Top Hat
About Top Hat
Top Hat is an online teaching platform designed to help professors and educators engage their students and build comprehension before, during, and after classes. The software offers solutions for delivering interactive courses, customizing digital textbooks, assigning homework, and securely administering assessments.
Top Hat automates a variety of common, repetitive tasks to free up teachers' time, such as taking attendance and grading homework. Built-in assessment tools allow users to tracks students' progress throughout the term, with in-class questions and polls in addition to assigned homework, and provide feedback in real time to course-correct when necessary. Top Hat also aims to enhance student engagement with courses through integrated graphics and videos, customized interactive textbooks, class discussions, and lesson gamification.
Top Hat's assessment solution allows students to take tests through their own device, whether a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, without downloading any software. Instructor-generated codes control access to the exam, and a proprietary behavioral algorithm automatically detects cheating. Homework tasks can be assigned to individuals or groups through the assignment solution, and users can create custom questions, import their existing materials, or choose free question packs in the Top Hat marketplace.
Key benefits of Top Hat
• Top Hat Classroom provides users with tools for delivering interactive courses to engage students, including attendance tracking through students' devices, embedded questions in presentations, real-time polls, and response data visualization.
• With Top Hat Textbook, users can create custom digital textbooks for their students, utilizing videos, animations, and questions interspersed within content to engage learners.
• Top Hat Assignment enables the assignment of homework tasks to individual students or groups, with options for importing existing materials, auto-grading of answers, and real-time feedback.
• Assessments can be managed and securely administered through students' own devices with Top Hat Test, which uses proprietary behavioral algorithms to detect cheating and automatically lock out students.
• Top Hat automates a range of common repetitive tasks, such as attendance taking and test grading, allowing users to focus their attention on important activities.
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Reviews
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- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Excellent for its purpose in education
Reviewed on 26/05/2022
Overall, I have had positive experience with the platform and I would encourage educators to at...
Overall, I have had positive experience with the platform and I would encourage educators to at least take a look and decide if it suits for you. There is no 'one size fits all' approach in higher education.
Pros
I have used the platform for years. Started using it to take attendance, but then transitioned to a more inclusive approach. What I like the most is that you can setup your lecture flow with PowerPoints, include quizzes/assessment points throughout, include videos (or other multimedia), and export grades/attendance at the end. There are a lot of small features that can be catered to individual faculty needs, such as types of questions, integration, etc. Their tech support is excellent! They helped me transition my course to tophat in no time.
Cons
I liked everything about the platform as it suited my needs. My only issue is the pricing model where the students have to pay for access individually. Not all of my students have the means to pay for access (which can really impact their grade if they don' use the platform). However, there is a discount if the platform is used in multiple classes. I also think they have site licenses, too.
- Industry: Higher Education
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Engaging Audience response system (and more)
Reviewed on 31/07/2023
Pros
Fairly intuitive for users; flexible; offers a lot of functionality in one application; responsive development team that frequently updates (new functionality and fixes)
Cons
Development has had a pretty narrow view of the use cases; they didn't seem to anticipate all the different scenarios that might occur in a Higher Ed environment.
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iClickerReasons for Choosing Top Hat
Turning was outdated and the cost to students was too high for the functionality they were receiving.Reasons for Switching to Top Hat
Most versatile functionality for the best price- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Monthly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10
Poor Customer Support
Reviewed on 24/03/2023
It looks like a good program but be wary of the customer support.
It looks like a good program but be wary of the customer support.
Pros
It looks like a very useful program to engage students in a large class. We wanted to use Top Hat.
Cons
The sales rep for Top Hat decided to stop replying to emails at critical time in deciding to implement Top Hat. We were even looking into the possibility of implementing Top Hat across the university. If Top Hat no longer wanted to pursue that, they could have at least replied to an email. Another colleague reported having problems with Top Hat personnel.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Top Hat Student Review
Reviewed on 27/11/2018
It has helped me so much with this class. It has given me a new way to go about grasping the...
It has helped me so much with this class. It has given me a new way to go about grasping the material and I would highly suggest it to other people.
Pros
I used it in my economics class, and we had embedded questions within our chapters. It really makes you slow down to understand and grasp the concepts.
Cons
We had problems with being able to go back and view which questions were answered correctly or incorrectly. I also wish there were more functions like notes and bookmarks along with the highlighting.
- Industry: Higher Education
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Easy to Use Learning Tool
Reviewed on 22/08/2019
Top Hat is a wonderful asset to have, and I'm glad my professors have been utilizing it. It has...
Top Hat is a wonderful asset to have, and I'm glad my professors have been utilizing it. It has increased the regularity and clarity of communication between myself and my professors.
Pros
When it comes to student/professor education software, I have found, as a student, that my favorite software programs are ones that professors are able to access and utilize with ease. The reason for this is that when professors utilize the functions available on education software, my life gets easier. Instead of dealing with streams of AOL emails, I get succinct and clean information and communication through a user-friendly platform. My professors who use Top Hat are VERY comfortable with it and seem to maximize its potential.
Top Hat is easy for me to use, and it's evidently really easy for my professors to use. It's clean, sleek, and really user-friendly.
Also, I like how Top Hat is device-friendly; their mobile app is great.
Cons
I've been using it for a few months and have not yet run into anything that I have a problem with.
Everything's been great so far.
Top Hat FAQs
Below are some frequently asked questions for Top Hat.Q. What type of pricing plans does Top Hat offer?
Top Hat offers the following pricing plans:
- Starting from: US$48.00/year
- Pricing model: Free Version, Subscription
- Free Trial: Not Available
Top Hat is free for professors.
Q. Who are the typical users of Top Hat?
Top Hat has the following typical customers:
Self Employed, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000
Q. What languages does Top Hat support?
Top Hat supports the following languages:
English
Q. Does Top Hat support mobile devices?
Top Hat supports the following devices:
Android (Mobile), iPhone (Mobile), iPad (Mobile)
Q. What other apps does Top Hat integrate with?
Top Hat integrates with the following applications:
CANVAS
Q. What level of support does Top Hat offer?
Top Hat offers the following support options:
Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support, 24/7 (Live rep), Chat
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