Case Study: The University of Texas boosts student engagement and comprehension with Top Hat

How Top Hat Helped This Professor Teach Difficult Concepts in Courses with 900 Students

The University of Texas at Austin, where Classics professor Todd Curtis teaches large multi-section courses of up to 900 students, needed a better way to assess whether students were understanding difficult medical and scientific terminology. Traditional multiple-choice testing wasn’t helping students learn, and Curtis wanted a classroom response system that could show students what they did and didn’t know. Top Hat provided the engagement and assessment tools he needed.

Using Top Hat’s classroom response features, polling, pop quizzes, question types, and authoring platform, Curtis improved participation, comprehension, and feedback in class. He also built two interactive textbooks in Top Hat and embedded 1,200 assessment questions in one semester, while teaching 900 students across multiple sections. Top Hat helped him create a more personal learning experience, keep students accountable for readings, and save them money with custom course materials.

The University of Texas

Todd Curtis

Senior Lecturer, Department of Classics