Research offers Top Hat tips for instructors

Brian Hornbuckle is a proponent of active learning in large enrollment classes, but one question lingered through the years when he taught Introduction to Weather and Climate. Does a personal response system (PRS), like Top Hat, improve students' performance in courses where they are used? 

"I know students learn best when they feel they have a personal connection to the class and material," the agronomy professor said. "They can answer a question and get feedback right away, something that can be difficult to do in a large class."

In 2021, Hornbuckle received a $3,000 in Miller Faculty Fellowship grant to answer the question. With two Ph.D. students and an undergraduate assistant, Hornbuckle used 13 years of results from the course encompassing 3,148 students from 2007 to 2019. His data road the wave of technological improvements, from the use of clickers -- where students had to point a device at a receiver at the front of the classroom to record their answer -- to Top Hat, which integrates with Canvas.

In his classroom, Hornbuckle uses the PRS "for a force of good," as students only have to answer at least 50% of the questions throughout the semester to receive the points (5% of course grade), regardless of whether their answers are correct. Access to Top Hat at Iowa State became easier beginning last year with the university, not the student, paying the licensing fee.

Tips for faculty using a PRS

Hornbuckle's open access study, which was published last October in the Journal of Science Education and Technology, yielded several results he believes are useful to faculty across campus who use Top Hat or another PRS.

• Set a low threshold for students for using the PRS (Audio timestamp :30)

"It removes all of the stress for the student and for the instructor so you don't have to worry about students who may have to miss a class for some reason or a day when the PRS is not working. It really just invites them to engage with the material."

• Break up large lecture content into chunks using a PRS (1:47)

"Top Hat is a great way to let students know what they need to understand and measure their learning during a class period. I ask a question at the beginning of the class each day of the unit, and that helps students with what information I expect them to know. It gets them to pay attention and think more during class.

• A PRS system works when students use it in the right way (4:20)

"The more students used the PRS, the better they did on exams. 'A' and 'B' students used it more then 'C' students, who used it more than 'D' students. Over the course of 13 years, 'D' students did not benefit from a PRS, but our hypothesis is that they were answering questions just to answer for the points but didn't do any of the thinking."

• Encourage students to engage and think about the PRS questions (5:15)

"Students need to answer and think about the material to benefit from it. Answering without thought is not helpful. The first day of class, I show the students the data from the previous semester that shows that the 'A' students engaged the most with the PRS and so on."

• A PRS can be most beneficial to first-year students (8:14)

"First-year students still are trying to determine how to be successful in college. Using Top Hat is a way to help catch them up and make up for that lack of experience in a college setting."