Join us this afternoon as Ben Motz, the Director of the eLearning Research and Practice Lab at Indiana University's Pervasive Tech Institute, shares his research on Terracotta, a tool that embeds experimental education research studies directly into Canvas.
The Terracotta project has been listed as a finalist in the X-Prize Digital Learning Challenge sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences.
Title
Terracotta: Simplifying Rigorous Experimental Research on Teaching and Learning in Canvas
Abstract
To improve student outcomes, we have to identify teaching and learning practices that have reliable causal benefits in diverse education settings. In other words, we need to identify what works, for whom, in what contexts. To test whether an instructional practice exerts a causal influence on an outcome, the most straightforward and compelling research method is to conduct an experiment. However, experimentation is increasingly rare in the educational research literature, and to date, researchers have argued it is prohibitively expensive and difficult to conduct experiments in classrooms. To reverse these trends, and to increase the quality of evidence on what works for improving student outcomes, we are excited to introduce Terracotta. Terracotta (a portmanteau of Tool for Education Research with RAndomized COnTrolled TriAls; https://terracotta.education) is a Canvas plug-in that enables experimental research on what teachers assign in their Canvas course sites. The platform is a service of Indiana University, it's funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, it's free to use, and it's currently available in UNL Canvas sites. Terracotta’s goal is to enable rigorous and responsible experimental research across student populations and learning materials. Participants in this session will be invited to participate in a live demo.
Date: Thurs, 4/20, 2-3 pm CT
Zoom: https://unl.zoom.us/j/212107342