The first session of Top Hat Day at Altoona focused on some of the lesser known and interesting features of Top Hat. In this post, let’s look at those features and review some of the notes that Top Hat had for each of them. Take a look at what makes the most sense for your use case and try it out!
Highlight 1: Attendance
Top Hat allows you to take attendance quickly and easily with a unique code each time it is used. Students can “sign in” to class and instructors can keep track of their students more efficiently with this feature. This can be particularly helpful for larger class sizes, but is generally useful to monitor student progress in a course. Keeping track of student attendance might provide a data point to focus on if students are struggling or need additional supports.
There are three Top Hat Attendance options for you to choose from:
- Attendance: This is the default option that can be used for any teaching modality. This will simply generate a code for students to enter to confirm that they are in attendance.
- Secure Attendance: This is a location-based attendance feature that should only be used for in-person classes. With this feature, a perimeter is created in the room based on the initial entry and uses Bluetooth on the students’ devices to confirm that they are nearby. This requires students to have location permission enabled and should always be double-checked.
- Hybrid Attendance: This attendance feature allows students to self-report whether they are attending in-person or online and would be useful in hybrid course offerings. This mode cannot be used simultaneously with the Secure Attendance feature.
When using these Attendance options, make sure you select Finish at the end of your session to ensure the attendance is accurately logged in the Top Hat gradebook.
Highlight 2: Click on Target Questions
Click on target questions are one of the many question types that Top Hat polling provides. These questions allow you to upload an image and have students identify a requested target on the image. Their submissions can then be viewed as a heat map. This question type would be extremely useful in courses with a lot of complex visuals, but could also be used in any course to help instructors learn more about their students at the beginning of the course by asking them questions about where they are from on a world map or how they might be feeling about the semester with emojis.
Highlight 3: Slide Drawer
While many instructors using Top Hat are familiar with the Present button to begin sharing Top Hat content like questions, discussions, and slides, the Slide Drawer gives you access to any point in that folder of content. This feature allows for easier navigation through course content and gives you the opportunity to revisit these items as you progress through your lessons.
Highlight 4: Question Report Sessions
The Question Session feature creates a new “session” each time you re-ask a multiple choice question, displaying a comparison of student submissions over time. This would be a great way to track changes in student learning over time or to encourage discussion between students in the classroom. To enable this feature, instructors should check the box that says “If a question is presented multiple times, keep a record of all sessions instead of overwriting previous responses” from the Advanced Settings tab of the course.
Highlight 5: Word Clouds for Word Answers
Word Answer questions are a great way to get more active input from students regarding their understanding of course concepts. One way to display this is through a Word Cloud that provides a colorful and informative visual of student responses to help generate further discussions. This could be used as a pre-assessment of current understanding on a course topic, which could then be unpacked in activities like class discussions or Think-Pair-Share tasks. It is important to note that Word Answer questions work best when they are set up to have students enter one to two words rather than a full sentence.
Highlight 6: Different Ways to Use Discussions
Top Hat Discussions are probably the most underutilized feature in Top Hat at our campus but has so much potential both in and out of the classroom. Instructors can ask their students a question that requires a longer response (up to 5000 characters), getting subjective and interpretive answers from them, gaining real-time feedback on lectures by allowing them to ask questions, and facilitating dialogue between students. These Discussions can be presented in class or assigned for time outside of class.
Highlight 7: Testing on Top Hat
Top Hat provides the ability to give mostly secure online testing for live testing sessions using a student’s device instead of a university computer. This feature allows for a variety of testing options and course setups, including a lockdown browser that produces a Proctor Report as students are taking their assessment. While you are able to create, manage, and deliver these assessments on your own, you may also choose to give your current test to Top Hat to recreate it for you using their Concierge Service. Our recommendation is to give students a chance to use Top Hat Test prior to the day of your assessment so they can become familiar with the platform and know how to use it beforehand.
Highlight 8: Assign as Review
Assigning content in Review mode makes it visible to your students without having to grade it in Top Hat. Students are able to attempt any questions assigned in Review mode, check their understanding, and show the correct answer. This would be a great feature to use to help students prepare for an upcoming exam or as a post-reading/pre-lecture check for understanding of course content.
Highlight 9: File Submission and Aktiv
While regular File Submission through Canvas is always an option, Top Hat also provides a feature that allows instructors to collect student work. This use case would be good for open-ended essays, projects, or papers that are more robust than the other question types Top Hat provides. Top Hat has also partnered with the Aktiv Learning Platform to provide options for practicing with the math and science fields, including some practice questions, smart suggestions to focus less on spelling complex terms, scaffolded exercises, and a structural grid for visual representations of chemical and mathematical formulas.
Highlight 10: ACE and Class Threads
Finally, Top Hat has a few upcoming features that provide exciting learning opportunities for students: ACE and Class Threads. ACE is an AI-powered question creator that allows for faster and easier ways to integrate formative assessment questions in course content. With the click of a button, instructors can develop questions based on content provided in Top Hat. Class Threads allows students to ask questions to their peers about content they’re consuming in Top Hat and lets them reply to one another as support for complex topics. While these features are not yet available with the Penn State license, the University is actively working to incorporate these features in the coming months.
Try out some of the features in the Ten Things list above as you explore Top Hat further. Come back to our Spotlight Series tomorrow for a recap of the Faculty Panel session during Top Hat Day!
