Students learn data management by doing it: building eCRFs, writing edit checks, answering queries, signing consent and reading the audit trail in an actual EDC. The sandbox has every feature, no time limit and no credit card, and it uses demo data only.
Free sandbox · No credit card · 21 CFR Part 11 aligned
Study owner
Builds and configures the study
Principal investigator
Oversees the site, signs off the casebook
Sub-investigator
Enters and signs clinical data
Study coordinator
Screens subjects, enters visit data
Monitor (CRA)
Verifies data, raises queries
Data manager
Reviews, freezes and locks data
Participant
Completes their own questionnaires
What the sandbox gives a course
Why it matters
Courses in clinical research, clinical data management and good clinical practice usually explain what a case report form is, why edit checks exist and how an audit trail supports data integrity, and then ask students to imagine it. The obstacle is access: enterprise systems are sold to sponsors, and training environments are rarely available to a university course.
A self-serve sandbox removes that obstacle. Each student or group signs up, builds a study and works through the same tasks a study team does: translate a protocol into forms, enter sample data, break a rule on purpose and see the auto-query, answer it, sign, and then inspect the audit trail. Because the sandbox has every feature, you are not teaching around gaps. Read EDC for university clinical studies if you also run research on the platform.
The sandbox is for training with demo data. Do not enter real participant information in a teaching exercise. If a student project becomes a real study, it moves to a live study and a paid plan applies; nothing about the course exercise needs that.
Stage 1
DraftBuild and edit freely
Stage 2
ApprovedLocked for live use
Stage 3
In the casebookOnly approved forms
SDV requirement changed on Systolic BP
Data manager · Reason: critical safety value
Form approved: Vital Signs (VS) v2
Study owner · Locked for live use
Answer changed: Weight 68.0 to 68.5 kg
Site coordinator · Reason: transcription error
Course modules
| Module | Student exercise | What they use in Capture |
|---|---|---|
| Good clinical practice | Trace who changed a value, when and why | Field-level audit trail; the GCP glossary entry as reading |
| CRF design | Turn a protocol into visits and forms | Visual builder, AI drafting from an uploaded protocol, reviewed by the student |
| Data validation | Write range checks and test them | Edit checks that raise auto-queries; calculated fields such as BMI |
| Query management | Answer and close queries | Query workflow from open to answered to closed |
| Informed consent | Draft consent and sign it electronically | eConsent with on-screen signature and email OTP; consent templates |
| Patient-reported outcomes | Build a diary and enrol as a participant | ePRO with reminders; the sleep diary template |
| Data export and analysis | Export and describe a dataset | CSV or Excel with automatic data dictionary |
| Database lock | Define closing steps | Readings on database lock and the lock workflow |
Sign up, build a two-form study and break a rule on purpose. Free, no credit card.
For instructors
Build your own reference study first, so you know where students will get stuck and can show a finished example. Start from the standard templates for demographics, vital signs and adverse events, and let students extend them. These are the forms nearly every real study has, so students practise the structures they will meet at work.
A typical sequence is: week one, read a protocol and list the data points; week two, build forms; week three, add edit checks and test them with deliberately wrong data; week four, run queries and signatures; week five, export and describe the dataset. The how to design an eCRF guide is a sensible reading for the form design week, and the CRF builder page describes the building blocks.
Assessment becomes concrete. Ask students to submit the blank eCRF PDF the system exports, a screenshot of an auto-query they triggered, and the audit trail excerpt that shows their correction. These are the same artefacts a monitor would ask a site for, so students learn what "audit-ready" looks like. For a wider view of what students will meet after the course, point them to the clinical data management software overview.
It does not replace your institution's regulatory training, site visits or an SOP-driven validation exercise. Capture is a tool for the practical part of the curriculum; the regulatory framework still needs your own teaching.
Team exercises
Real studies divide work between people, and students learn more when they experience that division. Capture has researcher, site coordinator and admin roles. Site coordinators see participant names, while researchers see coded IDs only, so a group exercise can assign one student as coordinator and another as researcher and ask each to describe what they could and could not see. That is a concrete way to teach why personal data are segregated from analysis data.
Data integrity principles become tangible with the audit trail. Ask a student to change a value, give a reason and then have another student find the change from the record: timestamp, user, old value, new value and reason. The record is exportable and cannot be modified through the interface, which makes a good discussion of why such a record is trusted. For the regulatory background, pair the exercise with the 21 CFR Part 11 compliance checklist and the audit trail software page.
Add a monitoring exercise. One group builds a study and enters data with a few deliberate errors; another group reviews it as a monitor would, raising queries and checking source data verification settings. The risk-based monitoring and SDV page and the glossary entry on source data verification provide the reading. Because everything uses demo data, mistakes cost nothing and students can repeat the exercise.
Finally, use the study as a capstone. Students write a one-page data management plan for their sandbox study, using the data management plan template as a skeleton, and justify each design decision: why this edit check, why this window, why this role. The plan can be assessed alongside the exported artefacts, giving a complete picture of how well they understood the system and the principles behind it.
Setup
Which skills the exercises demonstrate: CRF design, validation, queries, consent.
A finished example built by the instructor.
Students told not to enter real personal data.
Each creates their own sandbox study.
Tasks, expected outputs and assessment artefacts.
GCP, CRF design and database lock readings.
Yes. The sandbox has every feature, with no credit card and no time limit. You pay only when a study goes live with real participants.
No. Use made-up participants for teaching. Real data belongs in a live study.
Yes. Researcher, site coordinator and admin roles exist, which lets you teach separation of duties and PII segregation.
Yes. They can build a consent, sign it on screen with an email one-time code and export the signed PDF.
Yes. Every record carries a field-level audit trail with timestamp, user, old value, new value and reason for change.
Yes. They can upload a protocol and let AI draft visits and forms, then review every item before anything is saved.
No. It teaches the concepts and the hands-on workflow. Specific vendor systems still have their own training.
Book a demo and describe the course. We can show you what to build for the exercises.
Keep exploring
EDC for university clinical studies
Research use at a university.
Clinical trial software for universities
Institution-level view.
How to design an eCRF
Reading for the CRF design week.
CRF builder for clinical trials
The building blocks.
Free EDC software
What the free tier includes.
Case report form glossary entry
A short definition for students.
Free sandbox with every feature, demo data only. No credit card.