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Blog Archive

  1. Ohio University Student Wins $50,000 Top Hat Scholarship

    First generation student Delia Grantham overcame early life struggles to embrace her studies and college experience

  2. 4 Ways Introverted Professors Can Succeed in the Classroom

    Getting outside your comfort zone and embracing your in-class personality are just a few of the ways introverted professors can face the challenges of a big group lecture

  3. How to Help Students Overcome Impostor Syndrome

    No one is immune to impostor syndrome’s effects, and millennials, faced with constant comparisons to friends’ accomplishments on social media, can be especially affected

  4. 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

  5. Open Educational Resources (OER): The Ultimate Guide

    Traditional textbooks—even electronic editions—are overpriced for students and for teachers, and worse still, the price of hard copy and e-books increases with each revised edition. Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming more widely adopted in the classroom for teaching and learning due to their flexibility, minimal costs and easier access for students. This guide outlines […]

  6. Introducing Top Hat’s New Gradebook

    Top Hat’s revised grade and attendance management system is designed to be intuitive and easy to learn. Product manager Karthiga Vezhavendan talks about the gradebook's great new features

  7. 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

  8. Agile Learning: Collaboration in the Classroom

    Agile learning takes its inspiration from the concept of ‘agile’ as used in the world of technology. Agile teams collaborate on projects and provide ongoing feedback, dealing with minor bumps in the road before they become major obstacles. If something doesn’t work, they change course. Agile methodology works in the tech industry, but it’s increasingly […]

  9. 5 Strategies for Improving Your Course Evaluation Results

    There are good reasons colleges conduct student course evaluations, though you might be forgetting them as you skim through your results. Were these students in the same classroom as you? How should you understand the comment that describes your delivery as “strict”? And what importance will college administrators attach to the finding that 22 percent […]

  10. How to Help Introverts Thrive in the Classroom

    Are you an introvert? Roughly one third to a half of the population feel most capable or alive in quiet environments. Author and speaker Susan Cain’s research centers around introverts, as the co-founder of the Quiet Revolution, a movement devoted to showcasing introverts’ strengths. She is also the author of Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths […]

  11. 4 Professors Share: What I Wish I Had Known

    How do you know if your teaching practice is effective—and whether you’re just teaching a certain way because that’s how your professors did it? In the spirit of reinvention—and remembering the ‘growth mindset,’ where making mistakes is an important part of getting better, here are four professors and how they decided to tweak their initial […]

  12. 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 […]

  13. How This Professor Became a Crusader For the Disenfranchised

    Sara Goldrick-Rab, the Temple University professor and scholar-activist working to make college more affordable and equitable, was disinterested in academia until she discovered her passion for creating change

  14. 2 Profs on the Benefits of a Course Refresh

    In this abridged extract from our new e-book, The Professor’s Guide to Agile Teaching, we look at a pair of professors who broke down and rebuilt the way they were teaching and changed their classes for the better. Candice Damiani Biology Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh Candice Damiani could have kept teaching the same old way. […]

  15. Work-Life Balance: A Guide for Professors

    Postsecondary educators, who often view their work as a vocation, are experiencing previously unseen levels of occupational stress. This guide will help you reach something more than work-life balance: a healthy integration of your career and your life

  16. How to Engage Students in Active Learning

    You’ve created new lesson plans and are experimenting with active learning in the classroom. The problem is, your students are completely resistant to the idea. Here’s how to engage students in active learning—even if they are initially reluctant. Active learning teaching strategies are effective teaching and learning methods. But that doesn’t mean everybody understands the […]

  17. How a Riot, a Rock Band and Rutgers Led to the Rise of Richard Florida

    Top Hat is the active learning platform that makes it easy for professors to engage students and build comprehension before, during and after class. This interview is part of our recurring series “Academic Admissions” where we ask interesting people to tell us about the transformative role education has played in their lives. For more than […]

  18. 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 […]

  19. The Professor’s Guide to Classroom Response Systems

    Learn how to effectively choose and use clickers in the classroom, and gain tactical insights from professors who have put them to work to improve student outcomes

  20. 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 […]