TopHat vs Articulate 360

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Our analysts compared TopHat vs Articulate 360 based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

TopHat Software Tool

Product Basics

Top Hat is an online teaching platform that offers digital classrooms, discussions, customizable questions, textbooks, lectures, videos, attendance, assignments and more. Learners can get real-time feedback, proctor tests and quizzes and stream lectures. Administrators can track progress and look at overall trends.


It integrates with other education programs and works for students and instructors. Overall, the tools let users design workspaces, create interactive materials, make quick assignments and proctor exams. In many classes, it’s used to replace clickers which allowed teachers to show materials on-screen and students to choose answers via a handheld device at their desk. The resulting answers are shown via a bar graph on the screen for a visual representation of the group’s understanding. Its specialty is helping educators find and publish quality open education resources.
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Articulate 360 is an award-winning e-learning software suite designed for individuals and teams who create online training materials. It offers a comprehensive range of tools for developing interactive courses, assessments, simulations, and more. The intuitive interface and extensive content library make it suitable for both beginners and experienced developers.

Key benefits of Articulate 360 include its versatility, ease of use, and ability to create engaging learning experiences. It also provides robust collaboration features, enabling teams to work together seamlessly on projects.

In comparison to other LMS software, Articulate 360 stands out for its focus on authoring tools and its ability to create highly interactive and visually appealing content. Its pricing model is based on an annual subscription, with different tiers available depending on the number of users and features required.

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$33 Monthly
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$499 Annually
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Better Content: The solution can help create and deliver high-quality content. Learners keep access to their materials even after the lesson is over. It also changes up boring PDFs and replaces them with interactive content with embedded videos, questions and graphics.
    • Digital Textbooks: Instructors can create, adapt, share and customize textbooks and other interactive materials for their course. They are always up-to-date. Users can embed assessments right into the material to see how students are absorbing material as they read. The text can also integrate videos and animations for more engaging material. It’s free or low-cost for the students and constantly added to by a community of educators.
    • Marketplace: It provides different integrated applications for coursework and content. Learners and teachers have access to thousands of textbooks, educational materials, question packs and over 20,000 open classroom resources. The subjects include anthropology, arts, biology, business, chemistry, computer science, cultural studies, earth science, education, engineering, ethics, health, humanities, law, math, medicine, physics, religious studies, science and more.
    • Customizing and OER: Users can change up the digital textbooks for intro courses to add and remove relevant information. Content is up to date and easy to modernize in the places where it may be lacking. It can take feedback and give changes in real-time. Through the marketplace, it’s easy to get open education resources from places like OpenStax and Saylor. This makes it easy for the school library to find the OER they need.
  • Greater Student Engagement: Students can receive more encouragement to participate, learn and have a voice. Some tools include a discussion prompt added between slides, awarding participation points and anonymous participation for shy students. Students can vote for responses in a queue, giving teachers an idea of where the group isn’t understanding the material. For creative questions, students can even submit drawings. The solution allows instructors to sync slides with students’ devices while students can’t move ahead of the class. This forces them to pay attention. Educators can share the responses of students in fun, interactive ways with visual graphs, heat maps and word clouds. Upon the end of the lecture, instructors can let their students see slides in review mode so they can study.
  • Better Interoperability: While the solution does some of the same things as the learning solutions, it also integrates with other more complex platforms such as Blackboard, Canvas, D2L and Moodle. For those who already have an LMS and SIS set up, this connects seamlessly to bump up the experience without getting rid of present tools.
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  • Adaptability: Create courses adaptable to most screens and devices to ensure that the experience is convenient for learners. 
  • Diversity: Build lessons on a vast range of topics using tools and technologies to enhance learner engagement and interactivity. 
  • Improved Learner Engagement: Access over 7 million course assets in the media library to create quizzes and more to keep learners interested in the learning process and track progress on the go. 
  • Collaborative: Collect consolidated feedback throughout the process to keep all stakeholders in the loop. Address and resolve comments to optimize the learning experience. 
  • Simplified IT Workload: Minimize IT workload pertaining to software management through seamless publishing of courses compliant with SCORM and Tin Can. 
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  • Testing: With built-in security, users can host tests, quizzes and exams in a virtual environment where students can bring their own devices. Tests are easy to build and customize with multiple formats for questions. The fourteen unique question types include fill-in-the-blank, word answers, multiple-choice, numeric answers, click-on-target and many others. Students can also do video assignments, drawings or chemistry questions. Several behavioral algorithms help teachers monitor students and prevent cheating. If they do, they’re immediately locked out. Instructors can also see a real-time report and can offer secure codes so students can get into the proper test. Once the exam is complete, educators can automatically grade and have results show up immediately in the gradebook. This system is compatible with smartphones, laptops and tablets and doesn’t require a separate app. Grades can transfer to an LMS or other solution. Once grading is complete, it’s easy to review results and identify at-risk learners.
  • Attendance: Teachers can verify attendance in several ways. First, they can prompt students to sign in using a unique code and assign grades to reward students who are present. Second, the solution can verify the students’ physical location so only those in class get counted. It sends points for roll call and participation straight into the gradebook. Alternatively, instructors can build options for excused absences.
  • Grading and Reporting: Users can track learner progress, implement weighted grading and track attendance and performance. All of this transfers to the gradebook automatically. Instructors can weigh factors such as questions, participation and attendance. From there, administrators can analyze information and adjust for future lessons. To make sure teachers miss nothing it automatically captures student replies and participation grades in the gradebook.
  • Course Creation: Users can integrate quizzes, tests and other course materials. They can also track through analytics and port results over to other software. The system is FERPA compliant and has extensive support. Some other functions are the discussion tool where students can collaborate, offline mode, multiple file type capabilities, access to the marketplace, design consulting and more. Administrators can include gamification, flip classrooms and use devices to bump up engagement. Teachers can also stream lectures and students can participate in a live chat.
  • Assignments: It provides the functionality to create, personalize and auto-grade homework. Teachers can assign unique questions based on the group or individual and use interactive questions to engage students and reinforce the material. Homework assignments are easy and quick to assemble. Users can time responses, limit wrong answers or show the correct answers. They can also add images, videos and website links and build existing homework right into the platform. When the homework is complete, instructors can provide feedback immediately with comments. For hard subjects, users can create ungraded homework.
  • Institutions: Broader districts or institutions using the solution can acquire support specifically for their needs. The solution provides help with implementation, scaling, onboarding and other resources. Afterward, the company can help administrators review the program’s success. For organizations looking for more comprehensive help, the company manages support and training for the institution. They also offer workshops that follow the pedagogy and challenges of the faculty. A team of 40 instructional designers works to make this happen while a dedicated account manager communicates one-on-one. It integrates with all major LMSs and works with Shibboleth for easy configuration and single sign-on capability. It comes with institution-paid and student-paid options and has a clicker buyback program for the early transition.
  • Cloud-Based: The solution is a Software-as-a-Service and available without additional hardware or installing. It’s designed to scale smoothly and collects student data to ensure the organization is keeping track of student aptitude and progress.
  • Assessments: These deeper level analytics go after not just individual grades or students, but can track performance, completion, persistence and learning outcomes across the organization. It offers both summative and formative analysis so instructions can both correct the overall course and find individuals who need help. This makes it easier to track, identify, diagnose and fix problems when they arise.
  • Content Creation and Course Authoring: For specialized content, the solution provides authoring tools to create the materials. Users can get help with textbook projects. Instructors who want to share their work on the marketplace still own the copyright and earn royalties. It also provides collaborative projects where multiple educators and experts can come together to make a textbook. Creators can import OER or other content and split the revenue among collaborators.
  • Accessibility: It has various options to accommodate different students and learning styles. This includes allowing students to dial-in to a lecture via phone, transcripts of lecture records and videos of class meetings. It also optimizes assignments and textbooks so students can work from their desired device.
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  • Storyline 360: Create interactive courses that can be seamlessly delivered to any device. It offers: 
    • Touch-Screen Gesture Support: Allow learners to swipe, drag and pinch-to-zoom for a deeper interactive learning experience. 
    • Animations: Ensure visually pleasing courses using motion paths, an animation painter, transitions and more to keep learners engaged. 
    • Interactions: Build effective interactions by assigning triggers to objects. Add variables, mouse objects, buttons, hotspots, markers and more. 
    • Media and Simulations: Along with multimedia support, utilize screen recording and take screenshots. Generate text-to-speech captions and add web objects for improved interactivity. 
    • Assessments: Track learning progress by importing questions as well as adding question banks, multiple quizzes, expanded quiz tracking and more. 
  • Rise 360: Build responsive and automatically adaptive courses with the help of up-to-date web technologies. Users can: 
    •  Create courses which are adaptable to most devices. 
    •  Drag and rearrange lessons or structure courses from scratch on the go. 
    •  Preview lessons or entire courses before publishing on their device of choice. 
    •  Build customized courses with options to choose among using blocks from an extensive library, scenario blocks for interactive courses or creating a course from scratch. 
  • Content Library 360: Choose from pre-built templates or create engaging eLearning programs using more than 7 million available assets, such as pictures and videos. Customize assets to suit requirements with only a few clicks. 
  • Review 360: Centralize and share feedback to resolve issues and speed up eLearning development. It includes: 
    • Contextual Feedback: Resolve comments easily and accompany them with screenshots to offer more context. Screenshots with comments allow tracking of changes required. 
    • Comments Management: Address collaborator’s comments individually, reply to comments in threaded conversations and review comments that have already been addressed to avoid overlaps. 
  • Expert Training: Access expert-led videos and training webinars to ensure the updated skills and knowledge needed to make the most of all course-building capabilities. 
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Product Ranking

#31

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#77

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LMS Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 63 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 730 reviews
78%
of users recommend this product

TopHat has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 78% when considering 63 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

93%
of users recommend this product

Articulate 360 has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 93% when considering 730 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.0 (22)
4.6 (126)
n/a
4.7 (423)
3.8 (38)
n/a
4.0 (3)
4.5 (181)

Awards

No awards.

Articulate 360 stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Interactive Features: TopHat offers interactive features such as live polling, quizzes, and discussion tools.
Easy Integration: TopHat can be integrated with other educational tools to streamline workflows.
Improved Engagement: TopHat helps increase student participation and engagement during lectures.
Valuable Analytics: Educators gain insights into student performance through TopHat's analytics features.
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E-Learning Accessibility: Articulate 360 includes robust accessibility features such as closed captioning, screen reader compatibility, and keyboard navigation, ensuring inclusive learning experiences for all learners.
Seamless Collaboration: With cloud-based storage and real-time collaboration tools, multiple authors can work on projects simultaneously, streamlining the content development process.
Intuitive User Interface: The user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy for both experienced and novice users to create engaging e-learning content.
Interactive Content Creation: Articulate 360 offers a wide range of interactive elements such as simulations, quizzes, and games, allowing you to create immersive and engaging learning experiences.
Mobile-Responsive Design: With responsive design, your e-learning courses will automatically adapt to any device, ensuring accessibility on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Robust Content Library: Access a vast library of templates, characters, and interactions to quickly and easily create professional-looking e-learning materials.
Detailed Reporting and Analytics: Track learner progress, identify areas for improvement, and generate detailed reports to measure the effectiveness of your e-learning programs.
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Cost: TopHat is often more expensive than other LMS options, which can be a barrier for budget-conscious users.
Technical Issues: Some users have reported experiencing occasional technical glitches or difficulties with the platform.
Learning Curve: New users may require some time to familiarize themselves with all of TopHat's features and functionalities, leading to a learning curve.
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Pricey: Articulate 360 can be expensive, especially for small businesses or individuals on a budget.
Limited Customization: While Articulate 360 offers a range of templates and themes, some users find that they have limited options for customizing their courses.
Publishing Limitations: Articulate 360's publishing options can be limiting, with some users reporting issues when publishing to certain platforms or devices.
Collaboration Challenges: While Articulate 360 includes collaboration features, some users find that it can be difficult to collaborate effectively with team members on projects.
Technical Glitches: Some users have reported experiencing technical glitches and bugs with Articulate 360, which can be frustrating and disrupt the learning process.
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Is TopHat a top-tier learning management system, or does it fall flat? User reviews from the last year reveal a mixed bag. TopHat is praised for its interactive features that boost student participation, such as polls, quizzes, and seamless integration with existing LMS platforms. Educators particularly appreciate its ability to transform lectures into engaging experiences, as highlighted by a professor who lauded TopHat for breathing life into their classroom and facilitating dynamic student interaction. However, some users find the platform's initial navigation somewhat cumbersome and occasionally encounter technical hiccups. A case in point is the "time-constrained attendance marker," which reportedly suffers from lag, impacting user experience. While TopHat's customer support receives mixed reviews, its strengths lie in its user-friendly interface, diverse question formats, and smooth integration capabilities. Its standout feature, the ability to create an interactive and engaging learning environment, makes it a hit among educators. Conversely, the pricing model, which requires students to pay individually, draws criticism for potentially hindering access for some. A user aptly pointed out, "Not all of my students have the means to pay for access (which can really impact their grade if they don't use the platform)." TopHat's differentiating factor lies in its dedication to fostering student engagement and active learning. This is achieved through features like real-time polls, quizzes, and interactive presentations, setting it apart from traditional, static learning platforms. A testament to this is a user's comment, "Top Hat is a great student engagement tool, useful in polling students on the fly or setting up assessments prior to class." In conclusion, TopHat is best suited for educators seeking to infuse their classrooms with interactivity and boost student participation. Its array of engagement-focused tools makes it ideal for educators who prioritize active learning. However, the pricing structure might pose a challenge for students with limited financial resources, making it crucial for institutions to consider alternative funding models or explore site licenses to ensure equitable access for all.

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Users praise Articulate 360 for its user-friendly interface, extensive content library, and robust collaboration tools. Its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy for users to create engaging courses, even without extensive design experience. The vast library of pre-built templates, characters, and interactions provides a solid foundation for course development, saving time and effort. Collaboration is seamless, with real-time editing, commenting, and version control, enabling teams to work together efficiently. Compared to competitors, Articulate 360 stands out with its focus on accessibility. Users appreciate the built-in accessibility checker, which helps ensure courses are inclusive for learners with disabilities. Additionally, its mobile-responsive design ensures courses can be accessed on any device, making learning more flexible and convenient. However, some users have noted limitations in advanced customization options and reporting capabilities, which may be important for organizations with highly specific requirements. Overall, Articulate 360 is an excellent choice for organizations seeking a user-friendly, feature-rich LMS software. Its intuitive interface, extensive content library, and robust collaboration tools make it an ideal solution for creating engaging and accessible courses. While its customization and reporting capabilities may be limited for some, it remains a top choice for teams looking to streamline course development and foster collaboration.

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