Top Hat is a teaching tool that enables instructors to engage students with compelling content and activities, online, in person, or both. Top Hat is a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) solution and students use their phones, tablets, or laptops to interact with the instructor and with each other. (Note: Several years ago, Top Hat was selected as a replacement for hardware-based "clickers".)
The primary features of Top Hat
Popular Uses
Some of the more popular uses of Top Hat include presenting interactive questions in class and generating conversation with Top Hat discussions. Instructors find value in garnering more participation using Top Hat, especially in large enrollment courses. Responses can be displayed in real time which helps instructors gauge student comprehension and/or student attitudes, depending on the question design. Teaching can then be better tailored, using these learning insights. Attendance is another popular use of Top Hat along with assignments and quizzes.
See Top Hat - Learning is Active video, an overview of using Top Hat features to improve your students' learning and make teaching more fun and effective.
Getting Started with Top Hat
Instructors
At the most basic level, there are 4 steps to getting started with Top Hat.
- Create a professor account and a course using your NC State credentials. [Instructions]
- Create Top Hat activities. [Instructions on creating questions]
- Add students to the Top Hat course.
- Conduct your Top Hat activities. [Instructions on asking a question]
We strongly recommend that you complete the Professor: Quick Start Guide to master the Top Hat basics. We also created an article called "Using Top Hat" which outlines key resources so you can learn to use Top Hat effectively.
Students
NC State's campus license allows students to use Top Hat Pro at no cost.
To use Top Hat, students must create a student account using their NC State credentials. They will need a wireless device, which in most cases will be a web-enabled smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer.
Students can also submit most types of answers via text message using an ordinary cell phone; however, some question types cannot be answered via text messaging. For details, see Student: SMS/Text Message Submissions.
For instructions on setting up your Top Hat account, see the NC State University – Single Sign-On Account Setup and Student: Quick Start Guide.
Browser requirements
Web
For the best user experience, Top Hat recommends one of the following web browsers:
- Chrome (supporting last 3 major versions)
- Mozilla Firefox (supporting last 3 major versions)
Top Hat also supports the following web browsers:
- Safari (supporting last 3 major versions)
- Edge (supporting last 3 major versions)
Mobile
The supported iOS platforms are iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touches running either of the two latest versions. The supported Android platforms are phones and tablets running the latest OS version. Note that Android variants such as the Fire OS (Kindle Fire), Silent OS (Blackphone), YunOS, and the Nokia X Platform are not supported.