Accelerate Student Success and Save Money with an Institution-Wide Partnership

At Top Hat, our mission is to help faculty and institutions deliver better learning—and better outcomes—to as many students as possible. Our engagement platform helps faculty bring active learning strategies into their courses, leading them to see benefits like increased student engagement, improved exam performance and grades, and a higher passing rate. ¹Research shows that frequent, low-stakes assessment—one of Top Hat’s key features—is connected to improved academic performance. Thanks to these improvements and affordable content initiatives, an institution’s site-wide investment in our platform can pay for itself within just three years.

Calculate the Impact of a Partnership for Your Institution

Use this calculator to see the estimated impact based on data from our existing partners. Contact us to get a more detailed estimate based on your institution’s unique situation.

With full-time undergraduate students enrolled at your institution that pay
$
USD annually in tuition, a Top Hat partnership can create...

Savings for your institution:
Savings from reduced DFW rate:
Savings from increased student retention:

Savings for your students:
From reduced license fees:
From savings on course content:

See our methodology*

Want a more detailed projection of the impact a Top Hat partnership could have at your institution?

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How Top Hat Can Help Improve Grades and Reduce DFWs

Here is a leading example of how an educator used Top Hat to dramatically improve student performance. Stephanie Dillon, Director of Freshman Laboratories at Florida State University, saw DFW rates—the percentage of students who earn a D, F, or withdraw from the course—of over 28% in General Chemistry courses taken by 2,500 students each semester. Along with her colleagues, she used Top Hat, Aktiv Learning, and Canvas to flip the class and change their teaching approach. Between the 2017 and 2022 Fall semesters, the percentage of A’s increased by 23% and DFWs decreased by 22%.

Reducing Costs for Students

When Top Hat is made available across campus by an institution, more faculty choose to teach with it—leading to wider implementation of active learning strategies that help improve student outcomes. Our team works with our institutional partners to achieve their student success goals by tailoring implementation and training plans for faculty to each institution’s preferences, pace, and needs. On average, we see Top Hat platform usage grow to 60 to 80% of enrollments within three years of beginning our partnership, giving more students opportunities to succeed.

We can also be your partner for initiatives in making course materials more affordable. Our flexible authoring platform, low-cost digital textbooks, and custom content solutions can reduce the cost of course materials to under $50. In a leading example, Top Hat helped Ohio University students save more than $1 million in less than one year.

Student Usage Growth After Institution-wide Partnership

This institution's adoption grew to 77% of total enrollment after an enterprise agreement in 2018.

Your partner in
Student Success.

Our services and support teams help educators evolve how they use Top Hat, leading to improvements in how they apply evidence-based practices to their own teaching. And thanks to the powerful insights collected by our platform, widespread use produces data that can be applied to student success efforts to help increase retention. The better educators make use of Top Hat, the better results an institution can realize.

Want a more detailed projection of the impact a
Top Hat partnership could have at your institution?

¹ Sotola, L. K., & Crede, M. (2021). Regarding class quizzes: A meta-analytic synthesis of studies on the relationship between frequent low-stakes testing and class performance. Educational Psychology Review, 33(2), 407–426.
Brame CJ, Biel R (2015). Test-enhanced learning: the potential for testing to promote greater learning in undergraduate science courses. CBE Life Sci Educ 14, es4

*Our calculations are only an estimate. For a more detailed estimate tailored to your institution’s specific needs and goals, contact us today.

*Underlying data and assumptions for institution savings:

Average DFW rate of 15% (rates can be 30% or higher in the largest gateway courses) (source, source, source)
Students with DFWs have increased odds of stopping out between 1.1 to 1.5 (source)
Estimated improvement of 2% in DFW rates in some courses where Top Hat is used
2.5 additional years of tuition from retained students

*Underlying data and assumptions for student savings:

Our enterprise partners see 60% to 80% of students using Top Hat for at least one course within 3 years (average of 2 courses per year per student)
Average 20% of full-time enrolled students using Top Hat before institution-wide agreement
An average textbook cost of $100 is reduced to $50 with Top Hat interactive textbooks
14% of all courses will have Top Hat texts as a result of affordability efforts