Comments on: Instructure: we know. we learn.

By: Dawn Worley

Dawn Worley — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:04:58 +0000

George, thank you for sharing information this LMS system. As an educator, I presently work with Moodle 2.1 and appreciate the ease of use that it provides for my students. I viewed the basic information on the Instructure Canvas and am curious about the time saving options this LMS provides. The ability to send Facebook messages and text messages is also appealing as our students spend the majority of their time on their cell phones. Since you have used Instructure, would you be willing to share your experiences with the Speed Grader feature?

By: Jared Stein

Jared Stein — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:05:13 +0000

Hi all,

I work for Instructure and want to clarify that we do have some ed folks and instuctional designers on staff (myself, for example!). We do explicitly frame ourselves as a technology company first and foremost, but–at least from my perspective–we also recognize and value ed tech research and theory, and the influence it can have to positively shape our tools.

By: gsiemens

gsiemens — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:33:43 +0000

@Curt – thanks for your comments and for your active blogging about your mooc experience with Blackboard. I had a great time at DAU conf.

In terms of instructure – I agree that the educational/learning theory is not explicit in their tools. I’d go further and say that many edtech startups have essentially turned their back, more more accurately, don’t know it exists, on established research in learning. it’s a bit of a step back…

Hope you’re doing well, Curt!

By: Guillaume

Guillaume — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 19:33:11 +0000

Thank you Georges for your article, I am also going to explore the potential of this platform

By: Curt Bonk

Curt Bonk — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:36:41 +0000

A sat in demo of Canvas two weeks ago on another campus in the Big 10. I am trying to avoid naming names here since this is a public post. But the demo came from someone high up i the company (again, I am avoiding naming names…but he was about as high up as they get). It was a highly impressive demo. However, when people in the room asked him questions related to human learning, there was a lull. When asked how many of the people at Instructure (which has apparently quickly grown from 18 employees to 130 or so employees) were instructional designers, learning people, or educators, the answer was none…but that the computer programmers at Instructure were now becomming interested in instructional design and learning theory and were picking all that up on the side as they built Canvas. I have no real problem with that, though it does validate your pt that young start-up companies tend to be naive and think that they know the solutions that we need.

Glad to see John Baker is supporting your programming needs. I like John a lot and I respect what he has done at Desire2Learn. Good luck George.

Oh, and I should say great slide deck for your Saskatoon talk the other day. Impressive talk George. Learned a lot as always. Thanks. I heard you knocked em dead at the Defense Acquisition U (DAU) conference as well. Chris St. John is trying to get me to make a return visit next year but I will be on sabbatical.