Case Study: Kansas State University improves student engagement and remote learning with Top Hat

How an interactive Top Hat textbook helped this professor succeed in the move to remote learning

Kansas State University professor Katie Thompson-Laswell needed a way to engage more than 200 Human Development students with course material that felt relevant, relatable, and usable both in and out of class. The existing textbook was expensive, impersonal, and didn’t support the active learning approach she wanted, especially for a large course and later in the move to remote learning. Top Hat’s interactive learning platform and textbook offered a way to make the material more personal and interactive.

Using Top Hat, Thompson-Laswell authored an interactive, media-rich textbook for her course, complete with assessment questions, videos, images, and embedded activities, while also using Top Hat’s classroom response tools. The solution helped students save $70 on course materials, supported an easy transition to remote teaching, and improved engagement and performance, with fewer students failing and more earning A grades. Top Hat also gave her the flexibility to keep the course effective across in-person and remote formats.

Kansas State University

Katie Thompson-Laswell

Senior Instructor of Human Development and Family Science