Instructure Chooses Partners for Its Open, Interoperable Ecosystem of Solutions
A Q&A with Ryan Lufkin
Education technologies are changing at an increasingly fast pace. New opportunities to enhance teaching, learning, and administration are compelling. Here, CT talks with Instructure's VP of Global Strategy Ryan Lufkin to learn how his company leverages partnerships in an evolving global marketplace.
"We've created an open, interoperable ecosystem of solutions, leveraging partnerships that bring in additional solutions to build an even more comprehensive ecosystem." —Ryan Lufkin
Mary Grush: What is Instructure's view of the higher education marketplace, and what are your company's priorities for new products and market development? As Instructure's VP of global strategy, what's important from your perspective?
Ryan Lufkin: I've been with Instructure for five and a half years now, and I've worked in education technology for more than twenty. One of the key things that has always impressed me about the education market is the sense of openness and collaboration. And that's reflected in Instructure's own ongoing commitment to openness. As we move Instructure beyond the Canvas LMS as our primary solution, to a full platform of solutions — the Instructure Learning Platform — one of the key things that we've remained committed to is an openness that allows educators to plug in whatever tools they want to use. In our extensive open ecosystem we have more than 800 partners who have built solutions that we can plug in to Canvas. That empowers customers with the flexibility to choose the solutions they want most.
Now that we're in an innovative phase in which AI tools are evolving rapidly, that openness allows us to leverage some of the best AI tools in the marketplace. We want to help education institutions leverage tools from partners they can trust. All of that supports our own long-term mission — which is "to elevate student success, amplify the power of teaching, and inspire everyone to learn together" — and it's the most beneficial approach for our education customers.
To speak somewhat more specifically to areas of product development, I'd turn to more recent times. We've recently experienced probably the most disruptive three years in the history of education, with Covid and the rapid adoption of technology. That happened all around the globe: An estimated 1.5 billion students suffered from learning disruption. So, our focus at Instructure in recent years has been to support the transition to online learning.
But now, as we're getting back to a new normal, we're focusing more on blended learning and using that technology to support students both inside and outside the classroom. And we're preparing tools for future disruptions, be they natural disasters or other rapid changes.
The bottom line is that we're poised to evolve [sic] the learning experience, if you will, worldwide. We do that in several ways. Perhaps most importantly, we see the accessibility gap, as well as an equity gap, and we want to help close those gaps for learning institutions at every level, around the globe.
We see the accessibility gap, as well as an equity gap, and we want to help close those gaps for learning institutions at every level, around the globe.
Just as we were adjusting to this new normal, we saw the emergence of the AI revolution with its amazing rapid progress during the past several months. So, what we are doing right now is working with learning institutions to determine whether we can all view AI as something other than a cheating tool — and in fact, as so much more. The critical questions that might be addressed with AI are: How can we help support educators who are burdened with the complexities of modern education, and how can we help students stay on track?
At Instructure, we look at AI in a very positive way. We take a measured approach as we integrate AI tools into our learning platform and work with great partners like Kahn Academy in rolling out those tools. We are focused in three key ways: First, to be intentional. We must truly solve student and educator problems. We're not merely implementing sharp, glitzy tools. Second, to be safe. We want to be sure we are protecting student data and privacy as well as educators' intellectual property. Third, and perhaps most important, to be equitable. We aim to lay the groundwork for access by all students. We must not usher in a new generation of "the haves and the have-nots" in a future with AI.
Grush: Could you talk a bit more about the recent announcement of the partnership of Instructure and Khan Academy?
Lufkin: A little more than two weeks ago, Instructure and Khan Academy announced their partnership to bring Khan Academy's Khanmigo, an AI-powered student tutor and teaching assistant into Instructure's Canvas LMS. Earlier this year, when Khan Academy first announced Khanmigo, we were immediately struck by its potential to offer students a more engaging and personalized student experience through generative AI and ChatGPT. Students can ask their tutor questions or engage in interactive role playing that makes the characters in a book seem to come alive. Students with access to Khanmigo will become better prepared to use AI in their future work careers, too. Khanmigo also provides student assistant and classroom teaching and administration tools — from grading, to creating rubrics, and more — to help our overburdened educators save time.
Another fundamental thing to note, is that we are taking a proven AI tool, Khanmigo, and plugging it in to Canvas, a world-class LMS. Data collected over time will help us research and understand what kinds of AI tools promote student success and wellness, and how much impact AI can have on improving student outcomes.
We are taking a proven AI tool, Khanmigo, and plugging it in to Canvas, a world-class LMS.
Grush: Is any other learning platform besides Instructure currently working in a similar AI partnership for Khanmigo?
Lufkin: No, some may be building AI tools internally or possibly even finding other solutions to integrate, but no other learning platform yet has leveraged the great capabilities we have with Khanmigo.
Grush: As you plan to scale the capabilities you have with Khanmigo, how will you avoid missteps, and how are your customers helping Instructure develop, evaluate, and guide this work?
Lufkin: There are a lot of concerns around AI and the potential for its misuse or overuse. We've seen plenty of examples as other vendors face these problems. That's why we are being very measured in our approach to rolling out AI, at the same time as we are excited to move ahead.
We have a customer advisory board that is helping us steer our decisions, and we want to hear from them as opposed to making assumptions. As we look at new and different partnerships, or at additional AI-powered features within our products, and as we look at Khanmigo and how we roll it out across our products, we are working hand-in-hand with our customers to help guide our approaches. Our partners also get the benefit of feedback about what features they should be developing, and how they should work with Instructure to develop complementary tools around AI. Again, and I've said it before, we want to make sure we are solving real problems and not just putting "gee whiz" glitzy tools out there. Our customer advisory board plays a huge role in helping us get this right.
As we look at new and different partnerships we are working hand-in-hand with our customers to help guide our approaches.
Grush: Where are we in the timeline for all this? Where can our readers get more information and maybe some good resources as all this develops?
Lufkin: We've added an AI-specific roadmap to our larger Instructure roadmap. In fact, if you search "Instructure roadmap" you will find helpful, public-facing roadmaps for all of our products.
In the AI tools category, you will see that most of the tools are in beta right now. We are pulling the test groups together. Soon, and through the end of this year you will see these tools being rolled out.
If you search for and visit the "Instructure community" online, you will see and be able to access the open community. You will also see that there are some customer-only areas. In general, we are providing access to quite a lot of resources. Within our "Canvas community" we're launching a new "brand hub" with helpful resources to keep you up to date on all things Instructure.
In terms of more upcoming resources, one of the things that we announced a couple of weeks ago that's under development is an Emerging AI Marketplace. We want to make it easier for people to understand what's available and what's new in the area of AI-powered tools. The Emerging AI Marketplace is where individual educators and administrators will look at AI-powered tools and determine what might work best for the challenges they are trying to face. The Emerging AI Marketplace is coming soon. Again, we are creating a trusted marketplace where educators will be able to find the tools they need and can trust.
We are creating a trusted marketplace where educators will be able to find the tools they need and can trust.
Grush: Is the formation of partnerships a trend that's getting stronger in the tech world?
Lufkin: Ten to fifteen years ago there was a real tendency for software vendors to create a walled garden, focusing on wallet share and the hope that customers would use their technologies to the exclusion of others. As I mentioned earlier, the fundamental principles behind Canvas were the very opposite of that. We've created an open, interoperable ecosystem of solutions, leveraging partnerships that bring in additional solutions to build an even more comprehensive ecosystem. In recent years, we have seen a shift in the market, where the level of interoperability and interaction among systems is higher than ever before. This has special implications for partnerships when we recognize that eventually we're going to be seeing technologies emerge that we haven't even thought of at this point.
Grush: Getting back to the recent announcement of Instructure's partnership with Khan Academy for Khanmigo, what do you think or hope will be the best thing that comes out of that partnership?
Lufkin: Khan Academy has done such an amazing job building Khanmigo, especially on the student side of the equation, whereas a lot of our work at Instructure has been on the educator efficiency side of it. Bringing it all together where we have both sides so strongly represented is great, and I hope we get very broad adoption of the tool.
Also, there had been a lot of trepidation initially about AI in education. There were those first, knee-jerk reactions, in some cases labeling AI tools as cheating tools and banning them across the board. But now, a few months later, we are seeing many of those bans being lifted, with a better understanding of AI. What I'm really hoping is that Khanmigo, with its ease-of-use directly within Canvas, will open the doors for broad adoption of the tool as well as for a lot more uses of AI in general, by a more confident, open, and accepting higher education community.