Case Study: The University of North Dakota Improves Student Engagement and Online Learning with Top Hat

How Flipping the Classroom with Top Hat Gave This Prof the Tools for Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Learning

The University of North Dakota’s Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Sarah Sletten, needed a better way to engage a much larger class after moving from teaching about 50 students to as many as 160. Early student feedback showed lower-than-desired engagement and evaluation scores, and students were even recommending that she use Top Hat, the classroom engagement platform used by other professors.

Using Top Hat, Sletten flipped her classroom with interactive polls, quizzes, case studies, and self-paced online modules, which later made it easy to shift to asynchronous and hybrid online teaching during COVID-19. The results were strong: her average quality-of-education score rose to 4.64/5 from 4.38, with learning at 4.57/5 and engagement at 4.76/5, and more than 50 students nominated her for a Student Impact Award.

The University of North Dakota

Sarah Sletten

Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences