Fall Refresh: Energize Your Teaching with Top Hat
NOVEMBER 19, 2026
3:00–4:30 PM EDT
See learning more clearly. Know where to focus. Make a bigger impact. Spend 90 minutes exploring fresh ideas and practical strategies with faculty who are finding new ways to engage and support students.
Practical Moves.
What if you could pinpoint why students are disengaging and know where to focus your effort?
What if your course content could give you deeper insight into how students are learning and where they need support?
At Fall Refresh, faculty will share fresh approaches to questions like these, and show how the latest Top Hat features are bringing their ideas to life in the classroom.
Join a session or stay for all 90 minutes. Either way, we’re glad to have you!
Our Agenda
The Future of Learning with Top Hat
Clare Castro, Top Hat
Learn more
When polished outputs are easier to produce, the learning behind them matters even more. Educators need greater visibility into student thinking, while students need meaningful opportunities to apply knowledge, explain their reasoning, and demonstrate what they can do.
Top Hat is evolving to make more of that possible, without making more work for you! Get a first look at new capabilities that make it easier to create authentic learning experiences, uncover the thinking behind student work, and provide meaningful feedback at scale.
From Course Content to Student Insight
Dr. Jenny Billings, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College
Learn more
Each year, nearly 2,000 students take Jenny Billings’ First-Year Experience course. Since partnering with Top Hat to redesign the learning experience around customized, interactive content, students are achieving stronger academic performance, persisting at significantly higher rates, and retaining more of what they learn. So what changed?
Jenny will share how she built formative touchpoints throughout the course content, along with ‘hidden gems,’ giving instructors earlier insight into how students are progressing and helping them personalize outreach and intervene when it matters. Discover how thoughtfully-designed course materials can help more students feel seen, supported, and encouraged to shine!
Engagement by Design: Identify the Gap. Focus Your Effort.
Dr. Demian Hommel, Oregon State University
Learn more
When students disengage, it’s tempting to throw strategies at the problem and hope something sticks. Demian Hommel offers a more useful way to think about it: engagement is multidimensional, and different problems require different responses.
In this session, Demian introduces four “dials” of engagement: behavioral, emotional-cognitive, social, and agentic. Learn how to pinpoint where engagement may be breaking down in your course and focus your effort where it can have the greatest impact. He’ll share practical examples of how Top Hat can help spark curiosity, lower the risk of participation, build connection, and strengthen student agency. Together, we’ll go beyond “How do I get students engaged?” to a more useful question: “Where will my next move make the biggest difference?”
Clare Castro
About Clare
Dr. Jenny Billings
About Jenny
Jenny Billings is the Program Chair of Associate in Arts and the Division Chair of Study Skills (ACA) and English (ENG) at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in Concord and Salisbury, North Carolina. She has taught at Rowan-Cabarrus since 2011 and holds extensive experience in first-year success, English composition, and developmental education, along with a strong focus on curriculum and master course development.
Dr. Demian Hommel
Oregon State University
About Demian