Simplifying
experimental research on teaching and learning

To improve student outcomes, teachers need to know what works. The most straightforward way to see how teaching and learning practices influence student outcomes is to conduct an experiment. But, experiments can be time-consuming and expensive to conduct in classrooms. Enter Terracotta.

Terracotta’s goal is to make experimental research easy and accessible across education levels, student populations, and learning materials. Terracotta is designed to be flexible and robust, enabling a range of experiment designs that reflect the complexity of instructional practice. By allowing teachers and researchers to embed studies in Learning Management Systems, where many learning activities already take place, Terracotta can advance our understanding of what works in student learning on a broad scale.

Terracotta handles the practical details of embedding experiments; it manages participant recruitment, random assignment, implementation, and de-identified data exports across multiple classes.