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Six Ways to Grow with the Instructure Community

Eli Johnson

Six ways to find, offer up, and create solutions

Teaching with and administering an LMS can feel like you're finding solutions alone... until you realize millions of others are solving the exact same ones!

One educator solves a problem and creates shared knowledge for millions. In the Instructure Community, our customers connect and solve in the open, while we listen and grow alongside them. Together, we solve today’s problems and help shape tomorrow. Here’s a look at six ways you can get involved.

01 Ask and discover

The Community helps you realize that not always knowing the answer is okay because you're learning how you can better solve problems together as a group" - Theresa Cullen, Eastern New Mexico University

Ever ask a question and wonder how many others need the same answer? In the Community, your questions and answers become resources for a global network. Every building-block question and late-night troubleshooting moment contributed to the 20 million unique visitors to the Community in 2025.

For IT teams, that translates to far fewer help requests during onboarding, LMS migration, and beyond. And for educators and administrators, it means pro tips at your fingertips, whether you’re using Canvas, Mastery, LearnPlatform, Parchment, or Canvas Career.

02 A global staff room

"The number of different groups in the Community and the number of users willing to help each other are two reasons that I've been going to the Instructure Community for ten years now." - Chris Casey, University of Michigan-Dearborn

If you’re asking it, chances are someone else has lived it. The Community makes shared challenges visible, so a K–12 district in Ohio ends up helping a university in Australia solve the same problem. Talk about a global network!

3 in 4 questions are answered by someone who's been exactly where you are.

Because a high percentage of answers come directly from peers, you get documentation plus change management strategies or pedagogical wins from someone who’s been in your shoes. Whether you’re a 6th-grade teacher, a Chief Technology Officer, an HR lead at a business, an adjunct professor, or a Canvas administrator, the Community is made for you to share your ideas, problems, pro tips, and solutions.

03 Shape the future together

We’re all works in progress—and that includes our Instructure products. Since the earliest days of Canvas LMS, our users have shaped the next iteration of all things Instructure.

130+ institutions gave over 200 contributions in the first month of the new roadmap process.

And with the new Collective Roadmap in the Community, you can upvote your priorities and put in your two cents to help us determine not just what could be built, but what should be built next. You see your contributions in action. Built with you, not just for you.

04 Keep learning!

"The Community makes it possible to find folks answering the same questions all around the world. At InstructureCon, I was fortunate enough to be included in a group presentation. There were four of us from four different institutions, and we met through the Community." - Greg Beyrer, Cosumnes River College, Callifornia

You don’t have to leave your classroom or office to grow professionally. You can think of the Community as an extension of InstructureCon—every single day! You can dive into the practicals of a platform, learn from people a little further down the implementation road, sign up for live events and peer-led sessions, and so much more.

The Community brings learning (and the opportunity to pay it forward) to you. You can read peer blog posts, digest them in your own time, or comment and add to the conversation, making professional development a regular rhythm.

05 Your creative sandbox

"Often, a conversation ensues as Community members have a desire to help others. Even if a solution isn't readily available, the collaborative, supportive nature of the Community makes users feel seen and heard." - Diana Knox, Clay Community Schools

Being a lifelong learner means experimenting with new ideas. Where do you go when you’re not sure if an idea will work? The Community is a safe place to explore your unpolished ideas and ask, "Has anyone else tried this?" before you roll out a new work ow to your entire institution.

From early adopter programs and testing opportunities to pilot conversations, the Community helps us all turn experimentation into shared learning. Our product teams innovate, but so do you: the people closest to the work.

06 Be ready for what’s next

Change is a lot easier to manage when you know what’s coming. You can better adapt and respond to how those changes can improve teaching and learning at your institution, district, or business. The Community turns product evolution into a visible timeline, so you can see every update, gain clarity on upcoming changes, and prepare to innovate before they hit your environment.

Regular product blogs and release notes mean you're never caught off guard by what's coming

When you know what to expect, you strategize and ask better questions instead. Whether you’re in charge of a team or just in charge of your own classroom, the Community is here to help you move forward and create awesome learning experiences, knowing there aren’t any surprises ahead.

Your expertise is the fuel the Community needs to grow smarter and stronger for every administrator, teacher, coordinator, and student around the world. Thank you for being one of the millions who are solving today’s problems and shaping tomorrow!

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Comments

JoanWilson55851988

Learning how the system works.

Jeff_F

@all - I've been a Canvas fan/instructor/course designer/support lead since we adopted the LMS in 2014. All this above ^^^ makes a ton of logical sense from my perspective. Here is one more suggestion:

07 Build a solution showcase pipeline

One of the fastest ways to scale impact is to make your local solutions visible, reusable, and easy to adopt. Instead of relying on informal sharing, create a simple, repeatable process where staff document and publish the solutions they build while doing their daily work. Imagine if a few dozen people did this just once per month?

So how do we go about formalizing that into a lightweight “solution showcase” workflow?

When someone solves a problem, they capture a short entry that includes the problem, the approach, and the outcome. This can live in a shared knowledge space, a Canvas hub course, or a simple internal page (e.g., a shared OneNote file). Over time, this builds a searchable library of real solutions created by your own team, not just external documentation.

What makes this high value is that it shifts our teams from reactive support to institutional knowledge creation. Instead of solving the same issue multiple times through tickets or one-off responses, we create durable artifacts that others can reuse. This reduces repeat work, speeds onboarding, and gives faculty and staff practical examples that are grounded in our environment.

And we can strengthen the impact by adding a few simple expectations:

Each team member contributes a set number of solution entries per term/ month/ etc.
Entries are short and focused on real problems, not theory
High value solutions are highlighted in your weekly updates or team meetings
Select solutions are shared externally when appropriate to contribute back to broader communities

This also reinforces a culture where building and sharing solutions is part of the job, not extra work. It aligns with the idea that one solution can scale far beyond the individual who created it, which is exactly what makes communities like the Instructure Community effective.

Over time, this approach creates three clear benefits. First, institutional memory improves because knowledge is captured as it is created. Second, staff development accelerates because team members learn from each other’s work in a structured way. Third, operational efficiency increases because fewer problems need to be solved from scratch.

We have perhaps 2/3rds of this in place ourselves. I haven't yet set quotas for a few reasons.