Top Hat: What are my options to minimize student connectivity issues?

Issue/Question

• My students are reporting connectivity issues with Top Hat. What are my options to minimize the issues?

Environment

• Oregon State University
  • Instructor
  • Student
    • Top Hat

Resolution/Answer

Faculty can enable the following features in Top Hat to minimize or avoid connectivity and/or data usage issues.

• Offline Mode Submissions: Offline mode will hold student responses until the connectivity becomes stable. This feature can be enabled by the instructor in the Course Settings - Advanced Options.
• SMS/Text Message Submissions: Students may text their response to the number on screen if they have lost connection and cannot response over the web. This feature will not work with 'click-on-target' questions. This feature can be enabled by the instructor in the Course Settings - Advanced Options.
• Auto-Web Retry: If a student attempts to submit the answer and the connectivity is preventing the answer from being recognized, Top Hat will automatically make continuous attempts to submit the answer until a connection has been restored and the answer has been submitted. This is true even after lecture has ended. Faculty will need to contact Top Hat to enable this feature.
• Low Bandwidth Mode: This prevents slides from mirroring on student devices and only pushes the questions, making Top Hat require significantly less data usage. Faculty will need to contact Top Hat to enable this feature.

Still have questions?

If you questions about this topic or related topics, please use one of the following methods to contact the Classroom Response team at Oregon State:

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