TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Top Hat

Score8 out of 10

3 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is Top Hat?

Top Hat supports student engagement for higher education. Grounded in learning science, the platform and content solutions help educators create interactive, personalized learning experiences with the goal of boosting student engagement, belonging, and success.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Top Hat.
View all reviews

Top Hat brought life to my classroom!

Incentivized
Ricardo Nogueira
Senior lecture at Georgia State University (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

  • I use Top Hat as a discussion tool where the students can write what they have learned or what they haven't.
  • Exams are taken in class and are totally paperless with grades available immediately.

Cons

  • It would be great if the exams could have settings to set-up start and finish times.
  • The grade book still needs improvement in the formatting.

Return on Investment

  • Students are paying less for their course material
  • Increased student participation.

Alternatives Considered

Intelliclick

Top Hat Review

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Finance and Accounting (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used in a course as a standalone learning management system platform which was used for courses where students login to collect, download, and access course contents. Lecture slides and presentations are posted to the class site platform for students. There are a few interactive applications and tools, for example polls and checkpoints, which were utilized to help with student engagement.

Pros

  • Offers a good variety of interactive tools such as polls and quizzes
  • It is relatively easy to create and customize pages on the class site
  • Educators have access to good analytics and insightful performance information

Cons

  • When creating polls/quizzes a way to make it a bit easier to build from templates
  • More prompt and guided support for students
  • Some ability for offline updates and updates once logged back online

Most Important Features

  • Polls and Quizzes creation
  • Data and Class Performance Reports
  • Relatively easy or intuitive for educators to use

Return on Investment

  • Positive return on investment providing one platform that has many features
  • Reduces complexity of requiring to use multiple learning management systems
  • Provides good oversight for student attendance with its location feature

Alternatives Considered

Canvas LMS

Top Hat is a worthwhile replacement to Turning Technologies

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy to use.
  • Many question types beyond multiple choice.
  • Attendance.
  • Gradebook syncing.

Cons

  • If students are paying, it's a confusing onboarding process for students and instructors and could be better streamlined.
  • The Android app not as well polished as iOS.
  • A better, free, or ad-supported model might be more palpable to students.
  • Integration directly with PowerPoint -- not requiring instructors to upload their slides to Top Hat.

Return on Investment

  • One of the better ways to track attendance in a mostly secure and automated way.
  • Promotes more active learning, especially in large classrooms.
  • Unpopular if students have to pay.