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Top Hat - Overview (UW-Madison)
Top Hat is a Student Response System (SRS) that allows you to ask questions, take polls, give quizzes, and receive feedback from your students during class. Top Hat is a bring-your-own-device solution, which means that students can use any web-enabled device (laptop, tablets, smartphones) to participate. Top Hat also allows for text messaging to submit answers, so students can submit without using network data.
Select this link to list all Top Hat documents from the Learn@UW-Madison Knowledgebase at the bottom of this page.
Getting Started
Students
Guidance from your instructor will be provided about how Top Hat will be used within your course. Please keep in mind that instructors can chose to use Top Hat differently; some may choose to send you an email invitation to their course and others may simply provide you with an access code in class.
Top Hat provides extensive, very helpful support documentation about their product. Please see their support websitefor documentation, including tutorials, that will show you how to log on and get started with Top Hat.
Instructors
- Sign up and create an account. For instructions, see Top Hat - Account Setup (Instructors) (UW-Madison) .
- For a product demonstration and an overview of product features, please contact the UW-Madison Top Hat representative:
Andrew Furgal647-462-9856
- For extensive product documentation, including tutorials, please see the Top Hat Success Center.
- For ideas about how to use Top Hat in your course, please contact DoIT Academic Technology's learning technology consultants at academictech@doit.wisc.edu.
- For information about UW-Madison's agreement with Top Hat, including pricing questions, departments/courses already using Top Hat, policies, concerns, and so on, please contact DoIT Academic Technology by emailing learnuwsupport@doit.wisc.edu.
Pricing
Top Hat is a cloud-based software-only SRS product, free of charge to instructors. Students are required to purchase a subscription in order to use the product. Purchasing a subscription enables a student to use Top Hat with an unlimited number of active courses (courses occurring during the subscription period).
Top Hat Basic (free)
Top Hat offers a free version of their software for students, known as Top Hat Basic. While this is free, please keep in mind that:
- Basic does NOT integrate with Canvas
- Basic does not offer any formal grading capabilities
For more information, please see Top Hat’s pricing guide.
Top Hat subscriptions
UW-Madison students receive reduced subscription prices for Top Hat:
- One semester (4 months) - $16 (This option cannot be upgraded to a year.)
- One year (12 months) - $20
- Lifetime (5 years) - $54
When purchasing a subscription, you'll have the opportunity to select the duration of your choice. UW-Madison reduced pricing will be shown during the purchase process.