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Top Hat Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8 out of 10
Score
8 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Top Hat are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

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.

Reviews

3 Reviews

Top Hat Review

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

VU
Verified User
Professional in Finance and Accounting (5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Top Hat
3 years of experience

Top Hat brought life to my classroom!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think Top Hat can be used in any classroom size to help student learning. it is user-friendly for both students and teachers.

RN
Ricardo Nogueira
Senior lecture at Georgia State University (5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Top Hat
3 years of experience

Top Hat is a worthwhile replacement to Turning Technologies

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Top Hat
4 years of experience