The Top Hat family is growing again! We’re excited to welcome into the fold science publisher bluedoor, known for creating affordable, customizable and engaging learning content. With more than 15 years of experience, bluedoor brings to Top Hat 400 labs and course materials used widely by higher ed faculty across the United States and Canada.
Top Hat will be converting all content from bluedoor into digital courseware, and adding in engaging elements, such as dynamic multimedia and interactive assessment questions. Professors using bluedoor content will now have access to these digital versions, as well as the full power of Top Hat’s active learning platform to ensure student success when teaching in online, blended or face-to-face classes. Students learning from bluedoor digital labs will benefit from a more modern, immersive experience—and will love the engagement they experience both in and out of class. Read on to learn more.
‘We can enable more educators to deliver their courses effectively’
For over a decade, Top Hat has been focused on making learning more active and engaging through real-time polls and quizzes, interactive assignments, and live chat and discussion tools—all on a single platform. Providing digital courseware that is every bit as engaging and dynamic as the classroom experience is an integral part of this effort.
Going forward, instructors will be able to use bluedoor content that is packed with high resolution images, engaging videos and assessment questions that are tied to Top Hat’s active learning platform. They will be able to track how well students are comprehending the course material by viewing which students have completed the readings and seeing how they performed on various embedded assessments. This valuable student data is all captured within the Top Hat platform, giving instructors insight into student comprehension and participation—and making it easy to reach out to those who may be struggling. This information can also easily be exported to your LMS. And with our recent launch of robust virtual classroom capabilities, educators can easily infuse active learning techniques in any online, in-person, or blended environment.
bluedoor’s expertise in the sciences encompasses the disciplines of Anatomy & Physiology, Biology, Chemistry, Microbiology, Veterinary Technology and more. This content is the perfect complement to the Top Hat family, which already offers thousands of textbooks and learning materials in the Top Hat Catalog. “At bluedoor, our focus has always been on empowering educators with flexible high-quality content,” said bluedoor CEO Jon Earl. “By joining Top Hat and transforming our content into interactive digital courseware on its all-in-one platform, we can enable more educators to deliver their courses effectively and bring active learning to life for their students.”
‘A perfect fit for bluedoor to join Top Hat’
The labs and course materials produced by bluedoor have long created engaging learning experiences for students. Educators love bluedoor for its easily customizable course solutions and extensive online database of labs. By choosing bluedoor, instructors can select off-the-shelf national content or tailor-make their own solution from countless high-quality course materials that can be customized down to the letter.
With bluedoor content joining the Top Hat team, more professors will have better access to interactive science materials at a time when, due to the pandemic, so much learning is happening online or in blended environments. The resilience of interactive, digital textbooks and labs means students will be able to access their course materials on their own devices—anytime, anywhere.
Following the recent acquisition of the domestic higher ed textbook business from Nelson Education, Canada’s largest educational publisher, the bluedoor deal expands Top Hat’s repository of high-quality content to better support educators in this climate of uncertainty and beyond. “bluedoor has a stellar reputation as an expert in educational content for the sciences,” said Top Hat founder and CEO Mike Silagadze. “Our partnership has evolved into a perfect fit for bluedoor to join Top Hat.”
