Create Top Hat Content
With Top Hat, instructors can easily create engaging and interactive content. Top Hat activities include questions, polls, discussions, and more. Instructors can upload their own slides and insert Top Hat interactions to create interactive presentations. This content can easily be copied to other Top Hat courses and integrated with the Brightspace gradebook, if desired. Continue reading to learn more about creating interactive content with Top Hat.
Create Questions and Polls
Top Hat Questions enable you to break up lectures and engage students. There are currently 11 Top Hat Question types (with 5 additional Third-Party Question Types available). For details on the question types offered by Top Hat, please visit our Top Hat Question Types, Explained help page. To begin creating your own questions, please follow the steps below.
Step 1
From within a Top Hat course, select the Add to course button.
Step 2
Choose Question/Poll from within the Create Menu.
Step 3
From the Question Menu, choose a question type to create.
Step 4
Fill in the necessary information, including the question, the question title, the answer choices, and an image, if desired. The example in the screenshot below shows a Multiple Choice question type. Keep in mind that each question type will have different required fields.
Step 5
Adjust the question's settings to your liking. The settings you can choose from are listed below.
Note
Most settings for a question can be edited after the question has been created but making a question anonymous cannot be undone.
- Present Options
- Timer: Allows instructors to set a time limit for a question. Timers can also be added or adjusted while presenting.
- Group Question: When Group Questions are presented or assigned, students respond as a team. Any associated points will be reflected in each group member's gradebook. To enable Group Questions you must create groups in the Student Manager and enable group submissions on individual questions.
- Segmented Results: Gives instructors the ability to segment the results of a question, based on the answer to a question asked previously.
- Assign Options
- Hint for incorrect response: Provides a pre-written message when a learner answers the question incorrectly.
- Explanation for correct response: Provides a pre-written message when a learner answers the question correctly.
- Advanced Options
- Anonymous answers: Anonymizes all responses to this question. Learner responses will be anonymous to instructors, classmates, and Top Hat support.
Create a Discussion
Through Top Hat Discussions, instructors can ask students questions that may not have a simple or absolute answer. Discussions allow instructors to receive real-time feedback during lectures, while students can seek clarification and dialogue with peers. To create a discussion, please follow the steps below.
Step 1
Select the blue Create button in the upper left hand corner of your Top Hat course. A pop-up menu will appear. Choose Discussion.
Step 2
Choose a title and topic for the discussion.
Step 3
Choose if and how you’d like to grade the discussion, then adjust the Grading Options to meet your needs. By default, the values are set to half a point for correctness and half a point for participation. These values can be changed to anything you’d like, including zero.
Note
- Discussions that include points for correctness must be manually graded.
- Any participation points will be applied to any learner that participates, regardless of answer length/quality.
Step 4
Decide who should be able to view the discussion and its responses. Adjust the Response Options as needed. Options exist to allow students, instructors, both, or neither to view responses to the discussion.
Step 5
When you’ve finished creating the discussion, select Save in the bottom-right corner. Your discussion will appear in your course dashboard. From there, it can be added to a folder or embedded into your slide presentation.
Note
The maximum response length for a Top Hat Discussion is 5,000 characters (about 250 words).
Other Content Types
Top Hat has many other features, including: Interactive Pages and Textbooks, Testing, and Whiteboard Sketches. For details on all of Top Hat's features, please visit Top Hat Features (opens in new tab).
Support
If you have any questions or concerns about Top Hat, please reach out to the UCATT Instructional Technology team at intech@arizona.edu, or Top Hat's support team at support@tophat.com.