Top Hat, the leading active learning platform for higher education, today announced the release of six Top Hat Intro Courses—all-in-one digital course solutions that provide all the content and assessment tools professors need to deliver their perfect course, while remaining fully customizable to fit any classroom.
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Top Hat Intro Courses are all-in-one digital course solutions that provide all the content and assessment tools professors need to deliver their perfect course, while remaining fully customizable to fit any classroom. (Photo: Top Hat)
Top Hat Intro Courses: Full course solutions, all on one platform
Top Hat Intro Courses are the only full course solutions that enable professors to quickly and easily provide engaging and effective learning experiences while improving student outcomes. Interactive readings, assignments, lecture slides, instructor resources, and integrated assessment tools to gauge student comprehension before, during, and after class are all accessible from a single platform.
Every Top Hat Intro Course is designed so that professors can easily incorporate their own course materials, from text to slides to videos to quizzes. Additionally, Top Hat’s integrated gradebook and weekly reports on student progress equip professors with actionable insights to pinpoint difficult topics and identify struggling students so professors can intervene early.
“The most effective courses are the ones that enable professors to teach their students using a variety of approaches, tools, and content,” said Nick Stein, CMO, Top Hat. “With Top Hat Intro Courses, we are taking that approach one step further, to empower professors with flexible, affordable, and customizable content that motivates learners and ultimately supports student success.”
Today’s launch features the release of six Top Hat Intro Courses for four popular subjects:
– Top Hat Intro Course for Psychology
– Top Hat Intro Course for Economics, with separate textbooks: Principles of Economics, Principles of Macroeconomics, and Principles of Microeconomics
– Top Hat Intro Course for Anatomy & Physiology
– Top Hat Intro Course for Public Speaking
Chosen for their ability to have a big impact on student success, these subjects are taught in more than 42,000 courses, to more than 2.9 million students at colleges and universities across the United States. Top Hat Intro Courses incorporate interactive textbooks that have been used, modified, expanded, and improved by professors in the classroom for years. Based on feedback from our community of users, the authors have further strengthened and updated these texts to ensure a high-quality standard that also maintains affordability for students.
Changing the textbook paradigm
Overcoming the challenges faced by traditional standalone textbooks, Top Hat Intro Courses are:
– Designed for active learning: Student comprehension is supported through features like rollover definitions, interactive 3D models, comprehensive chapter summaries, and expansive study guides.
– Affordable: Top Hat Intro Course for Psychology is only $80 for the textbook and the full Top Hat platform, whereas publisher print textbooks bundled with their assessment platforms are $200 or more.
– Great for student engagement: Professors encourage student participation through interactive presentations packed with polls and assessments, facilitating engaging discussions via student devices.
– Holistic and seamless: All content is kept up to date and in one place, so professors never have to piece together textbook readings, e-learning modules, and other in-class materials.
– Customizable: Easy-to-use editing tools let professors adjust content to fit their curriculum.
– Rich with actionable insights: Data points and progress reports show professors where students are struggling, enabling them to easily reach out and intervene early.
Top Hat Intro Courses drive up the educational value for students by improving the quality and flexibility of content and instruction, with the ultimate goal of raising student success rates. Top Hat is focused on driving down the cost of higher education by offering affordable high-quality content. Through working with professors, Top Hat is supporting a new standard for how forward-thinking and engaged educators are setting up their students for success.
What Top Hat professors say
“Students like the continuity of what we cover in lecture and what’s in the textbook. They like that there’s no wasted space, they’re not forced to read something that doesn’t matter, because it’s not germane to what we’re discussing. There’s a tremendous energy barrier for students to participate. So we’re using all these techniques to reduce that energy barrier and encourage engagement, because when they participate, they learn, and they will gladly come afterwards into my office and ask more questions.”
— Joe Crivello, Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut, and the lead author of the Top Hat textbook Anatomy & Physiology in Context
“What I like most about the text is that it provides a lot of examples and gives feedback to students. It really helped students to understand the material more clearly. They know how to apply a theoretical concept to the real world. The instant feedback feature of the assignment does allow them to evaluate their understanding of the material instantly.”
— Megharanji Hazra, Lecturer of Economics and Top Hat Intro Course for Economics user, Towson University
“Top Hat has enabled me to deliver my course differently and allowed my students to review materials more effectively before exams. This is linked to higher exam scores and fewer failures compared to my previous five years of teaching this course.”
— Jamie Kleinman, Assistant Professor in Residence of Psychology and Top Hat Intro Course for Psychology user, University of Connecticut
“Any instructor will tell you that finding the right textbook is hard. You use maybe 60 percent of what’s in it and then you have to supplement with other materials. A teacher should adopt technology not because it makes their life easier, but because it makes student learning better. What sold me on Top Hat initially was the ability to provide quantitative and qualitative feedback through the app.”
— Luke Green, Instructor of Communications Studies, St. Cloud Technical & Community College, and contributing author of the Top Hat textbook Effective Public Speaking
About Top Hat
Top Hat’s interactive, cloud-based teaching platform enables professors to engage students inside and outside the classroom with compelling content, tools, and activities. Millions of students at 750 leading North American colleges and universities use the Top Hat teaching platform. To learn more, visit https://tophat.com.
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