Video: Embracing Change
Our final, speaker for the agenda today is, a man who has real command of the stage. I'm sure a lot of you have seen it, I feel like every workshop that's been available, you've had a session, Ryan, and you've been presenting. So one of the busiest people in the team, over the past day or so. Ryan is our vice president of global academic strategy at Instructure. Also, a host of the Educast three thousand podcast, which is a really good listen for all things education technology. But I don't want to steal your thunder, Ryan, so I'll hand over to you.
And, yeah. Please welcome Ryan to the stage. Thank you. My pleasure. And I realize I am standing between you and the end of a day after a or end of the, drinks after a full day.
Hopefully, you learned a lot of information. Hopefully, you continue the conversation after this. If there's one thing I hope you take away, it's that, we at Instructure are here for you. Hopefully, you've got names. You've got contact numbers.
Add us on LinkedIn. Reach out to us on on, instant message. We will respond. And it's something culturally, we we are here for you. And so I I hope we continue the conversation after this.
But as I as I dive in, as Dan said, I work for my name is Ryan Lufkin. I'm our vice president of global academic strategy. I work for Melissa Lobel, who's our chief academic officer. And we have the, honestly honored I'm honored to have the job of being able to travel around the world and speak to schools. As Dan mentioned, I've spoken to many of you already today in a couple of different sessions.
I apologize if you've heard some of this before, but I get really excited about it. And I like to tell these stories. And so, there's also the old marketing adage. You have to hear three times something three times before it sinks in. So I will I will move through this rapidly.
But I do want I do wanna wrap up, and give you some takeaways from the day. Last year, when Melissa Lobel moved into the chief academic officer role, we sat down and said, okay. How do we not boil the ocean? How do we focus on the themes that are impacting global education and narrow that down? And we came up with what we call the impactful eight. And as a as a global company, we're really trying to focus on those challenges that we all face. And you'll recognize most of these at some point today, we've talked about.
Right? Operational efficiency and effectiveness. How to get the most out of your systems. Lifelong learning. Clearly a trend. Right? This this move towards, a full full stage of of, of learning throughout your life cycle.
First day of school, last day of work. But how do we teach, the ability to like, really make those skills sink in as opposed to rote memorization, things like that? Assessment. One of those things that's been turned on its head by generative AI, our next, aspect. And you cannot I honestly I was gonna give somebody a bell to ring every time we said generative AI, because it is, literally woven through everything we do at this point. Data decision making is incredibly important, and we have more access to data because of these tools than we've ever had before.
Pathing, tracking, and demonstrating learning. How do we make sure that we help guide students through their educational path, give them credit for what they've done, allow them to, to showcase that those skills that they've earned, that they've developed to potential employers and even other educational institutions. And I loved what Joe showed on the the, Journeys product. I think that's something that's gonna transform education and we're we're definitely moving in that direction. That goes right into education and industry partnerships.
We're seeing more and more of institutions working with employers, to train on specific skills. So how do we scale that beyond individual connections into, broad, skills taxonomies? Broad, accepted trusted frameworks that employers can look at. And then the future of learning, which is kind of a catch all bucket. And AI is the most recent innovation that's disrupted us. We're now almost two years into the the generative AI revolution, but it's only the latest.
And as we see this pace of change, I love that Anne Marie this morning called out the fact that we this is just the next thing. And it was fundamentally transformative, and the the next one may not be quite as big, but we will continue to see this disruption, these innovative technologies. These are some that are on our radar now. Right? Remember that generative AR wasn't really on our radar. But as we look at this, augmented reality, virtual reality, adaptive learning algorithms, micro learning, personalized learning, social learning, learning games and simulations.
Right? As we look at this tech generation, as we were talking in the lifelong learning session, I tell a lot of stories about my kids. I'm lucky enough that I've got a a product focus group in my family. My daughter is a sophomore at the University of Utah and uses Canvas. My son's thirteen in eighth grade and uses Canvas. So we get a lot of feedback.
Some of it solicited, some not. What we can do better. They blame me that we don't have, snow days in Utah anymore. We have distance learning days. That's personally my fault somehow.
But what's important is that I see how they're using it every day. And they're fundamentally using technology differently than we did. They have a different framework. And I talk a lot about AI and how when we when we, focus on AI, we need to make sure that we are not looking at it through our lens of experience, but through theirs. And that's something that's pretty challenging.
I'm talking about AI specifically in some of these data points, but this applies to all emerging technologies. Digital literacy and AI literacy go hand in hand. And as we talk about educators, right now what we're seeing is a a pretty serious divide. This is widely researched from earlier this year, global research. And you can see on the left, students are far more likely to be using AI tools in the classroom than educators are.
And that's widening. We see that gap widening. The first webinar, and I've I've said this a couple of times, but the first webinar I hosted after the release of of AI in January of twenty three, I had an educator say, we're going medieval on them. We're going back to pencils and paper. Every assessment, every quiz.
And I at the time, I said, that's just not right. These are not where students live. Students live on their phones. Students live with technology. So going back to analog is going in the wrong direction.
And we have this assumption that they're using it for cheating. And it's a problem. We need to address the academic integrity issues. We need to figure out new ways of assessment. How to assess skill mastery, and things like that, that can't easily be gained.
We need to teach students to use AI in pursuit of learning, not to avoid learning. And that's incredibly important. Right? Because they are using it, but they're using it for a myriad of things. Essentially, AI in many ways is replacing the the search engine. Right? These these tools are trained on millions, billions, sometimes trillions of data points.
They're incredibly smart. Zach Pendleton, who was up here earlier, our chief architect, he tells an amazing story about trying to learn Hungarian and actually starting to use, ChatGPT, or another AI tool, to learn Hungarian. And it was so much more effective than Google Translate, because it was speaking in real style language. He walked into a coffee shop, and was actually able to have a first conversation, short as it was, in in Hungarian in a way that he couldn't before. And that's one of those things that AI, that natural language, is just excels at.
But we need to look at how students are using it, and our team has done a lot of that as we look at, the different possible AI features in the product to really map to this. How are we using it? How can we save them time? How do we make it easier within Canvas to address these these same issues? What's interesting is we talk about students using it much more more deeply. But in reality, one in two students, fifty percent of students, more than fifty percent, don't feel AI ready. Either, just in general with AI skills, or in the skills they'll need for the for the workforce. And that's pretty remarkable, because they're the experts at this point.
They're the ones that are out there using it, pounding on it, and yet, they realize that they're not being given boundaries. My son, I tell this story all the time, but my son truly, truly does not understand why Grammarly is okay, but ChatGPT is not. For him, they're just two different technologies. Two different tools that help him do his homework. And if he's not given boundaries, he doesn't understand.
Juxtapose his his experience, which is, I say, have your teachers talked to you about AI? No. It's cheating. Don't use it. They don't talk about it. It's not the thing.
That's in the elementary school level, junior high school level. In college, my my daughter is experiencing much more regulation around how she uses it course by course. Good educators are calling out when to use it. Building it into their actual processes. Right? Use it to get words on paper.
Brainstorm. Use it to create a rough draft. Don't use it for anything you would would be a final input. Don't use it for, final research. Use it to identify research and then move move, into those sources.
Right? It's good at some things. It's bad at other things. But we can't assume just because we know when it's plagiarism, when it's cheating, that they know that. They fundamentally look at it differently than we do. What's interesting is students expect their universities to be teaching them about AI.
To be teaching them about the very thing that they currently know more about in most instances. That should be alarming for all of us. That should make all of us go, we need to pick up the mantle. We need to take responsibility for this. And if we're not teaching our educators about AI, if we're not increasing their usage of AI, how are we possibly expecting meeting that expectation for students? We're not.
We have the ability to do that in the near future, but we're not. And we talked a little bit earlier about how, in some cases, we think, oh, jeez. Maybe we should just focus on the five year olds. We have a chance to keep up and and and, catch them up. Twenty five year olds will just write them off.
Right? We can't do that. We've actually got to to meet these expectations for students. This one's interesting because and we were actually in a in a panel yesterday, and I asked how many of you have have, developed policies around AI usage for your institution. Over the third of schools in Europe have not developed guidelines around the use of AI. That's pretty pretty impressive that, you could go the other way and say it's impressive that sixty four percent half.
What's interesting is sixty four percent of those, if you actually look at their guidelines, they're often don't use chat GPT. Right? That's alarming in and of itself. Because this is a such a fast moving environment. I love every time I talk to Zach Pendleton, he makes me smarter about what the latest and greatest large language model that's out there is. Half the time, I don't understand what he's saying.
But he gets excited about it, and I do too. And what's impressive is these the the advances have gotten to the point where, they're reducing the amount of hallucination. The amount of, confidently correct answers. They're getting better all the time at giving us what we want, and yet we're scared of engaging with that. And we've got we've got to do better.
We've actually got to articulate to students at every level. The course level, the program level, the institution level. When is it okay to use these tools? How do we use them appropriately? And that you'll hear the term AI literacy. It's one that that we're starting to throw around out there. So you ask, what is AI literacy? There's four different pieces.
And one is the very basics. Know and understand AI. Understand that at its basics, AI is a large language model, essentially a black box, that's been trained on billions, trillions of data points. And I can ask it questions to a chat bot, and it gives me answers. Whether those answers are text, or visual, or video, but it gives me answers.
It's trying to give me what I want. But just knowing that that's possible, for a large segment of society, that's incredibly important. People that don't understand what AI is capable of, or understand what AI can do, are far more likely to take deep fake pictures seriously. To accept language and things generated by AI, because they simply don't understand that it's possible for a machine to give you something like that. You know, video games, reached a point where they were so realistic that they were keeping people out, and they had to dial it back and make them less realistic.
AI is really good at making things even more realistic. Right? Somehow, we crossed that bridge and nobody noticed. The second piece is use and apply AI. Prompt engineering. You'll hear that over and over again.
How do I actually understand how to write prompts that give me the results I want? And I love Martin's point earlier about, hello. This is Martin. Do you remember me? Right? Establishing that connection. Those little tips make you a better prompt writer. The more we work at those prompt writings, the better we get at the results that they give us.
Because we're giving it context. We're giving it more information. It's actually incredible to understand how much prompting like, how much prompt writing goes into really incredible outcomes. Sometimes we see these photos, and we think, wow. AI is incredible.
Somebody write wrote, give me a picture of a tree. Now that is a three page prompt about every detail of that tree. And that's why, you know, to get that that incredible result. That's why when people say, oh, it's gonna it's gonna take away artist jobs. No.
Artists should be looking at those tools in the same way that they look at Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator, I'm using my hands. Like Martin said, I'm using my hands to draw a picture. What a what a novel concept that we have to actually draw all those elements. This tool simply takes the words we give it and transforms those.
How amazing is that? Of course, it should work like that. I should be able to envision something and have it show up on paper. Right? It's different inputs. And that's where we need to evolve this conversation. I think the third one's incredible.
Evaluate and create an AI. And what's interesting about this is, it's evaluate the outcomes. And in a lot of cases, evaluate the accuracy and honesty of those outcomes. Right? We get a lot of of of you know, for a long time, people were freaked out about deep fake or confidently inaccurate, or making up, references. Right? And they would attribute this to some sort of malice in the machine.
And then the act the exact opposite is true. AI is trying to give you what you want. And it's trying so hard to give you what you want, sometimes it makes it up. Right? So you've got to be able to be critical of what the outputs are from AI, so that you can judge whether or not that tool is working the way you want it to. And it's not just the first time or the second time.
It's every time you generate something out of AI, you should be critical of what those outcomes are. That's why we really push human in the loop on all of the AI features in, Canvas and in our partners solutions. Humans should always have the final say in everything. Because AI is not infallible. We need to remember that.
And then the fourth is, fourth is AI ethics. And I'll tell you today, AI ethics is an evolving conversation. At the base level, it's what I said before. Students should use AI to enhance learning, not to avoid learning. That's the basic AI ethics statement for colleges and universities.
Now, we can dig into that, and there's a whole larger sense. There's a slide I like to show, I think, when we're talking about the nineteen eighties in VHS tapes. I have a slide that shows nineteen eighty two, Blade Runner. Nineteen eighty three, War Games. Nineteen eighty four, Terminator.
If you're a child of the eighties, we were conditioned to fear AI. We're scared of it. So when it got here, of course, we were scared. Shut it down. We don't want it.
It's scary. We've moved beyond that now. And there's still those larger AI ethical discussions about will they achieve sentience, which we have quantum computing. None of us in this room should be worried about that at this point. We should be worried about how do we make sure students are using these tools properly, ethically in the classroom.
And we've got to tell them. We've got to communicate that. What's interesting is we're not starting from scratch. None of you have to feel like, this is so daunting. I don't know how to teach my educators to teach with AI.
There are so many resources out there. This is just a segment from vendors like OpenAI. They have a whole website on teaching with AI. Great information. MIT.
MIT is interesting, because MIT said, you know what? We're not gonna create a policy to govern AI usage, because we're so worried we might stifle some kind of innovation. No guardrails. That was at least six months ago. I checked in that was still the case. We'll see if it's still the case in the future.
But they've aired on that side. But they are focusing on how do we actually teach with that? How do we embed this in the courses? Michigan's done some great stuff. I told a story yesterday, about some unintended consequences. Michigan actually stood up their own chat g p t version. They called it Maisie.
She has an avatar. She's amazing. And what was interesting is, they said, look. This is a safe version. It doesn't ingest any student data.
It is, it is what we should all use. Don't use the public facing versions. And students said, we don't trust you. We think you're tracking all of our inputs and outputs. We don't trust you.
And they were truly gobsmacked. They did not think they would have gotten that result. But it's one of those unintended human consequences of this experimentation that we're going through. But they offer some great tools. There's also a free course for k twelve educators on how to use AI in in, the classroom as well.
Oxford has done amazing work on this. We've had a couple of folks from there, actually present on this and show their tools. The University of Sydney, RMIT has some as well. These are just a sampling of what's out there. Nobody is starting from scratch.
And so as we stand up here, and we talk about this, and it feels daunting, don't let it. We're researching it. We're trying to understand it better. We're trying to embed these tools better. We uncover new use cases all the time.
This is early. The flip side of that too is that, on November thirtieth of twenty twenty, too, this launched. And we all started at the same spot. It was one of those truly remarkable events in history, where globally, we all started at the same starting point. The haves and have nots.
We all started there. So when people say, oh, we've missed the boat. We're too far behind. You're not. Where you have I was in the Philippines, and I was saying, look.
You have every chance to be a pioneer. You have every chance to be leading this conversation, not just in the Philippines, not just in Manila, but across the globe. You can be that if you put your mind to it. If you decide to engage with it. But fear is keeping us back from that.
Our own perspective on how we approach education, how we approach teaching, is is keeping us from actually moving forward with this. Even though, essentially, we started on the same playing field. And even though it advances so rapidly, you can catch up very quickly. If you plug into the right information, do the research, this is all possible. So I said I'd I'd go through this quickly, and I want to leave you with one quote.
And I think it's, incredibly important. Because it if you leave today and you have one perspective change, I hope it's this. Teachers should prepare the students for the students future, not for the teachers past. And I love that because it makes you actually step back from your own perspective a little bit, and say, yeah. If we're going medieval on them, back to paper and pencil, what does that do for a student? I know my own kids handwriting is terrible because they do everything with their thumbs.
Right? We need to make sure that we're meeting them where they are. We need to make sure that we're teaching them for their future and not be held back by our own pasts. And most of us are. We we have our own biases. We have our own hang ups, but we need to actually lean into this new technology.
Lean into this evolving lifelong learning concept. And it's exciting. I actually get so excited about the future. I think there's a lot of doom and gloom out there. I get so excited about talking to you all about it.
It's it's truly the most impactful time in the history of education, going back to the printing press. I mean, do you think of another a more transformative time? And we get to be part of it. We get to shape it. We get to build it. That's incredible.
And we should all feel that freedom, that excitement, because we're all in it together. And that's why bringing these communities together, having these conversations is so incredible, is so amazing. Every time I leave here, I tell a story I I hear in Barcelona the next time I'm in Manila, or next time I'm in Santiago, Chile. Right? We're doing this together, and we're all sharing information. We're part of a collective that is truly incredible.
So, I'll leave you with that. But I do wanna, again, plug the podcast, because these conversations we're having today, Joanna has been on the podcast. Martin's been on the podcast. We bring the smartest people in our world. The people with fresh perspectives onto the podcast.
And it's the best way that we can continue this conversation beyond these these events. So thank you all so much for having us. Thank you for hosting us. It's been an incredible event. I appreciate it.
Have a good day. Okay. I am actually officially the last person now standing between you and the drinks and and the canopies. And by way of show of hands this morning, I think probably some bad decisions potentially based on, last night's showing. Thanks, Ryan, for the presentation.
I'm trying not to take it personally that I haven't been on the conference, and you said the best and brightest brains have been on. But, nonetheless, maybe I'll bug you a bit later on. So before we wrap up, has anyone got any golden pandas near them? Has anyone want Yeah? Come on. Yes. Absolutely.
That's the energy we want. So I've been told that there are at least a hundred and seventy people that are currently on the scavenger hunt and are one QR code away. So I feel out of health and safety, I shouldn't maybe dramatize it too much. I can see a stampede for that genius bar, but I think we still have a few more golden pandas. So for those of you who have engaged with that scavenger hunt, thank you.
It's been really good to, see our technology in action and support just a fun and innovative way that complements some of the content that we've gone through today. So a big day. Right? Lots of content, lots of thoughts to reflect upon, lots of ideas for us to digest as we go away from the from the conference today. In my opening remarks, I mentioned we had an event last year both in Amsterdam and in Liverpool, and I remember standing on the stage at both of those events and signalling this growth that we see from this community, the excitement we have around running a regular cadence for these style of events. And thanks to all of you, we absolutely have seen this event this year grow at a rate that pretty much has grown across every facet that we can possibly measure.
We have had a pre conference event this year, which I will say did result in some sore heads this morning, and I may or may not be talking about myself. But we also delivered some really great networking and opportunities for collaboration there. We saw nearly thirty sessions this year compared to seventeen last year. Over four hundred delegates, which was nearly double the amount of delegates that we had last year, and the number of partners has more than doubled, as part of the content. So whilst those numbers are impressive, they look really good on a slide deck, and I'm hoping some of my bosses are watching this stuff that will make me look good.
I think what I'm always reminded of when I come to events like this is just how fortunate we are to have you, our customers. You are sharing your passion for education, for student success, and anyone that's ever new to in education in this space, I think they are blown away at the genuine connection and passion that we all have for the work that we do. And for that, I wanna say humbly, thank you. It makes our our jobs, our lives that much more enjoyable for the work that you do. Thank you for your continued efforts in making students learn as successful.
Thank you to our speakers, all of you for collaborating in the discussions that we've had. There's been a a really rich dialogue that I think we've all been a part of. Can we also just say a huge thank you to my marketing team led by Ed Bray. So Natalie, Ed, Lee who's on maternity leave, Sarah, Georgina, Jackie who's flown in from North America. Just a really, really wonderful team.
They've put on a fantastic event, so so thank you. And also, for those of you who have had an opportunity to engage with our executive team, obviously, a fantastic chance to to just see a more global perspective of our business, which is great. So speaking of passion, we're incredibly passionate about our mission. Right? Three components that I think are really important. Elevating student success, amplifying the power of teaching, and inspiring everyone to learn together.
And hopefully, what you've seen over the course of the presentations, and particularly, I think this last chunk where you've seen some product stuff and thought leadership, is how those themes that we mentioned earlier can intersect. Right? I hope that you can go away today feeling a little more knowledgeable, right, a little more excited about what we're doing in this technology, what we're doing for the future, and how lifelong learning, how the use of AI, and how student success really do form a a core goal, a four a core tenant, sorry, of our ecosystem that we kicked off, with the theme. On those items, you know, lifelong learning, artificial intelligence, student success. I think about doctor Amaphidon this morning talking about how do we inspire those five year olds? How do we create a thirst for learning? Because that's really what we're doing with lifelong learning. We want learning to be something that isn't just picked up and you know, forgotten about once we get into our careers.
That's really resonated with me and something I'll take away. I think about Ryan and and Zac Sessions about artificial intelligence, how our our teams on the product side and the strategy side are thinking about how that technology is going to start playing a role in our jobs. And hopefully, as you can start to see that augmenting into our road map and some of the processes that you're a part of. And then on student success, I'm not sure I could find a better story than Johanna's. I think seeing inspirational people like Johanna, the way that she's combated and overcome the hurdles that had she has had in her life, that's what student success can do.
Right? Ultimately, it can lead us to a more equitable, a more accessible world for us to live in, and I think that's a really powerful message. Speaking of powerful messages, speaking of ecosystems, I talked about this morning how an ecosystem needs to adapt, needs to evolve. And just like an ecosystem, my team, the wider instructor team, we also need to evolve. And for us, this is a vision that we are really working towards in terms of our technology. We want to create a powerful educational ecosystem that's powering learning for a lifetime and most importantly, creates opportunity for everyone.
And ultimately, I think that's that's the goal of education. Right? We can't do it alone though. We really can't. And again, like an ecosystem, we need a symbiotic relationship with partners. We can't solve all of the educational problems that are out there.
So again, thank you to our partners for being a big part of the, the conference today. AWS, FeedbackFruits, a lot of the individuals and companies that you've seen up on the stage today, are a huge part of our strategy in delivering against, you know, our wider mission and making sure that our end users have a really powerful way to to address and and achieve the educational outcomes that we all want. Before I let you go, we don't have an announcement just yet for next year's Canvas Con, but specifically because we had such a good showing at Vegas for InstructureCon. Anyone in the room? Show of hands. Did anyone make it out to Vegas? Martin, yeah.
I mean, you were there. You're a key component. Yes. Absolutely. Just a wonderful, wonderful time and there were stories that during the, some of the keynote sessions, the England Netherlands World Cup game might have gone on and we might have snuck off and had a drink and watched that game.
But nonetheless, there was some really good content, and I would encourage you next year to definitely come along and go to the InstructureCon event. But you've done a wonderful job of listening to me at the end of the conference. Thank you again for all of your attention, your engagement, your collaboration. On the way out, please do head towards the Genius Bar. We're gonna have some swag bags out there so you can get even more collateral, even more things to remind you of the event. And whilst you're all doing that, I'm gonna try and get my hands on one of those golden pandas. So thank you.
And, yeah. Please welcome Ryan to the stage. Thank you. My pleasure. And I realize I am standing between you and the end of a day after a or end of the, drinks after a full day.
Hopefully, you learned a lot of information. Hopefully, you continue the conversation after this. If there's one thing I hope you take away, it's that, we at Instructure are here for you. Hopefully, you've got names. You've got contact numbers.
Add us on LinkedIn. Reach out to us on on, instant message. We will respond. And it's something culturally, we we are here for you. And so I I hope we continue the conversation after this.
But as I as I dive in, as Dan said, I work for my name is Ryan Lufkin. I'm our vice president of global academic strategy. I work for Melissa Lobel, who's our chief academic officer. And we have the, honestly honored I'm honored to have the job of being able to travel around the world and speak to schools. As Dan mentioned, I've spoken to many of you already today in a couple of different sessions.
I apologize if you've heard some of this before, but I get really excited about it. And I like to tell these stories. And so, there's also the old marketing adage. You have to hear three times something three times before it sinks in. So I will I will move through this rapidly.
But I do want I do wanna wrap up, and give you some takeaways from the day. Last year, when Melissa Lobel moved into the chief academic officer role, we sat down and said, okay. How do we not boil the ocean? How do we focus on the themes that are impacting global education and narrow that down? And we came up with what we call the impactful eight. And as a as a global company, we're really trying to focus on those challenges that we all face. And you'll recognize most of these at some point today, we've talked about.
Right? Operational efficiency and effectiveness. How to get the most out of your systems. Lifelong learning. Clearly a trend. Right? This this move towards, a full full stage of of, of learning throughout your life cycle.
First day of school, last day of work. But how do we teach, the ability to like, really make those skills sink in as opposed to rote memorization, things like that? Assessment. One of those things that's been turned on its head by generative AI, our next, aspect. And you cannot I honestly I was gonna give somebody a bell to ring every time we said generative AI, because it is, literally woven through everything we do at this point. Data decision making is incredibly important, and we have more access to data because of these tools than we've ever had before.
Pathing, tracking, and demonstrating learning. How do we make sure that we help guide students through their educational path, give them credit for what they've done, allow them to, to showcase that those skills that they've earned, that they've developed to potential employers and even other educational institutions. And I loved what Joe showed on the the, Journeys product. I think that's something that's gonna transform education and we're we're definitely moving in that direction. That goes right into education and industry partnerships.
We're seeing more and more of institutions working with employers, to train on specific skills. So how do we scale that beyond individual connections into, broad, skills taxonomies? Broad, accepted trusted frameworks that employers can look at. And then the future of learning, which is kind of a catch all bucket. And AI is the most recent innovation that's disrupted us. We're now almost two years into the the generative AI revolution, but it's only the latest.
And as we see this pace of change, I love that Anne Marie this morning called out the fact that we this is just the next thing. And it was fundamentally transformative, and the the next one may not be quite as big, but we will continue to see this disruption, these innovative technologies. These are some that are on our radar now. Right? Remember that generative AR wasn't really on our radar. But as we look at this, augmented reality, virtual reality, adaptive learning algorithms, micro learning, personalized learning, social learning, learning games and simulations.
Right? As we look at this tech generation, as we were talking in the lifelong learning session, I tell a lot of stories about my kids. I'm lucky enough that I've got a a product focus group in my family. My daughter is a sophomore at the University of Utah and uses Canvas. My son's thirteen in eighth grade and uses Canvas. So we get a lot of feedback.
Some of it solicited, some not. What we can do better. They blame me that we don't have, snow days in Utah anymore. We have distance learning days. That's personally my fault somehow.
But what's important is that I see how they're using it every day. And they're fundamentally using technology differently than we did. They have a different framework. And I talk a lot about AI and how when we when we, focus on AI, we need to make sure that we are not looking at it through our lens of experience, but through theirs. And that's something that's pretty challenging.
I'm talking about AI specifically in some of these data points, but this applies to all emerging technologies. Digital literacy and AI literacy go hand in hand. And as we talk about educators, right now what we're seeing is a a pretty serious divide. This is widely researched from earlier this year, global research. And you can see on the left, students are far more likely to be using AI tools in the classroom than educators are.
And that's widening. We see that gap widening. The first webinar, and I've I've said this a couple of times, but the first webinar I hosted after the release of of AI in January of twenty three, I had an educator say, we're going medieval on them. We're going back to pencils and paper. Every assessment, every quiz.
And I at the time, I said, that's just not right. These are not where students live. Students live on their phones. Students live with technology. So going back to analog is going in the wrong direction.
And we have this assumption that they're using it for cheating. And it's a problem. We need to address the academic integrity issues. We need to figure out new ways of assessment. How to assess skill mastery, and things like that, that can't easily be gained.
We need to teach students to use AI in pursuit of learning, not to avoid learning. And that's incredibly important. Right? Because they are using it, but they're using it for a myriad of things. Essentially, AI in many ways is replacing the the search engine. Right? These these tools are trained on millions, billions, sometimes trillions of data points.
They're incredibly smart. Zach Pendleton, who was up here earlier, our chief architect, he tells an amazing story about trying to learn Hungarian and actually starting to use, ChatGPT, or another AI tool, to learn Hungarian. And it was so much more effective than Google Translate, because it was speaking in real style language. He walked into a coffee shop, and was actually able to have a first conversation, short as it was, in in Hungarian in a way that he couldn't before. And that's one of those things that AI, that natural language, is just excels at.
But we need to look at how students are using it, and our team has done a lot of that as we look at, the different possible AI features in the product to really map to this. How are we using it? How can we save them time? How do we make it easier within Canvas to address these these same issues? What's interesting is we talk about students using it much more more deeply. But in reality, one in two students, fifty percent of students, more than fifty percent, don't feel AI ready. Either, just in general with AI skills, or in the skills they'll need for the for the workforce. And that's pretty remarkable, because they're the experts at this point.
They're the ones that are out there using it, pounding on it, and yet, they realize that they're not being given boundaries. My son, I tell this story all the time, but my son truly, truly does not understand why Grammarly is okay, but ChatGPT is not. For him, they're just two different technologies. Two different tools that help him do his homework. And if he's not given boundaries, he doesn't understand.
Juxtapose his his experience, which is, I say, have your teachers talked to you about AI? No. It's cheating. Don't use it. They don't talk about it. It's not the thing.
That's in the elementary school level, junior high school level. In college, my my daughter is experiencing much more regulation around how she uses it course by course. Good educators are calling out when to use it. Building it into their actual processes. Right? Use it to get words on paper.
Brainstorm. Use it to create a rough draft. Don't use it for anything you would would be a final input. Don't use it for, final research. Use it to identify research and then move move, into those sources.
Right? It's good at some things. It's bad at other things. But we can't assume just because we know when it's plagiarism, when it's cheating, that they know that. They fundamentally look at it differently than we do. What's interesting is students expect their universities to be teaching them about AI.
To be teaching them about the very thing that they currently know more about in most instances. That should be alarming for all of us. That should make all of us go, we need to pick up the mantle. We need to take responsibility for this. And if we're not teaching our educators about AI, if we're not increasing their usage of AI, how are we possibly expecting meeting that expectation for students? We're not.
We have the ability to do that in the near future, but we're not. And we talked a little bit earlier about how, in some cases, we think, oh, jeez. Maybe we should just focus on the five year olds. We have a chance to keep up and and and, catch them up. Twenty five year olds will just write them off.
Right? We can't do that. We've actually got to to meet these expectations for students. This one's interesting because and we were actually in a in a panel yesterday, and I asked how many of you have have, developed policies around AI usage for your institution. Over the third of schools in Europe have not developed guidelines around the use of AI. That's pretty pretty impressive that, you could go the other way and say it's impressive that sixty four percent half.
What's interesting is sixty four percent of those, if you actually look at their guidelines, they're often don't use chat GPT. Right? That's alarming in and of itself. Because this is a such a fast moving environment. I love every time I talk to Zach Pendleton, he makes me smarter about what the latest and greatest large language model that's out there is. Half the time, I don't understand what he's saying.
But he gets excited about it, and I do too. And what's impressive is these the the advances have gotten to the point where, they're reducing the amount of hallucination. The amount of, confidently correct answers. They're getting better all the time at giving us what we want, and yet we're scared of engaging with that. And we've got we've got to do better.
We've actually got to articulate to students at every level. The course level, the program level, the institution level. When is it okay to use these tools? How do we use them appropriately? And that you'll hear the term AI literacy. It's one that that we're starting to throw around out there. So you ask, what is AI literacy? There's four different pieces.
And one is the very basics. Know and understand AI. Understand that at its basics, AI is a large language model, essentially a black box, that's been trained on billions, trillions of data points. And I can ask it questions to a chat bot, and it gives me answers. Whether those answers are text, or visual, or video, but it gives me answers.
It's trying to give me what I want. But just knowing that that's possible, for a large segment of society, that's incredibly important. People that don't understand what AI is capable of, or understand what AI can do, are far more likely to take deep fake pictures seriously. To accept language and things generated by AI, because they simply don't understand that it's possible for a machine to give you something like that. You know, video games, reached a point where they were so realistic that they were keeping people out, and they had to dial it back and make them less realistic.
AI is really good at making things even more realistic. Right? Somehow, we crossed that bridge and nobody noticed. The second piece is use and apply AI. Prompt engineering. You'll hear that over and over again.
How do I actually understand how to write prompts that give me the results I want? And I love Martin's point earlier about, hello. This is Martin. Do you remember me? Right? Establishing that connection. Those little tips make you a better prompt writer. The more we work at those prompt writings, the better we get at the results that they give us.
Because we're giving it context. We're giving it more information. It's actually incredible to understand how much prompting like, how much prompt writing goes into really incredible outcomes. Sometimes we see these photos, and we think, wow. AI is incredible.
Somebody write wrote, give me a picture of a tree. Now that is a three page prompt about every detail of that tree. And that's why, you know, to get that that incredible result. That's why when people say, oh, it's gonna it's gonna take away artist jobs. No.
Artists should be looking at those tools in the same way that they look at Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator, I'm using my hands. Like Martin said, I'm using my hands to draw a picture. What a what a novel concept that we have to actually draw all those elements. This tool simply takes the words we give it and transforms those.
How amazing is that? Of course, it should work like that. I should be able to envision something and have it show up on paper. Right? It's different inputs. And that's where we need to evolve this conversation. I think the third one's incredible.
Evaluate and create an AI. And what's interesting about this is, it's evaluate the outcomes. And in a lot of cases, evaluate the accuracy and honesty of those outcomes. Right? We get a lot of of of you know, for a long time, people were freaked out about deep fake or confidently inaccurate, or making up, references. Right? And they would attribute this to some sort of malice in the machine.
And then the act the exact opposite is true. AI is trying to give you what you want. And it's trying so hard to give you what you want, sometimes it makes it up. Right? So you've got to be able to be critical of what the outputs are from AI, so that you can judge whether or not that tool is working the way you want it to. And it's not just the first time or the second time.
It's every time you generate something out of AI, you should be critical of what those outcomes are. That's why we really push human in the loop on all of the AI features in, Canvas and in our partners solutions. Humans should always have the final say in everything. Because AI is not infallible. We need to remember that.
And then the fourth is, fourth is AI ethics. And I'll tell you today, AI ethics is an evolving conversation. At the base level, it's what I said before. Students should use AI to enhance learning, not to avoid learning. That's the basic AI ethics statement for colleges and universities.
Now, we can dig into that, and there's a whole larger sense. There's a slide I like to show, I think, when we're talking about the nineteen eighties in VHS tapes. I have a slide that shows nineteen eighty two, Blade Runner. Nineteen eighty three, War Games. Nineteen eighty four, Terminator.
If you're a child of the eighties, we were conditioned to fear AI. We're scared of it. So when it got here, of course, we were scared. Shut it down. We don't want it.
It's scary. We've moved beyond that now. And there's still those larger AI ethical discussions about will they achieve sentience, which we have quantum computing. None of us in this room should be worried about that at this point. We should be worried about how do we make sure students are using these tools properly, ethically in the classroom.
And we've got to tell them. We've got to communicate that. What's interesting is we're not starting from scratch. None of you have to feel like, this is so daunting. I don't know how to teach my educators to teach with AI.
There are so many resources out there. This is just a segment from vendors like OpenAI. They have a whole website on teaching with AI. Great information. MIT.
MIT is interesting, because MIT said, you know what? We're not gonna create a policy to govern AI usage, because we're so worried we might stifle some kind of innovation. No guardrails. That was at least six months ago. I checked in that was still the case. We'll see if it's still the case in the future.
But they've aired on that side. But they are focusing on how do we actually teach with that? How do we embed this in the courses? Michigan's done some great stuff. I told a story yesterday, about some unintended consequences. Michigan actually stood up their own chat g p t version. They called it Maisie.
She has an avatar. She's amazing. And what was interesting is, they said, look. This is a safe version. It doesn't ingest any student data.
It is, it is what we should all use. Don't use the public facing versions. And students said, we don't trust you. We think you're tracking all of our inputs and outputs. We don't trust you.
And they were truly gobsmacked. They did not think they would have gotten that result. But it's one of those unintended human consequences of this experimentation that we're going through. But they offer some great tools. There's also a free course for k twelve educators on how to use AI in in, the classroom as well.
Oxford has done amazing work on this. We've had a couple of folks from there, actually present on this and show their tools. The University of Sydney, RMIT has some as well. These are just a sampling of what's out there. Nobody is starting from scratch.
And so as we stand up here, and we talk about this, and it feels daunting, don't let it. We're researching it. We're trying to understand it better. We're trying to embed these tools better. We uncover new use cases all the time.
This is early. The flip side of that too is that, on November thirtieth of twenty twenty, too, this launched. And we all started at the same spot. It was one of those truly remarkable events in history, where globally, we all started at the same starting point. The haves and have nots.
We all started there. So when people say, oh, we've missed the boat. We're too far behind. You're not. Where you have I was in the Philippines, and I was saying, look.
You have every chance to be a pioneer. You have every chance to be leading this conversation, not just in the Philippines, not just in Manila, but across the globe. You can be that if you put your mind to it. If you decide to engage with it. But fear is keeping us back from that.
Our own perspective on how we approach education, how we approach teaching, is is keeping us from actually moving forward with this. Even though, essentially, we started on the same playing field. And even though it advances so rapidly, you can catch up very quickly. If you plug into the right information, do the research, this is all possible. So I said I'd I'd go through this quickly, and I want to leave you with one quote.
And I think it's, incredibly important. Because it if you leave today and you have one perspective change, I hope it's this. Teachers should prepare the students for the students future, not for the teachers past. And I love that because it makes you actually step back from your own perspective a little bit, and say, yeah. If we're going medieval on them, back to paper and pencil, what does that do for a student? I know my own kids handwriting is terrible because they do everything with their thumbs.
Right? We need to make sure that we're meeting them where they are. We need to make sure that we're teaching them for their future and not be held back by our own pasts. And most of us are. We we have our own biases. We have our own hang ups, but we need to actually lean into this new technology.
Lean into this evolving lifelong learning concept. And it's exciting. I actually get so excited about the future. I think there's a lot of doom and gloom out there. I get so excited about talking to you all about it.
It's it's truly the most impactful time in the history of education, going back to the printing press. I mean, do you think of another a more transformative time? And we get to be part of it. We get to shape it. We get to build it. That's incredible.
And we should all feel that freedom, that excitement, because we're all in it together. And that's why bringing these communities together, having these conversations is so incredible, is so amazing. Every time I leave here, I tell a story I I hear in Barcelona the next time I'm in Manila, or next time I'm in Santiago, Chile. Right? We're doing this together, and we're all sharing information. We're part of a collective that is truly incredible.
So, I'll leave you with that. But I do wanna, again, plug the podcast, because these conversations we're having today, Joanna has been on the podcast. Martin's been on the podcast. We bring the smartest people in our world. The people with fresh perspectives onto the podcast.
And it's the best way that we can continue this conversation beyond these these events. So thank you all so much for having us. Thank you for hosting us. It's been an incredible event. I appreciate it.
Have a good day. Okay. I am actually officially the last person now standing between you and the drinks and and the canopies. And by way of show of hands this morning, I think probably some bad decisions potentially based on, last night's showing. Thanks, Ryan, for the presentation.
I'm trying not to take it personally that I haven't been on the conference, and you said the best and brightest brains have been on. But, nonetheless, maybe I'll bug you a bit later on. So before we wrap up, has anyone got any golden pandas near them? Has anyone want Yeah? Come on. Yes. Absolutely.
That's the energy we want. So I've been told that there are at least a hundred and seventy people that are currently on the scavenger hunt and are one QR code away. So I feel out of health and safety, I shouldn't maybe dramatize it too much. I can see a stampede for that genius bar, but I think we still have a few more golden pandas. So for those of you who have engaged with that scavenger hunt, thank you.
It's been really good to, see our technology in action and support just a fun and innovative way that complements some of the content that we've gone through today. So a big day. Right? Lots of content, lots of thoughts to reflect upon, lots of ideas for us to digest as we go away from the from the conference today. In my opening remarks, I mentioned we had an event last year both in Amsterdam and in Liverpool, and I remember standing on the stage at both of those events and signalling this growth that we see from this community, the excitement we have around running a regular cadence for these style of events. And thanks to all of you, we absolutely have seen this event this year grow at a rate that pretty much has grown across every facet that we can possibly measure.
We have had a pre conference event this year, which I will say did result in some sore heads this morning, and I may or may not be talking about myself. But we also delivered some really great networking and opportunities for collaboration there. We saw nearly thirty sessions this year compared to seventeen last year. Over four hundred delegates, which was nearly double the amount of delegates that we had last year, and the number of partners has more than doubled, as part of the content. So whilst those numbers are impressive, they look really good on a slide deck, and I'm hoping some of my bosses are watching this stuff that will make me look good.
I think what I'm always reminded of when I come to events like this is just how fortunate we are to have you, our customers. You are sharing your passion for education, for student success, and anyone that's ever new to in education in this space, I think they are blown away at the genuine connection and passion that we all have for the work that we do. And for that, I wanna say humbly, thank you. It makes our our jobs, our lives that much more enjoyable for the work that you do. Thank you for your continued efforts in making students learn as successful.
Thank you to our speakers, all of you for collaborating in the discussions that we've had. There's been a a really rich dialogue that I think we've all been a part of. Can we also just say a huge thank you to my marketing team led by Ed Bray. So Natalie, Ed, Lee who's on maternity leave, Sarah, Georgina, Jackie who's flown in from North America. Just a really, really wonderful team.
They've put on a fantastic event, so so thank you. And also, for those of you who have had an opportunity to engage with our executive team, obviously, a fantastic chance to to just see a more global perspective of our business, which is great. So speaking of passion, we're incredibly passionate about our mission. Right? Three components that I think are really important. Elevating student success, amplifying the power of teaching, and inspiring everyone to learn together.
And hopefully, what you've seen over the course of the presentations, and particularly, I think this last chunk where you've seen some product stuff and thought leadership, is how those themes that we mentioned earlier can intersect. Right? I hope that you can go away today feeling a little more knowledgeable, right, a little more excited about what we're doing in this technology, what we're doing for the future, and how lifelong learning, how the use of AI, and how student success really do form a a core goal, a four a core tenant, sorry, of our ecosystem that we kicked off, with the theme. On those items, you know, lifelong learning, artificial intelligence, student success. I think about doctor Amaphidon this morning talking about how do we inspire those five year olds? How do we create a thirst for learning? Because that's really what we're doing with lifelong learning. We want learning to be something that isn't just picked up and you know, forgotten about once we get into our careers.
That's really resonated with me and something I'll take away. I think about Ryan and and Zac Sessions about artificial intelligence, how our our teams on the product side and the strategy side are thinking about how that technology is going to start playing a role in our jobs. And hopefully, as you can start to see that augmenting into our road map and some of the processes that you're a part of. And then on student success, I'm not sure I could find a better story than Johanna's. I think seeing inspirational people like Johanna, the way that she's combated and overcome the hurdles that had she has had in her life, that's what student success can do.
Right? Ultimately, it can lead us to a more equitable, a more accessible world for us to live in, and I think that's a really powerful message. Speaking of powerful messages, speaking of ecosystems, I talked about this morning how an ecosystem needs to adapt, needs to evolve. And just like an ecosystem, my team, the wider instructor team, we also need to evolve. And for us, this is a vision that we are really working towards in terms of our technology. We want to create a powerful educational ecosystem that's powering learning for a lifetime and most importantly, creates opportunity for everyone.
And ultimately, I think that's that's the goal of education. Right? We can't do it alone though. We really can't. And again, like an ecosystem, we need a symbiotic relationship with partners. We can't solve all of the educational problems that are out there.
So again, thank you to our partners for being a big part of the, the conference today. AWS, FeedbackFruits, a lot of the individuals and companies that you've seen up on the stage today, are a huge part of our strategy in delivering against, you know, our wider mission and making sure that our end users have a really powerful way to to address and and achieve the educational outcomes that we all want. Before I let you go, we don't have an announcement just yet for next year's Canvas Con, but specifically because we had such a good showing at Vegas for InstructureCon. Anyone in the room? Show of hands. Did anyone make it out to Vegas? Martin, yeah.
I mean, you were there. You're a key component. Yes. Absolutely. Just a wonderful, wonderful time and there were stories that during the, some of the keynote sessions, the England Netherlands World Cup game might have gone on and we might have snuck off and had a drink and watched that game.
But nonetheless, there was some really good content, and I would encourage you next year to definitely come along and go to the InstructureCon event. But you've done a wonderful job of listening to me at the end of the conference. Thank you again for all of your attention, your engagement, your collaboration. On the way out, please do head towards the Genius Bar. We're gonna have some swag bags out there so you can get even more collateral, even more things to remind you of the event. And whilst you're all doing that, I'm gonna try and get my hands on one of those golden pandas. So thank you.