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Top Hat

Top Hat

Overview

What is Top Hat?

Toronto-based Top Hat offers their higher education teaching apps, comprising Top Hat Classroom supporting flipped classroom and gamified lessons, Top Hat Textbook for delivering course content, Top Hat Assignment for customizable quizzes and graded tasks or homework, and Top Hat…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Top Hat is a versatile tool that caters to various needs in the education sector. Users have praised its ease of use and engaging …
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Top Hat Review

8 out of 10
January 24, 2023
Incentivized
Used in a course as a standalone learning management system platform which was used for courses where students login to collect, download, …
Continue reading
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Pricing

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Pro

$30

Cloud
per term (4 months) per student

Basic

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://tophat.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $30 per term (4 months) per student
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Product Demos

Top Hat Demo

YouTube

Back to the Rat Pack - Dean, Frank, Sammy & Liza - Demo

YouTube

Folkmanis® Rabbit In Hat Puppet Demo

YouTube

Newborn Elimination Communication Supplies Demo (2018)

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Top Hat?

Top Hat Videos

The Top Hat Experience
How to use Top Hat for Active Learning

Top Hat Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(3)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Top Hat is a versatile tool that caters to various needs in the education sector. Users have praised its ease of use and engaging interface, making it a valuable resource for both instructors and students. One of the key use cases of Top Hat is creating and administering quizzes, allowing educators to test students' knowledge and track their performance and areas for improvement. The platform also offers a feature for tracking participation, simplifying the process of allocating participation points at the end of the term. Additionally, Top Hat's ability to poll large classes during lectures promotes student engagement and improves overall evaluations. Instructors appreciate the opportunity to receive feedback from students during lectures, enhancing the learning experience. Top Hat is considered a user-friendly application for learners, making it easy for them to go through their lessons.

Another important use case of Top Hat is facilitating in-person and online quizzes and exams. Educational institutions commonly use this software to take attendance and administer quiz questions, with scores accessible through the app or website. Many instructors have found that running in-class quizzes has become easier to administer, simplifying this aspect of the course. The convenience of a user-friendly dashboard and accessibility through phone apps makes Top Hat a popular choice among users. However, some users have experienced challenges when using Top Hat for computer science or math courses due to issues with mathematical symbols and Unicode characters.

In higher education settings, Top Hat primarily aims to enhance student engagement, academic performance, and increase student retention. Users appreciate the ability to stay more engaged with class lectures, especially in remote settings where interaction can be challenging. The software's real-time assessment capabilities also make it a valuable tool for instructors to monitor student learning progress effectively. Furthermore, Top Hat benefits self-directed learning, interactive learning, and quizzing by providing active learning modules.

Beyond traditional educational settings, Top Hat has potential applications in businesses as well. It allows companies to ask questions and gather opinions efficiently. Moreover, the software enables great training and classroom management, allowing questions to be asked within large groups without disrupting the class. Large lecture-based classes particularly benefit from Top Hat, ensuring student engagement and collaboration.

Overall, Top Hat has received positive feedback from both instructors and students for its effectiveness in enhancing the learning experience. Whether it is used for creating quizzes, taking attendance, fostering student engagement, or facilitating assessments, Top Hat proves to be a valuable asset in classroom settings.

Effective tool for large classrooms: Users have found Top Hat to be an effective tool for quickly answering questions in large classrooms, where professors may find it challenging to monitor attendance. It has been praised by many reviewers.

Remote access via smartphone: The remote access feature of Top Hat through smartphones has received high praise from users. They appreciate the ability to claim attendance and bonus points even when they are not physically present in the lecture.

Versatile accessibility: Many users appreciate the versatility of Top Hat as it can be accessed from smartphones and the internet, allowing them to use it anytime and anywhere.

Complicated User Interface: Several users have expressed frustration with the user interface of Top Hat, describing it as complicated and difficult to navigate. This has caused trouble for a significant number of people who found it challenging to use effectively.

Glitches and Lag: Numerous reports have surfaced regarding glitches and lag when using Top Hat, particularly during times of high usage. These technical issues have been observed by multiple reviewers and have impacted the accuracy of attendance tracking.

Web Version Layout: The layout of the web version of Top Hat has received criticism from several users who consider it to be poorly designed and not very user-friendly. They have struggled with navigating through the platform due to its unintuitive layout.

Users commonly recommend Top Hat for its user-friendly interface, affordability in comparison to textbooks, and the convenience of its mobile version. They suggest utilizing Top Hat for remote classes and highly recommend it for both pre- and in-class activities/assignments. Users also advise conducting pilot-testing with students before fully implementing the software. Although some users have encountered issues with attendance, they still suggest using Top Hat's app alongside an in-person form of attendance. Moreover, users recommend exploring alternative cost-minimizing options in order to achieve academic goals due to the relatively higher cost of Top Hat for a single semester's use. In general, users highly recommend signing up for and testing out Top Hat, particularly for educators running classes.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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January 24, 2023

Top Hat Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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
  • 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
Top Hat is well suited for courses where students are comfortable with utilizing online learning management system as part of their course contents. It is more appropriate to use Top Hat as a stand-alone learning management system or if the school happens to have it integrated to the system. It is not recommended to use Top Hat and another platform or system for students as this would be too much for students.
  • Polls and Quizzes creation
  • Data and Class Performance Reports
  • Relatively easy or intuitive for educators to use
  • 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
Top Hat generally stacks up pretty well against other industry leading or popular learning management systems. Top Hat is comparable to learning management systems used in most educational institutions. The features such as allowing the educator to create an interactive experience by leveraging tools such as quizzes and polls is comparable. Data on student performance is also a helpful feature that is comparable to that of other similar learning management systems.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I don't know how many faculties are using Top Hat in the whole Georgia State University. In my department, there are three users, including myself. We use Top Hat to increase student participation in a more dynamic way.
It addresses the lack of students' interaction during lectures, with participation, discussion, attendance, and more. I personally use it for my face-to-face and online classes. I also have written a textbook using Tophat as a platform and it has been well-reviewed by the students. Overall, students are getting better grade distribution in my classes.
  • 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.
  • 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.
I think Top Hat can be used in any classroom size to help student learning. it is user-friendly for both students and teachers.
  • Students are paying less for their course material
  • Increased student participation.
Top Hat is much more friendly to use and has more capabilities.
They are very helpful and fast to resolve any issues.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Top Hat is used across the whole organization. Top Hat was originally piloted to replace Turning Technologies, which was having difficulties with stability and pricing as they moved from strictly a hardware solution to their cloud solution. It is used mostly for keeping students engaged in classrooms, particularly the larger courses. It is also used as an attendance tracking tool that syncs with the instructor's gradebook. Because it is a BYOD (bring-your-own-device), it was easier for instructors to implement and ensure students were able to participate.
  • Easy to use.
  • Many question types beyond multiple choice.
  • Attendance.
  • Gradebook syncing.
  • 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.
Top Hat is best suited if the institution is seriously able to consider purchasing a sitewide license. Making students pay in order to participate or take attendance is a hard pill to swallow. Also, if Top Hat is used for grading purposes it puts a very high bar to ensure all the technology works every single time. Can the wifi network handle the additional load of hundreds of students all pinging the access point at the same time? If students are paying, they will expect perfection or riot. It's a bit of chicken and the egg issue. Many faculty will not adopt Top Hat or response collection system if students have to pay for it, regardless of whether it provides educational value. However, it's hard to warrant a sitewide license if there's not a great deal of usage of across campus.
  • 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.
Turning Technologies' bread and butter was its rock-solid integration with PowerPoint and physical devices. Their move to the cloud was a very rocky road and opened the door to Top Hat who was a cloud-first solution. Overall Turning Technologies was better at ensuring every student could participate assuming they bought the clicker and registered. However, as they pushed their cloud solution, more and more issues crept up, to where it made sense to consider going to a full cloud implementation.
The initial rollout of Top Hat was not without its issues. Top Hat was very responsive, and even sent representatives to be onsite during the first couple of days of the start of class to help instructors and students. They were very knowledgeable about the product, but the sales team was pushy at times. At several times, we had to inform them not to reach out to instructors directly to pitch their service while we were still piloting.
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