Webinar | Building Terracotta: A Platform for Conducting Randomized Controlled Experiments in the LMS

This webinar is a part of the EDUCAUSE Industry & Campus Solutions series.

One of the most urgent questions in education research is “What kinds of learning activities improve student success?” Unfortunately, even with terabytes of data gushing out of our e-learning systems, we still have trouble inferring what works. This is because relationships between learning activities and student success are just correlational—a learning activity might cause students to succeed, but it’s also possible that successful students are just more likely to engage in the learning activity. To identify what works, we need more than data—we need to be able to conduct experiments. In this session, we will describe our vision for enabling teachers and researchers to easily run experiments in their classes, and we’ll unveil Terracotta, an experiment builder that integrates with the Canvas learning management system, the product of a collaboration between Unicon and Indiana University.

Outcomes

• Become familiar with the importance of experimental research in education and the challenges to conducting experiments on learning and instruction
• Gain insights into the process of turning a product vision into working software
• Learn how experimental research designs can turn conventional learning data streams into powerful tools for identifying what works
• Be among the first to see Terracotta, a platform that enables rigorous and responsible experimental research in the LMS

Additional Resources

Terracotta Overview