No matter the subject you teach, increasing student engagement and sense of belonging is a vital part of the educational experience. Have you had difficulty getting your students engaged in a large lecture course? Notice the same students repeatedly answering questions? It can feel, despite your best efforts to be inclusive, that you’re not reaching all students during class. Tools like Top Hat provide a low-barrier way to expand the reach and engagement with your students.
Top Hat is a student response system available to all students and instructors at UW–Madison, for-credit and non-credit alike. Top Hat has many uses and functionalities – you can even use it to take attendance! – but the functions that most encourage community and belonging are its polling and discussion functionalities.
Polling allows instructors to ask questions that all students can answer in real time, with anonymity if desired, including multiple choice questions, true/false questions, or click-on target questions. Instead of waiting for a student to raise their hand and respond (or the same ten students to raise their hands and respond), Top Hat prompts all students for answers then displays the aggregated results for both you and the students.
Top Hat’s discussion functionality allows instructors to solicit ideas and feedback from more students than simply asking students to raise their hands. Discussions allow you to request free-form responses that are then seen by you and students, enabling you and the students to engage and respond to each other. Students who may be shy or otherwise unwilling to engage are given a new way to contribute in class, helping them feel part of the course. Like with polling, you can make discussions anonymous if desired.
Want to learn more about using Top Hat in your classroom? Our Learn@UW consultants are here to help. Schedule a meeting with your local instructional technologist or call the Help Desk to schedule time with an Academic Technology consultant. You can also check out what UW–Madison students think about Top Hat in our Spring 2024 survey results.