Top Hat

Top Hat is a teaching platform for college and university courses. It puts in-class participation, interactive course content, assessments and student data in one place, so an instructor runs polls and quizzes in the lecture, assigns readings and homework from the same system, and sees the results in one gradebook. The company describes it as "dynamic courseware" that "helps students keep pace with learning," and says it is "Trusted by 1,200+ institutions." Its case studies name Texas Tech University, Penn State University, Indiana University, Arizona State University and Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. The site is published by Tophatmonocle Corp.

In the lecture hall

The first job Top Hat does is in-class engagement: "Transform lectures with interactive polls, quizzes and activities. Spark lively discussions, keep students focused through active participation, and get insights to address learning challenges in real time." Attendance is a feature of its own. Students take part on whatever they carry, since "All students need is a computer, tablet, or phone for classroom participation or to use at home." A student from Virginia Commonwealth University is quoted saying "Top Hat is a great way to get class participation without the judgment of others."

The question bank goes beyond multiple choice. Top Hat offers "over 14 question types," and the site singles out "Chemistry response, graph response, and graded calculation questions" as making it "easy to use in a wide variety of disciplines, including math and science." Instructors "can easily assign questions from class as review or homework," and the company stresses that "insights generated in class can be easily leveraged to inform assignments, and vice versa."

Interactive content and textbooks

The second part of Top Hat is content. Instructors can "Create interactive, media-rich content as big as a textbook or as small as an assignment," and "Discussions and activities can appear alongside content" so reading and participation sit together. The home page invites instructors to personalize a textbook from the Top Hat catalog, "including dynamic OER," or to create their own interactive materials, with "built-in assessments" to check what students took from the reading.

The catalog is organized into Business, First-Year Experience, Humanities, Social Sciences and STEM titles, and the textbook offer includes Interactive eTexts, Interactive Labs, Interactive OpenStax and Custom Solutions. A Wiley partnership covers Anatomy and Physiology and Psychology, and Aktiv Chemistry has its own section. The footer also lists bookstore services and content partners. For an instructor who wants to author rather than adopt, the "Build Your Custom Text" path and the content tools let them assemble their own interactive course materials inside the platform.

Assessments and academic integrity

Top Hat's testing tools let educators "choose from questions they've created for in-class assignments or question sets available in our catalog." The site adds that "During assessments, there are also tools to protect the academic integrity of online exams." The features menu groups this under Assessments and Preparedness.

All of it feeds one record. "Top Hat clearly captures each student's assessment, attendance, and participation data in a gradebook that integrates directly with your LMS, making it easy to track progress in and outside of the classroom." The Insights feature turns "data from attendance, in-class engagement, readings, and assessments" into a view of "student success in the moment and over time," so learning gaps show up early.

Ace, the AI assistant

Ace is Top Hat's "AI-powered teaching and learning partner." For instructors, it can "instantly generate questions from their content," and the site pairs "flexible content tools and AI-powered question generation" for building or adapting assignments. For students, the home page says Ace "delivers 24/7 personalized study support." The feature list names it "Ace: AI Assistant for Educators & Students."

LMS integration, setup and accessibility

Top Hat integrates "with all major LMS providers, including Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, Moodle and Sakai." The home page describes the result as "easy navigation, direct links to course materials, and synced grades."

It runs in the browser and on mobile: "Top Hat is cloud-based with no local installations to manage. The web app automatically updates, so you always have the latest software." Students rate the mobile app 4.5 out of 5 stars, according to the company.

Accessibility is built into the product: Top Hat says it "designed our platform with accessibility top of mind, making it compatible with screen readers and offering keyboard navigation," and a feature called Transform Content for Accessibility appears in the menu. The footer links to pages on accessibility and on security and compliance.

Pricing and support

The site says "Top Hat offers straightforward student pricing and there is no device to buy." Instructors can "Create your free account or take a self-guided tour," book a demo, and use a pricing page and an ROI calculator for institutions.

Support is a selling point. Top Hat describes "market-leading concierge service to convert your existing content into the Top Hat platform," plus "a dedicated instructional designer" to help instructors "meet your course goals and ease your class prep." Teaching resources include toolkits and how-to guides, webinars, templates, trends and infographics, a blog, a podcast, a glossary of higher education terms and a research section on the evidence behind the product.

What students and instructors report

Top Hat cites its Spring 2024 student survey (n=21,033): 95% of students say Top Hat is easy to use, 87% say it helped them feel engaged in the learning process, and 91% recommend that their instructor use it again. A case study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reports an 86% average exam score for students who used Top Hat in a Business Analytics course. On review sites, the company shows ratings of 8 out of 10 on TrustRadius, 3.8 out of 5 on Capterra and GetApp, and 4.5 out of 5 on the Apple App Store.

Instructors quoted on the site include Andrew Duffy, a master lecturer in physics at Boston University: "Between quizzes, textbook readings and homework, Top Hat has given students lots of different ways to assess their own learning." Echu Liu of St. Louis University says: "The major thing that sets Top Hat apart from other teaching platforms is immediate feedback of students' learning. I have seen students' performance improve since I started using Top Hat."

Who it suits

Top Hat suits college and university instructors who want one system for the whole course: participation and attendance in lectures, readings with built-in questions, homework and exams, all reporting into the LMS gradebook. STEM instructors get question types built for their subjects, and departments that want to replace a commercial textbook can adopt an interactive or OpenStax title or build their own. Institutions on Blackboard, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, Moodle or Sakai can connect it to the LMS they already run.

It is built for higher education, so a school teacher or a corporate trainer is not its audience. The site frames its pricing as "student pricing," so adopting Top Hat is part of the course materials decision as well as a teaching one.