Every conference leaves me with pages and pages of notes. Most of them are interesting, some spark a new conversation, and a handful genuinely shape the way I think about where higher education is heading. InstructureCon 2026 was definitely one of those conferences.
Our week actually started before we even arrived in Louisville. Together with the team, we hosted our thought leadership webinar exploring the latest research from ListEdTech and UPCEA on lifelong learning, continuing education, employer engagement, and the changing higher education technology landscape. During InstructureCon itself, we also had the opportunity to present our session, Building the Future of Continuing Education for Workforce Education, Lifelong Learning, and Learner Mobility, continuing that conversation with higher education leaders from across the community.
I expected those topics to resonate, but what struck me during InstructureCon 2026 was how often those same themes resurfaced in keynotes, customer conversations, and breakout sessions.
It wasn’t one particular product announcement that stayed with me, it was that Higher education has entered a period where institutions no longer have the luxury of changing slowly.
Everywhere I looked, people were talking about shrinking budgets, changing learner expectations, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital accessibility, cybersecurity and data privacy, workforce development, continuing education and lifelong learning. On paper, these seem like separate conversations, but by the end of the week I realized they’re all ingredients of the same dish. The challenge isn’t deciding which one deserves attention. It’s figuring out how to combine those ingredients into something that genuinely helps learners, educators and higher education institutions move forward.
Institutions aren't just buying technology anymore. They're buying confidence.
One of the cool and additional parts for me of InstructureCon every year is the Partner Summit. Of course, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with fellow partners and the Instructure team, but more importantly, it provides an early glimpse into the conversations higher education institutions themselves are having during customer panels.
Rather than focusing purely on technology, much of the discussion centered around what has now become the foundation for evaluating any new educational technology solution.
- Digital accessibility.
- Security.
- AI governance.
- System integrations.
These are no longer differentiators. They’re quickly becoming table stakes.
For institutions using Canvas LMS, integration isn’t simply nice to have; it has become an expectation. The more systems learners, educators, and administrators have to move between, the harder it becomes to create a seamless learning experience. Every additional login, export, import, or manual process introduces friction, and reducing that friction is exactly what institutions are trying to achieve.
What I particularly appreciated was hearing higher education institutions ask increasingly thoughtful questions about pilots. Rather than simply asking whether people liked a tool, they wanted access to meaningful data afterward.
- What impact did it actually have?
- Did learners engage?
- Did faculty use it?
- Did it improve the learner journey and contribute to student success?
I genuinely hope this trend continues because it allows institutions to make far better informed decisions. A successful pilot shouldn’t just end with enthusiasm; it should provide evidence that supports future institutional strategy and investment.
One question I wrote down in my notebook and underlined several times was:
“How much positive impact does this tool actually have on a learner and their journey?”
If we, as educational technology partners, continue asking ourselves that question, we’ll keep building solutions that genuinely matter and help make institutional ambitions a reality for learners around the world.
What does responsible AI look like in higher education?
It would have been impossible to attend InstructureCon without hearing about AI.
The difference compared to even a year ago, however, was remarkable. We’ve moved beyond asking whether AI belongs in education; now we’re asking how it belongs there.
Conversations focused on governance, interoperability, student success, data privacy and responsible adoption, rather than simply showcasing new capabilities.
One observation particularly resonated with me.
Before AI can help someone think better, people still need something to think with.
Foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and the ability to challenge an answer still matter.
AI can absolutely accelerate learning and productivity, but if we skip those foundations, we’re asking learners to cook a beautiful meal without ever learning what the individual ingredients actually do. That was a message I heard repeatedly throughout the conference, and personally I think it’s an incredibly healthy shift.
AI shouldn’t replace thinking; rather, it should strengthen it.
What did the Instructure security breach teach the wider higher education community?
One topic that understandably couldn’t be ignored throughout the conference was the recent security breach.
It was addressed immediately during the opening keynote. Personally, I would probably have preferred the conversation to feel a little less scripted, simply because moments like these call for openness and authenticity. At the same time, I also recognize just how incredibly difficult it must be to communicate while an organization is actively responding to an incident of this scale.
What stayed with me most, however, wasn’t actually Instructure’s response. It was how everyone else I spoke to responded to it.
Almost every partner and vendor I spoke with had been asking themselves exactly the same question:
“If this happened to us tomorrow, what else should we be doing today?”
Within Drieam, we’ve had exactly those conversations ourselves. Beyond certifications, security processes and best practices, where are the blind spots we haven’t considered yet? What questions should we be asking ourselves before somebody else asks them for us?
None of us would ever wish for something like this to happen. But if there’s one positive outcome, it’s that the entire educational technology ecosystem has become even more aware that security isn’t something you tick off a checklist once; it’s a discipline that requires continuous attention.
In that sense, I genuinely believe our ecosystem will become stronger because of the conversations this has started.
Why is the speed of change becoming higher education's biggest challenge?
I had the opportunity to attend several sessions by Martin Bean during the conference.
If you’ve never had the chance to hear him speak, I’d genuinely encourage you to make time for one of his sessions at a future event. In my opinion, he’s one of the real gurus in our sector. He has spent much of his career connecting higher education, work and lifelong learning, and every time I hear him speak I come away with another notebook full of ideas.
One sentence immediately made me stop writing.
“Today is the slowest day of the rest of your working life.”
It’s such a simple statement, but it perfectly captures what many higher education institutions are currently experiencing. Technology isn’t slowing down, the labor market certainly isn’t slowing down, and learner expectations continue to evolve.
Institutions therefore have to find ways to adapt while continuing to protect quality, academic integrity, and the learner experience.
Martin also spoke about something I completely agree with: assessment itself is changing. Authentic assessment alone is no longer enough. Learners increasingly need opportunities to demonstrate that they genuinely understand something, can apply it in practice, and can explain why they made the decisions they did.
Having all the ingredients doesn’t automatically mean you’ve cooked the dish.
Mastery is knowing how and when to use those ingredients to create something meaningful. That distinction is becoming increasingly important in a world where AI can already help produce the final product.
For me, that is one of the biggest challenges facing higher education today. Institutions aren’t simply adapting to new technology; they’re rethinking how learning, assessment, and workforce preparation fit together in an AI-enabled world.
Why might curiosity become one of higher education's most valuable enduring skills?
Another idea that kept returning throughout the conference was curiosity.
For years we’ve talked about soft skills. Martin challenged that thinking by arguing that many of these are actually Enduring Skills: the skills that are hardest to develop, hardest to automate, and, ultimately, hardest to replace.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
- Empathy.
- Leadership.
- Creativity.
- Communication.
- Curiosity.
These are exactly the capabilities that become more valuable as technology becomes more capable.
One thing I also found myself writing down was that lifelong learning has moved well beyond being an interesting initiative. More and more higher education institutions are treating it as a genuine institutional strategy, rather than a separate department or a standalone program, and that was genuinely encouraging to see.
Over the past few years I’ve watched lifelong learning grow from something that often sat on the edge of an institution into something that is gradually becoming embedded across the organization. Whether institutions refer to it as continuing education, professional learning, workforce education or lifelong learning, the direction of travel is becoming increasingly clear. And I think that’s exactly where it belongs.
After all, the world doesn’t stop changing once someone graduates.
What can higher education institutions learn from one another?
One of the nicest surprises for me personally happened outside the sessions.
Throughout the conference, people approached our booth who had watched the webinar we’d hosted before InstructureCon. Some wanted to continue discussing the research, others wanted to compare experiences at their own institutions, and others simply wanted to exchange ideas. To be honest, I hadn’t expected that.
So, if you were one of those people, an additional thank you from me personally.
Those conversations reminded me why I enjoy conferences so much.
Yes, we’re there to demonstrate the solutions we’ve built, but I probably learn just as much, if not more, from hearing about the challenges higher education institutions are facing, the creative ways they’re solving them, and the things they’re still trying to figure out.
I’ve always believed that everybody can learn from everybody else, as no two institutions are identical; different countries have different regulations, different learners have different expectations, budgets create different realities, but there are often far more common ingredients than we initially realize.
Sometimes another institution has already baked part of the cake.
You don’t need to copy their recipe exactly, but you certainly don’t need to start with an empty mixing bowl either.
That’s one of the things I love most about higher education.
People genuinely want to share.
Whether the conversation is about AI, continuing education, digital transformation, student success or institutional strategy, I’ve found that universities are remarkably willing to help one another move forward.
Where does higher education go from here?
I left Louisville feeling optimistic.
Not because higher education suddenly has all the answers. If anything, the questions are becoming harder, and the pace at which institutions are expected to respond continues to accelerate.
What gave me confidence was the people I met: educators, institutional leaders, partners, and educational technology providers.
People who are genuinely willing to put their shoulders under the work and solve these challenges together.
There is understandable hesitation. Higher education has traditionally provided a degree of stability while the world changed around it, and now some of its own foundations are evolving at the same time. Assessment, curricula, technology, qualifications, continuing education and the relationship between education and employment are all being reimagined simultaneously.
Yet throughout the week, I heard innovative, practical, and genuinely curious ideas from institutions already finding new ways to reach learners who have historically been underrepresented, overlooked, or difficult to serve through traditional degree structures.
At Drieam, those conversations continue to shape how we build solutions like Eduframe. Technology should never dictate an institution’s strategy, but it should remove the operational friction that prevents that strategy from succeeding.
The higher education institutions that thrive over the next decade will not necessarily be those with the biggest budgets or the greatest number of new technologies.
They will be the ones that remain curious.
The ones that continue learning from others.
The ones that use evidence to inform decisions.
The ones that protect quality while embracing change.
And, perhaps most importantly, the ones that never lose sight of why they exist in the first place: to create meaningful learning opportunities for learners.
Because if there was one thing InstructureCon 2026 confirmed for me, it’s that higher education isn’t simply adapting to change anymore. It’s learning how to lead through it.
And considering that today is apparently the slowest day of the rest of our working lives, there really is no better moment to begin.
See you at the next InstructureCon!
About the Author: Mieke Ridderhof
