I’m not sure which is more surprising – Instructure’s continued growth with no major hiccups or their competitors’ inability after a half-decade to understand and accept what is at its core a very simple strategy. Despite Canvas LMS winning far more new higher ed and K-12 customers than any other vendor, I still hear competitors claim that schools […]
Jared Stein
Vendors as Traditional Revolutionaries
In a post titled “The LMS for Traditional Revolutionaries,” Instructure’s VP of Research and Education for Canvas Jared Stein responded to my LMS rant with some numbers and some thoughts about the role of the vendor in encouraging progressive teaching practices. First, the numbers on the use of open education features in Canvas: 3.8% of […]
Instructure’s CTO Joel Dehlin Abruptly Resigns
One week after the conclusion of Instructure’s Users’ Conference, CTO Joel Dehlin abruptly resigned from the company for a new job. Joel took the CTO job with Instructure in summer 2013, around the same time as Devlin Daley’s departure (Devlin was co-founder). Joel’s resignation comes as a surprise, especially given his prominent placement as the technology lead for […]
InstructureCon: Canvas LMS has different competition now
For the first few years of the Canvas LMS, Instructure’s core message was ‘Canvas is better than Blackboard’. This positioning was thinly veiled in the company’s 2011 spoof of the Apple / 1984 commercial and even hitting the level of gloating in a company blog commenting on Blackboard’s strategy reversal in 2012. Instructure made their name by being […]
ITOE: Motivations for Open Education
Well, it’s only the second week of class, and I’m already turning an assignment in late. (It was due yesterday.) I can’t even argue (plausibly, anyway) that the dog ate my blog post. So much for iron self-discipline. At any rate, here is this week’s assignment: Carefully review at least 20 pages describing motivations for […]