While online data collection offers speed and scale, working in schools enables researchers to investigate educational development, language acquisition, mathematical reasoning, and many more areas, directly within a classroom environment.
This guide outlines key considerations, challenges, and practical solutions for collecting data in schools. Review our Case Studies to see how researchers have used Gorilla in schools, and see our Pre-Visit Checklist to ensure your sessions run smoothly and reliably.
Working with schools to collect data offers several advantages:
Efficiency: Collecting data in schools can speed up your recruitment by working with lots of children within a day. If you can speak with a whole class at once, that could be 30 participants within 30 minutes!
Environment: You may be interested in how children behave in different environments that can't be simulated online or in the lab. Going into a classroom can also improve the ecological validity of your research.
Inclusivity: Bringing research into schools ensures that all students can participate, including those who might not otherwise be able to travel to a lab or access online studies.
While there are many potential benefits, the technical feasibility of data collection in schools can be more complex.
Do I need anything special to use Gorilla in schools?
With Gorilla all you need is an internet connected device to collect data. No downloading or complex software, just a laptop, tablet, or phone!
If you know internet connection may be an issue in the school you're visiting, the best option is not to change your research tool, but improve your connectivity.
There are three main ways to do this:
Smartphone Hotspots
Using smartphone hotspots can be an easy way to get online without worrying about a school's firewalls or slow Wi-Fi. This process can use up a lot of data on your network plan, so make sure your contract has a sufficient data allowance. Similarly, hotspotting can reduce your device's battery more quickly, so you may want to bring a power bank along as well. There may also be device restrictions on the network, meaning you can only connect ~5 devices.
The main advantage of smartphone hotspotting is the cost and ease, you'll likely already have a device that can do this and may have a contract with a large data allowance.
5G Hotspot Hubs
5G hubs effectively do the same as hotspotting from a smartphone but provide a much stronger and more reliable connection. These devices are plugged into the wall and provide their own Wi-Fi network that multiple devices can join.
At the time of writing (2026), 5G Hubs can cost around £20-50 per month for subscription based services or you can buy one outright for £200-350 with the additional cost of a monthly SIM contract as well.
Satellite Connections
Satellite internet connection provides an alternative for areas where other networks can't reach. While most schools will be within mobile signal range, in some cases, you may need to a more dedicated solution.
At the time of writing (2026), Satellite internet costs £150+ for the hardware plus monthly subscription costs of £40-75.
All of these solutions will allow you to get online easily, while avoiding concerns about schools' firewalls or device limits!
This is a natural question that follows when concerns about connectivity are raised. Collecting data offline removes some connectivity fears.
At Gorilla, we have created standalone offline apps in the past, but we believe securing a reliable internet connection is far more time and cost-effective than custom offline development. Gorilla’s browser-based tools allow you to build, test, and launch your experiments immediately, without any technical headache.
| Feature | Custom Offline App | Gorilla |
|---|---|---|
| Development Cost | High (~£100,000+ bespoke build) | £0 (Included in Gorilla platform) |
| Time to Data | Months (~6+ months coding & debugging) | Instant (Build & test in minutes) |
| Device Compatibility | Fragmented (OS-specific bugs, iOS/Android bottlenecks) | Universal (Works on any browser & modern device) |
| Installation Limits | Custom building can come with device limits | Unlimited devices |
| Data Storage | Manual extraction per device; risk of data loss | Automatic, GDPR-compliant cloud sync |
| Ongoing Maintenance | Costly developer overhead for every update | Zero maintenance; seamless automatic platform updates |
The short answer is yes! Gorilla has been used in many different environments, including schools.
Read on for case studies of how Gorilla has been applied in schools.
Check out how Gorilla has been used in schools!
If you're looking for inspiration, check out some research that used Gorilla in schools to great success!
Did you know we replicated the “conflict network” effect on Gorilla, in Schools, a Public Engagement event, as well as fully-online!
Anwyl-Irvine, A.L., Massonnié, J., Flitton, A. et al. Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. Behav Res 52, 388–407 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01237-x
Utilising Gorilla in a school allowed these researchers to collect a large sample size over several sessions. Participants heard various sound conditions, and while these didn't have a significant effect on reading comprehension, nor did it influence calculation accuracy, response times in calculation tasks improved in the presence of playground noise and were longer under mechanical ventilation noise.
Features such as order counterbalancing and randomisation were implemented all on Gorilla.
Pellegatti, M., Visentin, C., Torresin, S., Babich, F., & Prodi, N. (2026). The effect of ventilation-related sound stimuli on 11–14 years students’ cognition and soundscape assessments. Applied Acoustics, 245, 111206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2025.111206
Recruiting participants via UK schools allowed these researchers to collect the sample sized they needed to investigate novel adjective learning. The researchers concluded novel adjectives read in more emotional (positive or negative) contexts were recognized more accurately than those read in neutral narratives.
Children did the study on the researcher's laptop with the researcher in the room, ensuring a standard experience across participants and allowing the researcher to support the children as they took part. All parts of the task were designed on Gorilla.
Dong, Y., Mak, M., Hepach, R., & Nation, K. (2025). How do children learn new words via reading emotional narratives? In D. Barner, N. Bramley, A. Ruggeri, & C. M. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5z74x0m0
You can find this experiment directly on Gorilla's Open Materials!
This study investigated how noise within a classroom impacts children's performance and found no group-level significant impact of verbal noise and mixed noise on academic tasks. The researchers mentioned that collecting data in a naturalistic environment (a classroom versus a lab) may have helped the participants to cope with distracting stimuli like noise.
Massonnié, J., Mareschal, D. and Kirkham, N.Z. (2022). Individual differences in dealing with classroom noise disturbances. Mind, Brain, and Education, 16 (3), 252-262. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12322
The next step is to build your Gorilla experiment and prepare for your school visit.
Read on for practical tips on testing and preparation!
Once you've arranged your school visit, researchers should follow these steps to ensure smooth data collection:
Ask the school:
If schools don’t respond or are unsure, consider the alternative connection options we discuss in the Overview section, such as hotspotting and 5G Hubs.
If the school you plan to visit is local, you could also arrange a short visit just to check the internet connection, without actually collecting any data.
All technologies may encounter unforeseen issues, so researchers should not assume 100% reliability from any solution, especially bespoke setups that won’t have been as thoroughly tested as out-of-the-box solutions.
If possible, try to bring back-up devices like spare tablets or audio-recorders, just in case!
By previewing your experiment you can make sure, ahead of time, that it's working as expected and you're collecting the data you need!
We also recommend piloting your experiment with colleagues or friends.
Gorilla provides comprehensive support to assist researchers during setup and testing.
Check out our guide to responsive layouts for tips on how to get your study running smoothly on tablets, phones, or whatever devices you're planning to use.
Gorilla provides a variety of different recruitment policies for getting participants into your study!
For in person research, we recommend using our Supervised Recruitment policy.
This recruitment policy allows you to define a set of Public IDs to be used with participants who will log in using a generic link. If you are in-person with the participant as they start the experiment, you can enter the Public ID for them on the device you've brought. This way, you can easily control participant IDs!
The British Psychological Society has a useful article with more tips for data collection in schools, especially around how and when to contact schools!
Hayes, B., & Lloyd, A. (2020). A practical guide for data collection in schools. PsyPAG Quarterly, 114 38-43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.53841/bpspag.2020.1.114.38
