Top Hat
Top Hat is an active learning platform that helps instructors increase student engagement through interactive features like polls, quizzes, discussions and real-time feedback.
- Students no longer need to purchase a license for Top Hat. However, they still need to create a Top Hat account.
- Accounts for UB faculty and staff are still available at no cost.
- In courses where the instructor uses a Top Hat Textbook or other fee-based content, students will need to pay for the content when registering their Top Hat accounts in their courses, or they can purchase the content directly from the University at Buffalo Bookstore.
Top Hat Features
- Discussions: Foster collaboration, critical thinking and community by posing questions and discussion prompts students can answer on any device.
- Polls & Quizzes: Keep your students engaged with 14 question types, including click-on-target, word answer and multiple choice, and immediately see how they’re responding.
- Assignments & Exams: Make homework a learning experience with interactive assignments and multimedia. Our formative and summative assessments put students’ knowledge to the test.
- Automatic Attendance: Automate attendance in any in-person or online course and get instant insights to help at-risk students.
- Pages Content Editor: Create interactive, personalized content that reflects your students and community.
- Customizable Textbooks: Packed with interactive features and the ability to edit, Top Hat textbooks take dynamic learning to a new level.
- Interactive Labs: Adopt and personalize virtual lab manuals with interactive diagrams, animations, and video demos.
- Real-Time Data: Top Hat creates actionable insights from attendance, quiz, poll, assignment and test data, so you can improve learning in the moment and over time.
- Accessibility: Our dynamic courseware is designed to meet or exceed internationally recognized accessibility standards and offers flexible options for individual students.
- LMS Integration: Top Hat seamlessly integrates with your LMS (Blackboard) for a better course experience.
- Top Hat Ace Lecture Enhancer: Generate questions from your slide content with one click and edit content as you sit fit. With Ace, save time on course prep and incorporate formative assessments to drive student engagement and gain insight early and often.
- Top Hat Ace, AI-Powered Questions in Pages: Generate questions, hints, and explanations based on your course content and give your students more opportunities for practice and immediate feedback.
- Top Hat Ace, Study Assistant: Now when students are looking for help on assignments, they don’t have to leave the learning environment to find assistance. Ace offers AI-powered study support in the moment, when and where students need it.
Instructor: Teaching Resources
Instructor: Creating and Managing Accounts
You must use your UBITName and password to access your Top Hat account.
Creating an account
- Go to tophat.com.
- Create Your Account in the upper-right corner.
- Click I’m a Educator.
- Click Sign-up.
- Search for University at Buffalo SUNY.
Click Log in with school account. - Enter your UBITName and password.
- Click Sign up as a Professor under I'd like to create a new account.
- Enter your first and last names.
- Click Get started.
Additional information about Top Hat accounts
Instructor: Creating Content
Instructor: Top Hat’s AI-Powered Teaching & Learning Assistant
Top Hat Content Solutions
Content Solutions in Top Hat include authored textbooks complete with teaching resources, OpenStax content that is interactive, custom textbooks and content designed for your course.
- Top Hat Textbooks are authored by experts in their field and produced by Top Hat’s editorial team. These teaching resources can be personalized for your course.
- OpenStax content is optimized for Top Hat’s dynamic courseware and can be personalize for your course. Top Hat can help to optimize any OER material for your course (courses must meet criteria to qualify).
- Top Hat Pages allows instructors to create and edit original, interactive and personalized content for your students.
Top Hat Accounts
You can use your UBITName credentials to access your Top Hat account. The instructions will vary slightly depending on whether or not you are brand new to Top Hat or if you've previously created a Top Hat account.
If you need to create a Top Hat account
Top Hat has created a document to help instructors create new accounts.
If you already have a Top Hat account
- Go to tophat.com using your computer (note: you must use a web browser; you cannot use a mobile app).
- Click the Login link in the top-right corner of the page.
- You may see University at Buffalo SUNY in the School field. If not, begin typing and click the University at Buffalo SUNY link from the drop-down list.
- Click Log in with school account.
- Use your UBITName and password to log in.
Top Hat Support: Videos
The Top Hat Educator Playlist features bite-sized videos to help master the fundamentals and learn how other educators are implementing Top Hat to drive engagement before, during and after class.
If you have 5-10 minutes…
If you have 20-30 minutes…
Top Hat Support: Contact
Top Hat maintains a Knowledge Base with product information and best practices.
Questions?
Instructors and students can reach out to Top Hat’s dedicated support team.
- Live chat in Top Hat’s platform: Located next to your name, in the top-right corner of your screen when in Top Hat.
- Phone: 1-888-663-5491, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- Email: support@tophat.com
- Top Hat’s dedicated representatives for UB:
- Contact Form: https://success.tophat.com/contact
Additional Resources