InstructureCon 2018 Review

InstructureCarn, aka InstructureCon 2018, was an intense week of presentations, networking, product demos, and carnival rides. It’s difficult to cover so much in a blog post like this, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

• Dr. Chuck showed off his Tsugi framework for quickly creating LTI-compliant applications in PHP.
• Harvard showed off their LTI tool suite, including distributed grading done fairly, swipe-in seating and attendance, and facilitating student collaboration. All of this is done while storing as much of the data as possible in Canvas itself to reduce dependence on the custom applications in the future.
• Jared Stein talked about
  • a prisoner education program that uses the open source version of Canvas on a secure, offline box
  • how Red Lake Nation College uses what they call “Intrusive Advising” to ensure that students are doing their work and know what to do next.
  • new Canvas X tools like On-track Predictor, Nudge, and Developer Key Scoping
  • how Badgr is now free for every Canvas installation
• Jawahar Madineni presented Scaling Data Science at UCF: Using Data from Canvas
• Instructure showed off Analytics 2 and how it can help teachers visualize how well their students are doing.
• Jacob Collins from Northwestern University talked about how he created a suite of LTI-compliant applications using Vue.js and AWS Lambda.
• Instructure announced some new Canvas API endpoints and features, including GraphQL.
• Instructure announced a new list view for the dashboard in Canvas.
• A team of people from Instructure talked about their internal Hack Week and some of the cool projects that have come out of it.
• Mitch Benson showed off some beta features, including granular permissions, student feedback view, advanced reports, and the ability to use emoji instead of scores in the gradebook.
• Karen Tinsley-Kim and Jacob Bates teamed up with Michelle Tuten from Clemson University to cover how the Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool (or UDOIT) was developed with the help of multiple institutions and members of the Canvas Community. You can view the recording of the presentation or read the teaser post.

If you’d like to learn more, you can view the session recordings archive or the conference information page.