Top Hat has made a few updates for this semester that are intended to help you and your students have a better experience. As always, don’t forget about Top Hat’s white glove service and instructional design support. Book an appointment for 1:1 support on TopHat.psu.edu’s resource page.
1: Create a custom role for your TA or other assistants
Top Hat now allows you to create custom roles within your courses. The best part of this update? It allows TAs and other assistants to be able to grade! Now you can get a little help and some time back to create more awesome content.
To learn more, check out the Create a Custom Role section of Top Hat’s TA guide.
2: Set up accommodations for tests
The test monitoring tool allows you to customize accommodations for students on scheduled tests. You can give an exact amount of extra time (ex: 15 minutes) or add a time multiplier like time and a half. Accommodations will only apply to the students you select.
To learn more, see Top Hat’s Test Accommodations article.
3: Design with accessibility in mind
Top hat has easy to access accessibility tools you can use while designing pages and questions. It makes it easy to add alt text to images, set heading styles, and make math questions easier to digest. There are also options for flexible scheduling.
To learn more, view Top Hat’s accessibility article.
4: Provide hints and explanations to asynchronous questions
You can’t always be with your students while they’re completing their assignment, but you can still give them a little help! Top hat let’s instructors provide hints that students can view on an asynchronously assigned question, for example, “look on page 42,” or a reminder of the formula they need to use. You can also add feedback that displays upon submission so that students can understand why they got the question correct or incorrect.
To learn more, read Top Hat’s article on hints and explanations.
5: Resize images for better visibility
You can now resize images you add to pages and tests in Top Hat. This is great for when images need to be larger for visibility, or smaller so they don’t interrupt written content. While you’re resizing your images, don’t forget about alt text and captions!
To learn more about your resizing options, check out Top Hat’s article on resizing images in pages and tests.