Student Response System (SRS) is a technology which allows faculty to receive immediate feedback from students wirelessly with the web-based tools. These systems originated as small handheld devices commonly referred to as 'clickers' (displayed below), but with the proliferation of mobile technologies, these physical devices are less common. As of Spring 2025, NIU has partnered with Top Hat as our centrally-supported student response system.
What is Top Hat?
Top Hat is an engagement platform that facilitates active learning and frequent feedback on student learning. You can use Top Hat during class to drive discussions, take live polls, and give students real-time feedback on how well they understand course concepts. Outside of class, you can use Top Hat to personalize interactive content, assignments, and assessments.
Top Hat offers extensive training, individual consultation, and instructional design support to help you seamlessly incorporate these approaches in your teaching.
As a result of our partnership with Top Hat, NIU students receive discounted pricing, which helps make the system more affordable.
Top Hat Features
Student Response & Assessment
Discussions: Foster collaboration, critical thinking and community by posing questions and discussion prompts students can answer on any device.
Polls & Quizzes: Keep your students engaged with 14 question types, including click-on-target, word answer and multiple choice, and immediately see how they're responding.
Assignments & Exams: Make homework a learning experience with interactive assignments and multimedia. Our formative and summative assessments put students' knowledge to the test.
Automatic Attendance: Automate attendance in any in-person or online course and get instant insights to help at-risk students.
Personalizable Content
Pages Content Editor: Create interactive, personalized content that reflects your students and community.
Customizable Textbooks: Packed with interactive features and the ability to edit, Top Hat textbooks take dynamic learning to a new level.
Interactive Labs: Adopt and personalize virtual lab manuals with interactive diagrams, animations, and video demos.
Educator Tools & Insights
Real-Time Data: Top Hat creates actionable insights from attendance, quiz, poll, assignment and test data, so you can improve learning in the moment and over time.
Accessibility: Our dynamic courseware is designed to meet or exceed internationally recognized accessibility standards and offers flexible options for individual students.
LMS Integration: Top Hat seamlessly integrates with your LMS for a better course experience.
For general questions about clickers at NIU, faculty and staff can contact the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at 815-753-0595 or citl@niu.edu.
As part of our partnership with Top Hat, NIU students receive discounted pricing for Top Hat subscriptions. When purchased directly from Top Hat, those prices are:
Semester: $26
Annual: $43
4 Years: $75
Students can also purchase an access code from the NIU bookstore. Those codes may be priced higher by the bookstore.
The fee covers all of the student's courses for the term they purchase (i.e., if the student is enrolled in more than one course using Top Hat in a semester, they only pay the fee once).
If you are using a Top Hat interactive textbook, the Top Hat subscription price will be adjusted to include the price of the text.
When students join your Top Hat course, they will usually have the option to initiate a 14-day free trial for the course from the checkout page. The trial will start as soon as they click the Start 14 Day Free Trial button on the checkout page. In order to take full advantage of the free trial, we recommend starting the trial on or after the first day of class.
Please note that the free trial option only appears when enrolling in a course through a web browser as opposed to through the mobile app.
Students can request a refund for a Top Hat product for a period of up to 14 days following their purchase. When a refund is granted, their access to the Top Hat products that were refunded will be immediately terminated and all records (including grades) associated with the products will be permanently deleted.
Top Hat can only provide refunds for Top Hat products purchased directly from tophat.com, while Top Hat access keys purchased at a campus bookstore can only be refunded by the bookstore.
Students can participate in Top Hat polls through an internet browser on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Top Hat can be used on the three latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, as well as Microsoft Edge. Top Hat is optimized for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, so they recommend using one of those two browsers.
Students can also download the Top Hat mobile app on iOS (Apple) and Android devices.
Yes, you may use a different student response system, if you prefer. Keep in mind a few considerations when choosing a system:
If students have to pay for the system you select, they may be paying for multiple systems in the same semester. If you selected Top Hat, the fee would cover all of their courses that may be using a student response system.
Top Hat is integrated with Blackboard and will soon be available via single-sign-on with your NIU credentials. If you select a different system, you and your students will need a separate account, and you may need to enter grades manually in Blackboard.
Student Response System (SRS) is a technology which allows faculty to receive immediate feedback from students wirelessly with the web-based tools. These systems originated as small handheld devices commonly referred to as 'clickers' (displayed below), but with the proliferation of mobile technologies, these physical devices are less common. As of Spring 2025, NIU has partnered with Top Hat as our centrally-supported student response system.