Terracotta Terms

Component

One of several different elements - an assignment, message, or external integration - that Terracotta can create within Canvas.

Condition

The varied element used to estimate a variable's effect, generally by comparison with a control condition

Experiment

A scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact

Exposure set

An exposure set exposes a student to a specific condition during a specific time period. In some types of experiments, students will change conditions between exposure sets, and the order of conditions across exposure sets will be randomly assignmed to different students. An exposure set contains one or more assignments, and there must be an equal number of assignments in each exposure set in order to balance the experiment.

Outcome

An outcome (also known as a dependent variable) is a variable that may be affected by an experimental manipulation. For example, if an experimental manipulation to a homework assignment in Terracotta is expected to affect students' later scores on a midterm exam, then the midterm exam scores would be an outcome.  In Terracotta, outcome scores are defined on the experiment's Status tab. Outcomes can be entered manually into Terracotta (by typing in scores for each individual student), or can be imported from a Canvas gradebook item. In within-subjects designs, it may be important to define an outcome score for each exposure set. Outcome scores are typically measured after an experiment, but an outcome can also contain any numeric score that is relevant to an experiment (pretest scores, moderator variables, etc.). Outcome scores are included in Terracotta data exports, and are visible in the Results Dashboard. 

Treatment

In Terracotta, a treatment is a version of an assignment.