Archive

Trends in Higher Education

  1. My Education Began When I Realized We’re Not Taught to Teach

    For Lauren Herckis, an anthropologist at Carnegie Mellon University, change is the only constant in a teaching life. But if you listen and adapt, you'll do more than survive—you'll thrive

  2. The Average Print Textbook Goes Out of Date Every 3 Years

    Print textbooks have been posing problems for students for years. They’re static, outdated and come at hefty prices.1 Not to mention that new editions are usually released three times a decade—forcing students to buy the most recent edition if they hope to keep pace in class. Here, we look at what new editions mean for […]

  3. How to Help Students Overcome Impostor Syndrome

    No one is immune to impostor syndrome’s effects, and millennials, faced with constant comparisons to friends’ accomplishments on social media, can be especially affected

  4. How a Riot, a Rock Band and Rutgers Led to the Rise of Richard Florida

    Top Hat is the active learning platform that makes it easy for professors to engage students and build comprehension before, during and after class. This interview is part of our recurring series “Academic Admissions” where we ask interesting people to tell us about the transformative role education has played in their lives. For more than […]

  5. 3 Ways To Keep Your Teaching Nimble

    In this abridged extract from Top Hat’s new e-book, The Professor’s Guide to Agile Teaching, we look at three different ways that instructors in psychology, math and physiology make sure that their teaching is memorable, effective, and most of all, responds to the needs of their students without creating colossal amounts of work for teacher […]

  6. How Blockbuster Helped Neil Garg Become a Better Prof

    Your first job, whatever it might be, is often a useful foundation, as Neil Garg, Professor of Chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles, explains

  7. Women in STEM, Role Models and The Crucial Role of Higher Ed

    Role models in education, industry and even television are needed to increase the percentage of women in STEM, say two front-line teaching academics

  8. Learning Styles: The Ultimate Guide

    Learn more about the learning styles approach, and how you can use them as a basis to explore new teaching ideas and methods

  9. Sir Ken Robinson: From Special Ed To Academic Royalty

    Knighted in 2003 for his service to the arts, Sir Ken Robinson, the bestselling author of The Element and Creative Schools, charted an unlikely course to find international success—he chased whatever truly interested him

  10. Education Needs Radical Change: Sir Ken Robinson at Engage 2018

    In a highly memorable and humorous talk at Engage 2018, Top Hat’s conference for innovative higher educators, international education expert and TED talk alumnus Sir Ken Robinson spoke about the radical changes needed in education to help the next generation thrive. There are forthcoming challenges in the 21st-century—climate change, ethics around artificial intelligence, and more—and […]

  11. How to Teach Generation Z in the Classroom

    The world seems to revolve around the Millennial generation. But Generation Z is serious-minded, success-focused and steeped in technology from kindergarten—and now, they’re taking over higher education

  12. OER Gets Serious: It’s Time To Take a Second Look

    As an instructor, you may have decided against using OER in the past because of concerns about the quality of the course material, or the ease of implementation. It’s time to reconsider

  13. Textbooks Too Expensive, Say 90% of Profs in Survey

    Soaring price tags aren’t just hurting students—they’re hurting professors, too. The results from our 2018 Professor Pulse Survey show that 90 percent of professors think the cost of textbooks is too high

  14. Teaching Creative Writing as a Springboard For Students

    Many students have to complete required courses in creative writing. Here's how Linda Rodriguez, Professor of Caribbean Literature, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, uses the language of fairytales to introduce new writers to the process

  15. Why Are College Textbooks So Expensive?

    The inflation of post-secondary textbook pricing has surpassed that of the housing market, the cost of health care, and even college and university tuition.

  16. How The 5 Main Textbook Companies are Being Disrupted

    The past 40 years will be seen as a time when college textbook companies ignited, expanded beyond expectation, and then began to die. And it’s all down to how people read. Prices of college textbooks have been increasing since the late 1970s when textbook companies found color printing and illustrations were far more popular with […]

  17. Digital Textbooks Erase Barriers For Teachers and Students Alike

    Authors of digital textbooks are short-circuiting the gatekeepers and saving their students money. In this extract from our e-book, Textbook Heroes: How Digital Textbooks Make Learning More Impactful, Philip Preville considers how the textbook market is changing in favor of the way modern classrooms operate. Every professor has a textbook in them. It’s the sum of […]

  18. Keylogging is the Latest Way of Cheating in College

    Professors have always had to contend with cheating in college, but thanks to the growing use of technology in the classroom, students are finding new, inventive methods—they’re recording and playing back what faculty members type. The practice, known as keylogging, made headlines last month when a student at the University of Iowa was arrested for […]

  19. Engage 2017: Malgosia Green on The Power of Community

    Filmed in Chicago at Engage 2017, Malgosia Green’s keynote kicked off Day 2 of the conference. With the rapid rise of modern technology, the challenges that university campuses are facing have changed. Yet most higher education institutions are slow to evolve and remain mired in old ways of thinking. The result: unhappy and disengaged students. […]

  20. Preventing Fake Degrees and Fraudulent Credentials

    If only preventing fake degrees and fraudulent instructors were as easy as unearthing this University of Rochester prankster, who recently masqueraded as a chemistry professor and announced that over half of the class was failing. (A few minutes later, the real professor walked into the lecture hall, demanding: “Who the hell are you?”) The difficult […]