Give a hat tip for Top Hat

Adoption of new app raises issues

Liberty University has partnered with Top Hat to replace Turning Technologies clickers this semester with an app specifically modified for use in Liberty University classrooms — a change resulting in both progress and growing pains.

Reasons for the change from clickers include a previous low-adoption rate by faculty, a complicated user interface and difficulty accessing data required by the Department of Education, according to Liberty’s Top Hat website.

Additionally, students would often lose or forget to bring their clickers to class, according to Liberty’s Top Hat Project Manager Bailey Anderson.

“Ultimately the faculty and the student was foremost in our minds when we were doing this exploration,” Anderson said. “I know sometimes students nor faculty feel that way. They think this was just an IT push-down project, but it wasn’t.”

GETTING AN UPGRADE — Students now use the Top Hat app on their phones instead of the Turning Technologies clickers that have been used by professors in past years. Photo credit: Christeanne Gormley

GETTING AN UPGRADE — Students now use the Top Hat app on their phones instead of the Turning Technologies clickers that have been used by professors in past years. Photo credit: Christeanne Gormley

One challenge in the transition has been overloaded Wi-Fi in 10 of Liberty’s largest classrooms, including DeMoss Hall 1113, 1114 and the Towns-Alumni Lecture Hall, according to Tom Butler, a director for analytics and decision support.

“Our network operations did the best that they could to prepare for that in those classrooms as much as possible, but until we had students here, it was very difficult for us to figure out where that breaking point was,” Anderson said.

Preparation included load testing of the wireless access points (WAPs) over the summer, Anderson said.

Additional WAPs have been installed to handle the load, according to Rob Van Engan, associate professor of biblical worldview and a member of the faculty pilot team for Top Hat.

“Before (students) had access points and before they could handle it, they weren’t happy with it,” Van Engan said. “but since that time, I’ve been asking them, ‘Okay, how has it been working? You doing okay?’ and there hasn’t been any complaints with it.”

Another challenge has been faculty confusion over how to use Top Hat.

Nathaniel Haywood, graduate student assistant for the Liberty Champion, decided to abandon Top Hat and put his quizzes on Blackboard.

“For me, it was new, at times a little complicated, and I think that it’s a good product — I just don’t know how to use it quite yet,” Haywood said.

The Top Hat project did not get authorization to begin until the end of June, according to Anderson.

“Some of the faculty confusion could have been helped if the decision had been made sooner,” Butler said. “I think, had they had the whole summer to play with it and get more familiar, I think we would have had a few more ‘Top Hat champions.’”

Students have reported the app working well in various other classes.

However, feedback has been mixed.

“It seems like it’s really kind of 50-50,” Butler said. “It doesn’t seem overwhelmingly negative or positive, which is really okay for being only two months in.”

Butler noted that Top Hat brings a variety of new features to make the classroom more interactive for students.

These include “Hot Spot” questions, where students touch part of a picture or diagram as their answer and “Drag and Drop” questions, where students physically match pairs together.

Faculty can also set up tournaments, pitting one side of the classroom against another or students against students “elimination style” for an ultimate winner.

Additionally, faculty can remotely open quizzes to specific students if they are absent for reasons such as family deaths, ministry teams or debate teams, Anderson said.

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Top Hat operates on a continuous development cycle, which means it is being updated constantly.

Turning Technologies, on the other hand, could only periodically release new versions of the software to add additional features or fix problems, according to Anderson.

Top Hat has responded and resolved problems in a matter of hours, Anderson said.

Other vendors they have worked with have taken days to respond, let alone resolve the problem, she said.

“They’ve been one of the most responsive companies we’ve ever worked with,” Butler said.

Faculty and students have expressed concern over opportunities for students to cheat, since the same phone that hosts the app also hosts Google, texting and camera capabilities.

Liberty and Top Hat are developing a “lockout” feature for the spring 2017 semester to prevent cheating.

The solution currently under discussion would lock students out of a test if they toggle to Google or text and camera apps until the professor lets them back in again, Anderson said.

Until the lockout feature is available, quizzes and tests in many classes remain on Blackboard, Van Engan said.

Khuyen Pham, a junior computer science student, also expressed concern over the cost of the new app.

“If we buy a clicker, we can resell it,” Pham said. “With Top Hat, it’s already more expensive … and you can’t resell it to anyone.”

The Top Hat app costs $70 at the Liberty bookstore for a 5-year subscription, whereas clickers previously cost $54.

Students can trade in their clickers for the app until Oct. 31, 2016, according to Liberty’s Top Hat website, but new students must purchase the app.

“Right from the beginning when we laid out the requirements, we said we don’t want to charge students significantly more,” Anderson said.

But given the new features, the benefit of not having to carry an extra device and the 5-year subscription, the committee made the decision to switch to Top Hat, Anderson said.

“As reluctant as I am to say it, if we had stayed with the previous solution, that cost would have increased anyway because we would still have been moving toward a cloud-based solution,” Anderson said.

Five faculty and roughly 2,000 students participated in the Top Hat pilot program last spring.

In the resulting survey, 70 percent of students were in favor of the app, according to Anderson.

Out of the remaining 30 percent, many students did not care either way, or were frustrated by procedures unique to the pilot.

Taking those questions into account, the student response was “pretty positive,” Anderson said.

Pors is a news reporter.

One comment

  • We in the testing program in Van Engen’s BWVW 102 class last semester were told we would be staying with clickers and not switching to Top Hat. That received a lot of applause.

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