create dynamic learning experiences by indexing course materials, lecture captures, and external resources like Google Drive, all accessible through Canvas.

This presentation demonstrates the integration and application of Khanmigo Teacher Tools within the Canvas Learning Management System for higher education. Khanmigo, an AI-powered teaching assistant developed by Khan Academy, offers 23 tools designed to enhance instructional efficiency and effectiveness. The session showcases seven key features: discussion prompt creation, exit ticket generation, lesson hook development, text chunking, content leveling, relevance enhancement, and real-world context generation.

This session showcases DeVry's groundbreaking implementation of Praxis AI's human-centered digital twin technology. Unlike traditional reactive AI assistants, DeVry's approach creates context-aware agentic professors that proactively observe student behavior, determine appropriate tactics for each situation, and autonomously engage learners through Canvas.

As artificial intelligence rapidly evolves, online learning institutions must proactively address both its challenges and opportunities. Over the past 18 months, Montana Digital Academy (MTDA) has developed a comprehensive approach to AI use in student learning, balancing innovation with academic integrity.

We will share implementation journey so far, our successes and challenges, how it has already proven a valuable tool, and how we see it as a vital asset in our future quality assurance, by leveraging data and AI and thus supporting staff and students and fostering culture of continuous improvement. This holistic approach ensures that we can provide high-quality education and meet accreditation standards effectively.

Leveraging Canvas Data 2.0, the University of Florida's Information Technology has developed a tool that brings together Canvas data, institutional data, and student feedback as a plugin accessible from the instructor's Canvas page.

In this session, we will share our vision for the future of online education and discuss how we’ve reimagined online healthcare education by utilizing real-time learner data to enhance student engagement, improve outcomes, and trigger timely interventions.

AI in learning—thrilling, but where do you even begin? This presentation sparks your curiosity with big ideas to ponder, not a checklist to follow. Hang on—could regulations around AI use in education raise questions worth a lively debate? Wait a sec, might its code carry biases that shape how it ‘reads’ students? Let’s explore the what-ifs of AI in action, then dive into an LTI app built on top of Canvas: one that jumps into student discussion posts with thought-provoking replies and lets you query an entire thread to uncover insights worth mulling over. 

Join us to learn how the University of Utah is leveraging the power of Canvas data and EAB's innovative tools to enhance student success.

Learn how AI capabilities, accessibility-first design, and more are reshaping what's possible in educational technology. We'll explore real examples of how these platform innovations are solving today's teaching and learning challenges while building the foundation for tomorrow's educational experiences.

Discover the transformative potential of Google for Education’s partnership with Instructure and learn how it can enhance your courses. This presentation demonstrates how Google’s AI tools, when integrated with the Canvas LMS, improve EdTech teaching and learning at a large public university.

This session will demystify Intelligent Insights’ "Ask your Data" feature, offering attendees a practical guide to prompt engineering, equipping you with the skills necessary to find the information needed.

At the University of Birmingham, UK, we have partnered with Canvas as our VLE provision since 2013. As our usage has evolved it has become the central platform for our ecosystem, with additional tools incorporated for assessment in STEM, lecture capture, search, and collaboration.

This session will explore the integration of Khanmigo for Teachers, an AI-powered learning assistant, with Canvas. 

This presentation explores how generative AI can provide personalized professional development for university faculty. By analyzing course transcripts, LMS documents, and curriculum maps, AI personalizes faculty feedback by identifying specific teaching strategies the instructor has employed, linking them to educational theories and course objectives.

In an era where careers span decades and the job market evolves at an unprecedented pace, the traditional model of education—front-loaded and finite—no longer suffices.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of educational technology, the integration and evaluation of third-party learning tools have become increasingly complex, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence.

As a Canvas Admin, Tech Leader, or Instructional Coach, your role goes beyond managing courses—you empower educators by unlocking Canvas’s full potential.

This panel discussion explores the impact and functionality of Canvas Intelligent Insights from both user and product development standpoints. Two representatives from UT Tyler will share firsthand experiences from the decision making process to adopt the tool, implementing the tool, as well as the benefits, challenges, and strategies for driving adoption.