In 2025, educators and students didn’t just adapt to AI—they elevated it. With Ace, Top Hat’s AI-powered assistant, classrooms became more interactive, practice became more purposeful and great teaching scaled farther than ever before. The data we collected as part of Top Hat Graded 2025 tells a powerful story: when instructors lead with curiosity and students learn with confidence, technology becomes a catalyst for deeper engagement. We’re thrilled to share the results of our annual report below.
→ Free Template: Simplify course evaluations this term
AI offered a powerful way to enhance your teaching
Instructors used Ace to lighten the load without lowering the bar. Whether generating draft assessment questions, designing in-class activities, or creating practice prompts aligned with their course materials, educators treated Ace as an assistant—never a substitute—for their own judgment.
Students, in turn, benefitted from more timely feedback, more consistent practice opportunities and more engaging learning experiences overall. Case in point: more than 107,000 students used Ace this year—a 114 percent increase compared to last year.
From ideation to instruction, Ace helped educators focus on what they do best: teaching with creativity, clarity and care.
Students loved generating practice quizzes
Ace’s practice engine became a cornerstone of student learning in 2025. Powered by course content—lecture slides, readings, assessments and more—Ace generated on-demand practice sessions that helped students study continuously, not just cram before exams.
These sessions supported retrieval practice, concept reinforcement and self-paced review, all while giving students instant feedback designed to build confidence and mastery. The convenience mattered too: students could launch a personalized practice session in just one click from any content page. Practice became proactive, not reactive—and students embraced the shift.
Faculty saved time on course preparation
Ace’s question-generation tools made it faster and easier for instructors to build high-quality assessments, polls, discussion prompts and in-class activities. By analyzing uploaded content, Ace drafted questions tailored to course learning goals, while always giving instructors full control to edit, refine or regenerate. This translated into more interactive class time, more frequent knowledge checks and richer opportunities for active learning across every discipline.
Educators and students embraced interactive learning tools
This year, instructors leaned into Top Hat’s interactive quiz tools more than ever—using AI to spark engagement, check understanding and create meaningful moments of active learning. Across every discipline, educators built richer assessments, more dynamic in-class activities and countless opportunities for students to think critically.
In total, 14,312,874 questions were created on Top Hat in 2025. Multiple choice questions topped the charts, with instructors generating 9,085,213 of them—the most widely used format for pulse checks, polls and final exams. Long answer prompts also saw impressive growth, with 1,746,370 questions created to encourage explanation, reflection and deeper reasoning.
Looking ahead
Top Hat Graded 2025 is more than a collection of numbers—it’s a testament to how educators and students reimagined what learning can look like with the right tools. Ace helped accelerate course preparation, scale personalized practice and enrich classroom interactivity, but the inspiration behind every improvement came from you.
Here’s to another year of bold teaching, engaged learning and innovation—together.
→ Get a FREE template for collecting end-of-term student feedback
