Article Intended For
Instructors using Top Hat at Penn State
Introduction
Top Hat is a student engagement system and comprehensive teaching platform that instructors can use to engage students in and outside of the classroom with interactive slides, graded questions, customized content, videos, discussions, and polls. When integrated with Canvas, instructors can also seamlessly synchronize rosters and grades. Top Hat utilizes no separate hardware but rather asks students to use their smartphones, tablets, laptops, or ordinary cell phones to participate in activities. There is no additional cost to use Top Hat for Penn State students or instructors.
Article Body
How to Use in Teaching and Learning
- Take Attendance: Secure attendance technology for accurate recording of class attendance data.
- Polls & Quizzes: Increase student participation during class with the ability to create a variety of interactive content such as polls and quizzes in Top Hat to share seamlessly through Canvas or via a web browser.
- Integration with Canvas: Instructors can seamlessly synchronize rosters and grades.
- Learning Insights: Keep track on how students are doing in your course.
- Assignments: Create tailored assignments or upload questions for use in your course.
- Low-cost Interactive Textbooks: This feature is available for a discounted student rate.
- Features coming soon: Lecture Recordings, Virtual Classroom Streaming, and Slate Course Communications.
Deep Linking
Penn State IT has updated Top Hat to now allow deep linking of assignments and modules in Canvas.
This integration enables instructors to map a course in Canvas to a course in Top Hat by deep linking an assignment or module, allowing students to be taken directly to the Top Hat page.
To use the Top Hat deep linking integration in Canvas, it is important to note the following:
- Only deep links to Top Hat pages are currently supported. Deep links to other content types like folders, questions, and tests are not supported.
- Syncing of due dates and assignment status is currently not supported. This means that if the value is changed in one application, the change will not automatically be reflected in the other application.
- When creating an assignment in Canvas which links to a graded page in Top Hat, make sure to set points to zero if you plan to sync grades using the Canvas Sync functionality in Top Hat.
Please refer to these Top Hat help articles for more information:
Top Hat Help Articles
Use the follow articles to help integrate Top Hat into your course:
- Professor: Quick Start Guide
- Professor: Creating Your Account and Courses
- Professor: Creating Additional Courses
- Professor: Setting up the Canvas Integration
- Professor: Inviting Students to Your Course
- Professor: Taking attendance
- Professor: Top Hat Questions
- Professor: Creating a Pages Content Item
- Professor: Creating Discussions
- Professor: Getting Started With Top Hat Test
- Professor: Uploading and managing slides
- Professor: Presenting slides
- Professor: Uploading Files for Student Download
- Professor: Folder Management
- Professor: Teaching Assistants
- Connect a Course to Top Hat in Canvas
- Deep Linking to Assignments and Module in Canvas
For questions about Top Hat (e.g. functionality, installation, etc.), please contact the Top Hat support team directly by email (support@tophat.com), using the in app support button, or calling 1-888-663-5491.
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