Top Hat scholars Hope Long of the University of North Georgia, Patryk Tomaszkiewicz of Texas A&M University and Nicole Blinn of Dalhousie University say the active learning platform has made them more engaged in class, increased their confidence and GPA and eliminated physical boundaries to their education
A Vanderbilt University professor wades into debate over the utility of current economics textbooks
Environmental economics student Emma Rice hopes to work at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Here, she talks about how the Top Hat Scholarship will help her pursue her dreams
First generation student Delia Grantham overcame early life struggles to embrace her studies and college experience
There's far too much silence around domestic abuse, says bestselling author, speaker and UofT scholarship award winner Samra Zafar
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In-class classroom response software, including Top Hat Classroom, has a profoundly positive effect on engagement—and a knock-on effect on grades, a new study in the March 2019 issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching says. The study, authored by Andrew J. Petto, Distinguished Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University […]
The three rhetorical appeals — pathos, ethos, logos — were defined by Aristotle hundreds of years ago, but they’re just as relevant today
How leading human anatomy textbooks fare in the higher ed marketplace
How leading sociology textbooks fare in the higher ed marketplace
Video: Florida Atlantic University’s Burcu Karabina on helping liberal arts students overcome their fear of math
Todd Rose—bestselling author of The End of Average—dropped out of high school because he couldn’t fit the mold. Then he realized that being different could be his ticket to the Ivy League
It’s an age-old problem faced by teachers: how to motivate students. While research has found a correlation between motivation and academic achievement, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to inspiring your students to engage in course material. But, with a bit of effort, you can effectively motivate different types of learners and, ultimately, […]
“The level of engagement in your students and your classrooms is not fixed. Yes, students will arrive in your classroom with varying levels of curiosity, but there are things you as an instructor can do to make your class better.”
Jasmine Roberts, a professor of communications at The Ohio State University, has a story to tell about how she ended up adopting open educational resources for her courses. It was, for her, a way to establish the Golden Rule: she did not want to treat her students the way she herself had been treated as […]
Jenel Cavazos and Greg Kitzmiller agree: if there’s one classroom tactic that’s effective at personalizing the student experience in their classrooms, it’s the word cloud. Often found on websites and in presentations, word clouds are clever graphic depictions of search terms and answers to open questions, with the most common words appearing in large print. […]
Psychology professor Jenel Cavazos shares some classroom management techniques for building rapport, keeping students on task and organizing content