Top Hat

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About this article

This article provides an overview of the Top Hat student engagement system. It is intended for all members of the campus community.

What's Top Hat

Top Hat is a core application for WSU. It is similar to what has been called an audience response or "clicker" system. In the old days, clicker systems included a handheld device that resembled a television remote. Students purchased the clicker, carried it to class, and used it to submit responses to questions posed by an instructor. The instructor was equipped with a receiver plugged into her laptop and a software application that processed and presented the results immediately. Top Hat does all of that and more, without the clickers or the receiver. Students use their networked tablets, phones, or laptops to respond to questions. Their data is stored in the cloud and accessed by their instructors using their networked laptop or tablet, all within a fraction of a second. Instructors can use the Top Hat web application via their browsers to create questions, send those questions to students, and display the results. However, this describes just one of Top Hat's features. Top Hat is actually a suite of integrated tools that can be used inside and outside of the classroom to engage students in active learning and retain the outcomes of those activities for later review and reuse.

Additional features

  • Instructors can control a Top Hat session untethered, using their iPad or Andriod tablet
  • Students can use their iPad or Android tablet to respond to questions, participate in discussions, and view class materials
  • Students can respond to questions using SMS phone messages
  • Instructors can implement continuous discussions and polls
  • PowerPoint slideshows and other file types can be uploaded and presented to students from within Top Hat
  • Top Hat makes taking attendance quick and easy
  • Top Hat activities can be saved and reused within and across courses
  • Scores on Top Hat questions can be synchronized with your D2L grade book
  • D2L class lists can be imported into Top Hat, saving time and avoiding confusion

What's a Top Hat course?

Similar to D2L, your Top Hat activities are organized into courses. When you create a Top Hat account, you will be asked to create your first Top Hat course. Because many of you will be integrating your Top Hat courses with your D2L courses, you may want to name your Top Hat course accordingly (e.g., Fall 2014 PSY 325-02 Social Psychology). You can change the names of your courses later and you can create as many courses as you need.

Top Hat and D2L integration

You can decide whether to synchronize your Top Hat course with your D2L course. This is not required in order to use Top Hat. D2L synchronization has three consequences:

  • It copies all of your students' names, Tech IDs, and email addresses into your Top Hat courses' roster. You can re-synchronize whenever you want to import changes to your D2L class list (e.g., drops, adds). This makes it much easier to set up student accounts and invite them to your Top Hat course.
  • It creates a "Top Hat" column in your D2L grade book that will contain the sum of all the points your students obtained on all Top Hat activities in the course. Think of it as a participation score.
  • If your D2L course is merged across several sections, you will need to decide whether to synchronize with D2L, which would create accounts for all of the students in the merged course, or create separate Top Hat courses for each section. If you choose the latter, you will not be able to synchronize your Top Hat courses with D2L.

More information from Top Hat

Related articles

These articles provide more detailed information about configuring and using Top Hat:

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