This summer my colleagues Eric Carlson, Ben Post and I attended InstructureCon 2024 at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. Instructure is the company that provides Canvas, NMC’s recently adopted Learning Management System that will replace Moodle completely by the fall of 2025. Over 3,000 attendees packed the Venetian Expo Hall during record high temperatures in Vegas for a fantastic event that featured close to 400 speakers and sessions designed to reach educators and technologists at all levels. 

Instructure adopted the theme of the “Ed-cological Exploration Society” and encouraged us to explore the Canvas “Ed-cosystem”. We attended a variety of sessions on topics including online, hybrid, and hyflex Canvas course design, Generative AI integration and its impact on Canvas and instruction, peer review, data analytics, engagement and interaction, upcoming Canvas features and much, much more. We also spoke with many vendors, some familiar and some new to us, to learn about additional tools available in the Canvas community. Check out the InstructureCon 2024 Highlight video.

In addition to learning more about Canvas and some of its features, I had a few big takeaways: 

1. The Canvas community is vibrant and passionate. Attendees were eager to share their excitement about the platform and the impact it has had on their institutions. 
2. Instructure moves quickly. Some of the new and upcoming features have us very excited about the insights we should be able to gather into how NMC students are interacting with technology as they learn. 
3. Vegas is hot. We experienced three consecutive days of high temps reaching 119°F. It never got cooler than 90°F the entire time we were there.

If you haven’t yet created a plan to transition from Moodle to Canvas, it’s time to start thinking about that. There’s a group of faculty participating in the Canvas pilot this fall. Anyone can use Canvas in the spring of 25, and everyone will be using Canvas by the fall of 25 when Moodle goes away completely. Reach out to any of us in Ed Tech to learn more or to get started.