In an effort to save out-of-pocket costs for students, UW–Madison purchased a Top Hat enterprise license that takes effect for the fall 2022 semester.
Top Hat is an active learning platform that provides instructors with multiple ways to engage students, including online homework and in-class interactive activities and polls. Top Hat is a bring-your-own-device solution, which means that students can use any web-enabled device (laptop, tablets, smartphones) to participate.
Although Top Hat has been part of the Learn@UW suite since 2016, the cost for using the tool was previously covered by students who purchased individual subscriptions. This new license will allow all UW–Madison students to use the tool without purchasing subscriptions.
Students who paid for a license that runs concurrent with the enterprise license are eligible for a refund. If you paid for an individual subscription, you should have already received this refund on the method of payment you used to purchase your license from Top Hat. Those eligible for refunds were sent an email confirmation on August 18 from DoIT.
Going forward, students do not need to purchase Top Hat licenses out of pocket. As long as you are a registered student at UW–Madison, you will have access to Top Hat.
New Top Hat version available now
In addition to the enterprise license, a new version of the Top Hat/Canvas integration has been put in place. The new integration, based on the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) 1.3 specification, uses an improved security model and will enable syncing of rosters from Canvas to Top Hat, as well as deep linking to assignments and syncing of grades from Top Hat to Canvas.
Please refer to the KB article “Top Hat – Overview (UW–Madison)” to get started. Instructors and students can get support directly from Top Hat by contacting their Success Center, or by phone at 888-663-5491.