Communicating Confidently: How a Custom Top Hat eText Prepares Students for Their Careers
$275K
Amount saved across three years since using a Top Hat eText
2,300
Students taught each academic year
$40
Saved per student each semester since using a Top Hat eText
The Challenge
A static textbook didn’t bridge the gap between theory and workforce-specific skills
What does student success look like to you? For Corey Clem, Assistant Professor of Practice and the Basic Course Director at Texas Tech University, the phrase is rooted heavily in preparing students for the workforce. That means she’s determined to ensure students exit her course with a solid grasp of public speaking concepts and the real-world skills required to thrive in any profession. More than 2,300 of her students in her online and face-to-face Business and Professional Communications course expressed the desire via end-of-semester surveys to effectively curate their LinkedIn profile, prepare for job interviews and gain confidence in presenting.
As someone who teaches primarily non-major students, Clem has had to grapple with how to impart the crucial soft skills needed for upper-year and future success. “Every business major needs to take the course for credit. I teach around 1,400 students in the fall and over 900 each spring, so I have to make sure that my material reaches them. I go in hoping that everybody’s listening but assuming that nobody is,” she says. The static textbook she used when she began teaching the course largely prioritized theory over practice. “I spoke with several employers and asked, ‘what are our students missing when entering the workforce?’ We knew we wanted to bridge the gap between student readiness and employer needs,” Clem shares. It was this goal that led her to partner with Top Hat’s Custom Solutions team to create an interactive, media-rich text that would support the next generation of accountants, information technology leaders, marketers and professional communicators.
School background
Dr. Corey Ann Clem earned her bachelors of science in Agricultural Communication from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She then earned her masters of science in Agricultural Communication and Ph.D. in Agricultural Communication and Education from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. She has spent the last nine years at the TTU College of Media and Communication teaching business communication and serving as the course coordinator for Business and Professional Communication. Dr. Clem’s research has focused on bridging the gap between what employers expect of their new hires and what competencies students possess upon graduation. She received the Association for Communication Excellence “Outstanding Dissertation” award in 2014 for her dissertation, “Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies Needed for Agricultural Communications Graduates: A Delphi Study.”
About the professor
Texas Tech University (TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. TTU has an enrollment of 41,000 students as of fall 2024. The institution offers a host of degrees in 150 courses of study through 13 colleges—including the College of Arts & Sciences and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration. The school was founded in 1923.
Corey Clem Assistant Professor of Practice and the Basic Course Director at Texas Tech University
The Solution
Authoring a customizable public speaking eText with Top Hat to let students learn from real-world examples
In 2022, Clem began the process of creating a customizable eText that would allow students to read, watch and practice public speaking principles from a single text. Clem describes her partnership with Top Hat’s Custom Solutions team as “collaborative” and one where she could draft chapters at her own pace. “I knocked out a chapter per week to meet our deadline. Top Hat was fantastic at helping me find images and coordinating information to import into the textbook,” she says.
The text offers the requisite theoretical material covering the value of public speaking in any profession in addition to multimedia, simulations and timely case studies that Clem can swap in on the fly. “We published 10 or 12 chapters for our first semester in fall 2022. Students came back and said they wanted to hear more about the psychology of presenting, for example, so I directly added another chapter for later in the semester,” she says. Students complete their assigned readings before attending in-person classes, which account for one-third of their final course grade.
Aside from reading exercises and live, online lectures, each student completes an in-person lab held by one of Clem’s 25 teaching assistants. During labs, students apply what they read in their Top Hat eText to a real-world scenario such as delivering a business speech or refining their resumé. A small subset of students complete the lecture and lab portion of Clem’s course asynchronously—a decision to offer greater accessibility to a busy group of learners. “Students can take the course synchronously or asynchronously—designed especially for those completing an internship across the globe. We still use Top Hat for our asynchronous component, which allows students to complete chapters and upload presentations at their own pace,” Clem says.
The Results
Students feel more prepared entering the workforce thanks to the applicable examples packed within the eText
Whether it’s seeing real-world examples of public speaking in action or watching videos on how to land a job, Clem’s students have been vocal about the benefits of using a Top Hat eText in their class. Even better, Clem has the data to prove it. “Students say how Top Hat activities helped them land a job or how a list of interview questions helped them prepare for their first internship. This is data not just from our course evaluations but students reach out after the course to share how the textbook helped them,” she says.
An equally important benefit for students is the reduced price tag. The cost of Clem’s custom Top Hat eText is $65—compared to upwards of $100 for the last textbook bundle she used. Her 2,300 students have saved more than $275,000 on course material costs over the past three years since using a Top Hat eText. That equates to saving each student $40 per semester. Unlike Clem’s last textbook, she now feels confident in Top Hat’s affordable and student-friendly price point. “I haven’t seen a single complaint about price since switching over to Top Hat because the text is half the cost of the book we were previously using,” Clem says.
From a professor standpoint, Clem appreciates being able to track student completion and performance using Top Hat’s real-time data. She’s even used this data to help struggling students get back on track. “During midterms this spring, I could tell that around 25 of my 900 students had never accessed Top Hat. I was able to send these students emails reminding them about their chapter assignments. It’s helpful to see which students to follow up with and Top Hat’s data really helps me have a pulse on that in such a large lecture,” she says.
“Students say how Top Hat activities helped them land a job or how a list of interview questions helped them prepare for their first internship. This is data not just from our course evaluations but students reach out after the course to share how the textbook helped them.”
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