As the landscape of higher education has changed over the last few decades, finding reliable and high-quality learning materials has become essential for student success. However, one barrier students face when interacting with these materials is the rising cost of textbooks. Open and Affordable Educational Resources (OAER) can offer an alternative to the traditional textbook-purchasing model, providing students with quality content at a much more affordable price point. Top Hat offers some of those materials for a variety of content areas through their platform. We were able to learn more about these options during our third Top Hat Day session.
Top Hat x OpenStax Offerings
Top Hat has partnered with OpenStax to offer instructors the opportunity to incorporate certain texts into their courses by pulling from their catalog. Due to this collaboration and the Penn State contract with Top Hat, we have access to a wide variety of texts and materials. While every content area is not represented on the platform, the following areas do have texts for instructors to review:
- Science & Math
- Anatomy & Physiology
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Earth Sciences
- Math
- Medicine & Health
- Physics
- Statistics
- Social Science
- Anthropology
- Cultural & Religious Studies
- Economics
- Education
- Law
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Arts & Humanities
- Communication & Media
- History
- Languages
- Literature
- Philosophy
- Visual & Performing Arts
- Business
- Economics
- Ethics
- Finance & Accounting
- Management
- Marketing
- Technology
- Engineering
As can be seen in the list above, there is quite an array of options that can be easily embedded into your Top Hat course. Additionally, this catalog is constantly changing, so even if your content is not currently represented, keep checking back to see what updates come in the future.
Why You Might Consider Top Hat OAER
Aside from the affordability factor that Top Hat OAER options can provide, integrating OpenStax textbooks on the platform can offer benefits for both instructors and students. Namely, there is an opportunity for fostering student engagement while reading. By embedding supplementary Top Hat content into OpenStax material, instructors can help guide their students on the main ideas as they read. Providing this seamless learning experience for students can assist in adjusting instruction for the students in front of you rather than the generic student.
For example, instructors may ask their students to complete an assigned reading with some multiple choice questions testing students on what they read to help with longer term retention of the information they are reading. This data can then be recorded in the Top Hat gradebook, giving instructors valuable formative insights into how students are engaging with the content prior to class and what gaps they may need to address as they begin their lecture. In this scenario, a class session could also begin by reviewing those questions as a class and having students explain the rationale for those answers to those who may have gotten them wrong while reading. By seamlessly integrating polling questions and other interactive elements into course readings, instructors can gauge student understanding and reinforce key concepts in real-time.
In fact, one Altoona instructor, Nick Pyeatt, Associate Professor of Political Science, has already been using a textbook from Top Hat’s catalog for three semesters. He was initially interested in the product because of its customization and intuitive setup, allowing him to offer low-stakes assignments to promote student reading, much like the example above. Nick mentioned that “students have found the product generally easy to use and it seems to have fewer technical issues than some other products.” He also expressed how responsive their customer service and technical support staff have been when issues have arisen.
There are so many different ways you may want to leverage this tool in your classes and speaking with the Office of Instructional Design or Top Hat instructional designers may help you visualize what this could look like in your courses.
So Now What?
For instructors looking to explore Top Hat’s OAER options, the next steps are fairly simple. To start, it is recommended that new users of these readings look through Top Hat’s Catalog and begin looking through what is already available. Using the search feature on that page can help narrow down some of your options and begin to explore content that makes sense for your course.
As you look through texts, pay attention to any costs that may exist or whether the text is free so that you can indicate the course materials section of your syllabus. Be aware that some texts come with a discount for Penn State students based on our contract with Top Hat and OpenStax, so some prices may actually be lower than appear in the catalog. After finding an appropriate text for your course, it is strongly recommended that instructors reach out to Top Hat directly to get some more information on pricing models and specific recommendations for using the text in their courses.
Once the text has been chosen for the course, instructors will have the ability to assign that course content and any included assessments to students. Students will access their interactive eText with the unique 6-digit code that gives them access to your Top Hat course. From there, they can enter any payment information that may be required and begin to interact with the course content you assign.
The integration of OAER options through the Top Hat platform provides a unique opportunity to help students navigate the costs of higher education and instructors gain powerful insights into their students’ learning. If you have any questions about how to get started with these offerings or want to talk through how you might use these resources, feel free to reach out and get an initial conversation started.
