Author Archive

Top Hat Staff

This post is written by the Top Hat editorial team.

  1. Video: Create a 50-Question Test in Under 2 Minutes

    How Top Hat can make building assessments quick, easy and painless

  2. How to Use Textbooks to Teach Generation Z

    The newest cohort of college students has a markedly different and more productive relationship with digital technology than their predecessors

  3. Behind the Soaring Cost of College Textbooks

    We look at the figures, the consequences—and the solutions

  4. In Lieu Of Textbooks, What Are Students Reading?

    Students are increasingly strategic when it comes to utilizing textbooks—and it’s up to professors to find solutions that ensure engagement

  5. Introduction to Psychology Textbooks: Which Is The Best?

    How leading introduction to psychology textbooks fare in the higher ed marketplace

  6. Toolkit: How to Fuel In-Class Engagement

    It’s the stuff of cold sweat nightmares: you’re midway through a semester you swore was going to be different. You came to each class with optimism and positivity, hoping your students would be more engaged this year. But they’re not, and grades are falling and you can just hear the nagging tone from your department […]

  7. The Downsides of Using Older Editions of Textbooks

    Textbook prices continue to be out of control—and one of the most common ways that students get around the issue of high prices is through buying older editions, which usually cost a fraction of the price. Normally, students manage to adapt; but there are some disadvantages to acquiring an older tome, and publishers are trying […]

  8. Public Speaking Textbooks: Which Is The Best?

    How leading public speaking textbooks fare in the higher ed marketplace

  9. General Chemistry Textbooks: Which Is The Best?

    How leading general chemistry textbooks fare in the higher ed marketplace

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  12. What You Need to Know About Millennial Faculty

    For Boomer and Gen X academics, here are five traits—including being teamwork-focused and boasting a reward-seeking mentality—your millennial coworkers may possess

  13. How Education Helped This Author Escape a Decade of Abuse

    There's far too much silence around domestic abuse, says bestselling author, speaker and UofT scholarship award winner Samra Zafar

  14. 4 Professors Share Their Work Burnout Stories

    Most faculty aren’t doing what they do for the money: it’s a vocation. But when you do what you love—and in particular for adjuncts, for little stability or monetary reward—it’s extremely easy to get overwhelmed and burn out. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and one of the major focuses in 2019 from organizers Mental […]

  15. Quiz: How Much Do You Really Know About Active Learning?

    When it comes to active learning, do you know your Bonwell from your Eison? Are you problem solving, or is everything just at the muddiest point? Try our quiz, just for fun, and see for yourself how much you know. Click here to take the quiz. Results guide 0%–30%: Your rating: Dolores Umbridge Even worse […]

  16. Change—and Persistence—Helps This Award-Winning Mathematician Thrive

    In our recurring series “Academic Admissions” we ask interesting people to tell us about the transformative role education has played in their lives. In this instalment, mathematician Dr. Priya Subramanian describes her cross-discipline and international quest to be one of the “why people”: and why that one more speculative e-mail sent in the middle of […]

  17. 3 Ways To Keep Your Teaching Nimble

    In this abridged extract from Top Hat’s new e-book, The Professor’s Guide to Agile Teaching, we look at three different ways that instructors in psychology, math and physiology make sure that their teaching is memorable, effective, and most of all, responds to the needs of their students without creating colossal amounts of work for teacher […]

  18. Classroom Response Software Lifts Engagement and Grades: Study

    In-class classroom response software, including Top Hat Classroom, has a profoundly positive effect on engagement—and a knock-on effect on grades, a new study in the March 2019 issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching says. The study, authored by Andrew J. Petto, Distinguished Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University […]

  19. 5 Professors Share Their Experiences of Imposter Syndrome

    Who do you think you are? What are you playing at? Sooner or later, somebody is going to find you out… Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Imposter syndrome—being continually plagued with the feeling that you’re not qualified—is endemic within academia. Although it happens to most academics, it’s particularly prevalent and toxic among those who identify […]

  20. How Interactivity Will Boost Learning in BVT’s Social Psychology Text

    Upgrading a print textbook to contain quizzes, surveys and checkpoints is far from a gimmick, according to psychology textbook author Stephen Franzoi. That’s why he’s transferring his current textbook, Social Psychology, to Top Hat’s digital platform. Franzoi builds self-report questionnaires into each of his chapters that students can take and then use to compare them […]