Top Hat Student Review

It has helped me so much with this class. It has given me a new way to go about grasping the material and I would highly suggest it to other people.

Pros

I used it in my economics class, and we had embedded questions within our chapters. It really makes you slow down to understand and grasp the concepts.

Cons

We had problems with being able to go back and view which questions were answered correctly or incorrectly. I also wish there were more functions like notes and bookmarks along with the highlighting.

Top Hat

Overall, Top Hat is easy to use and seems to make life easier for professors. However, it is not the most cost effective for students who must pay out of pocket for the service each time their classes require it.

Pros

Top Hat is easy for both me and my professors to use. It's clean, sleek, and extremely user-friendly. Top Hat is also device-friendly and I've had a great experience using the mobile app on my iPhone. I like that my professors are able to embed questions within our lectures, which aids in my learning and makes sure I am understanding the material being presented in the lectures.

Cons

As a student, my least favorite thing about Top Hat is the pricing. Although my classes require Top Hat, the cost is not covered by university tuition and class fees. In addition, Top Hat makes you pay based on how long you will need the software. You can pay for an entire year, which would end up cheaper if most of your classes use Top Hat. However, you may end up paying for the entire year when you only need it for 3 months if only one of your classes requires it.

It works, but isn't the most cost effective solution

Pros

Students answer questions in real time and the percentages of what answers were chosen can then be displayed.

Cons

As a student who had to use the software, the cost can be annoying. You have to pay based on how long you think you'll need the software, which you won't always know if you're not sure whether future classes will use the software. For example, you might decide to pay for 1 years use because it's "cheaper" over time, but you only ended up having a class use it for 3 months. So you wasted money paying for the rest of the subscription and the company gets more money from struggling college students. And of course, the opposite could happen where you pay for 1 quarter, then another classes uses it and you'd have to pay for it again. Before Top Hat came along, iClicker was the more commonly used tech and does the same job. With iClicker, you only had to pay one time for the remote and then you could sell the remote to another student, which was much more cost effective for students.

top hat for organic chemistry

I have been using Top Hat for last 3 years, it makes my in-person and online quizzes and exams go smoothly.

Pros

It is very convenient to design online quizzes and exams using top-hat. I use this for my organic chemistry classes, it is easy to draw the chemical structures

Cons

students complaint little bit about pricing, honestly it is not that expensive, otherwise it is user friendly software.

Testing my students

I could not run in class quizzes without this software. It has made this part of the course easy to administer.

Pros

This software has made giving in class quizzes very easy. I use it every semester and have had a great experience with administering the quizzes and grading them. It has made it easy to go over material and to provide immediate feedback.

Cons

I would like them to add a feature that allows for grading of word answers. I have to look at all the different spellings of a word. It would be nice to have a wild card or contains option for answers