WestConn Students Think Top Hat Is Tops

• Using The Top Hat Web-based Response System In The Classroom

• By Scott Benjamin

Even though it was used for the first time as just an extra credit option last semester, Top Hat, the Web-based classroom-response system, made students more attentive and engaged.

“It was good to have something extra to do in the PowerPoint slide shows,” said Kara Bowman, who was one of the 11 students that used it in the on-ground section of PS 104: World Governments, Economies And Cultures that I taught at Western Connecticut State University during Spring 2013.

“You just weren’t staring at a bank of slides,” she added.

“It changes the atmosphere of the class,” said Mohsen Shahini, a co-founder of Top Hat in a May 2013 phone interview. “It makes the class more fun.”

Each student that participated paid $20 for a one-semester subscription and was able to earn five additional points on their course grade through extra credit by answering at least 75 percent of the questions that were posed during the various PowerPoint presentations.

To utilize Top Hat, they used a cellular phone or Ipad to access the text message number that appeared on the screen and then answer the multiple choice question.

The system would indicate on the screen what percentage of students had answered the question as they logged in and then after everyone had submitted their response, I would show the bar graphs indicating how many students had selected each answer. Student performance on each of the questions was recorded in Top Hat’s Web site.

Allan Trocolla, another student in the class, said in a phone interview that he benefitted from using Top Hat.

“You want to get the question right, “he said. “There is a sense of pride. Every time the Top Hat question went up there I made sure my phone was ready, because I don’t have a technological background.”

“It forced me to pay attention to the PowerPoint slides,” Bowman added.

Shahini said Top Hat, which has its headquarters in Toronto and affiliate offices in Chicago and San Francisco, launched the program in 2010 as an alternative to conventional clickers, which started to become popular in college courses around 2003.

He said Top Hat is less expensive than conventional clickers and is easier to access.

“My wife has said that with a clicker it is another thing that you have to bring to class,” Trocolla said. “You’re not going to forget your cell phone. You feel almost naked if you don’t have it with you.”

“I enjoyed using it because you didn’t need a clicker,” Bowman said.

Trocolla said that additional costs are not a concern for most students since they are already have “unlimited text messaging.”

Shahini said Top Hat’s program is better since there is less opportunity for cheating.

“Some instructors have said students will bring a friend’s clicker with them and use it even though the friend is absent from class,” Shahini said.

On another topic, he said when Top Hat launched its program some instructors feared that the use of cellular phones and Ipads would be a distraction.

However, Shahini said during the three years that Top Hat has been in business, instructors have said if the students are using Top Hat, then they have to be focused on the material and will not be using their mobile device for other purposes.

“Cell phones get abused in every class these days,” Trocolla said. “I don’t think that Top Hat is going to push the envelope on that. Some students will abuse it as is the case in any class.”

Based on the success this spring, I made Top Hat mandatory for my PS 102: American Government class, since the company recently began offering free access for students in classes with 29 or fewer students. We again used it with free access for a section of PS 104: World Governments, Economies And Cultures during Spring 2014.

In the reviews on Top Hat, some of the students in the Spring 2014 class said they hoped that more instructors at WCSU would use the Web-based clicker system.

“Part of the reason for doing it is to promote Top Hat,” Shahini said of the free access option. “We get about 85 percent of our revenue from the larger classes, so we are willing to make it available for free to the small classes. Our hope is that more professors will find it a success in their smaller classes and will continue to use it in their larger classes.”

“I think it would be great to use for everyone in the class if it was free, and you can justify using it with everyone with the $20 fee if the textbook costs are low in the course,” Trocolla said. “It is a good program because it gets people engaged in the material.”

Scott Benjamin is an adjunct instructor of Political Science at Western Connecticut State University.