[axiom]

I'm the founder/CEO of Top Hat I'd love to hear about your experience and what we can do better - my email is mike at tophat dot com

Hiring engineers is one of the most important things we need to get right, so I'd hate to think we're doing such a bad job at it. Really sorry that you've had a bad experience with us

[eth0up]

Maybe not the suggestion you're looking for, but I'll take the opportunity to vent.

First and foremost, don't arbitrarily block Linux users for web interfaces. McGraw Hill does, or did in the past and so do others. I spent hours contacting their useless support and playing politics with the college to get this changed, to no avail. At first, I could simply change my useragent and sneak in, with everything working well enough. When they 'smartened up' (or whatever) a bit, they effectively kept me out thereafter. This was a very nasty and persistent problem for me and one I won't forget.

Also, I never once found McGraw Hill software helpful. It seemed a cheap, shameful way to employ 'professors' otherwise too inept and uncreative to manage their own coursework and classes. At the undergraduate level, many colleges are becoming odious rackets (by my observations). McGraw Hill et al are indispensable allies here. Be different, be effective, be honest about education. Real education isn't a gravy train.

[HarryHirsch]

It seemed a cheap, shameful way to employ 'professors' otherwise too inept and uncreative to manage their own coursework and classes.

You just found out the truth about textbook prices. What students are really paying for is the test bank for their assessment, the workload for today's instructors is just to great to be able to do paper coursework. In the past, you would have delegated grading to student assistants or the courseload would be smaller, nowadays you have "Mastering Physics" and whatnot. That, friends, is what "disrupting the market" is all about.

[coldpie]

Funny, physical textbooks have never blocked me from using Linux, nor has physical paper coursework...

[VT_Drew]

Exactly.

>Even as the big publishers work to increase the proportion of sales that come from digital products, they’re still largely dependent on physical books.

The other issue the large sum of money they want to charge per book. The cost of the books is so high that it is propping up "physical book" market. Mostly because publishers have offered no way to resell your digital or ebook. Lots of students buy used text books, and students that buy new often sell their books to recover some of the cost when they complete the class. The publishers see digital books as a way to prevent students from doing this so that everyone has to buy new (at the ridiculously high prices). The students are going to do what is economical for them, until the prices either drop significantly, or you offer an online marketplace where students can sell/trade digital books then physical college text book industry will be here to stay.

[eth0up]

I can assure you, some colleges have worked out methods to prevent students from selling their used books too. I'll cite my previous, rinky-dink college that after a single semester, within the same year of book publication, would simply change the book required for the next course. They did this with all five of my courses. I was unable to resell a single book that I'd purchased new only four months previously.

Also to consider is the marketing of student biometrics or other private data garnered through such software, e.g. SmartThinking https://services.smarthinking.com/login/login.php, etc.

SmartThinking also blocked Linux and, in my opinion, provided no benefits to students at all. It was actually used to manage and grade the majority of our assignments. Seriously, the professor would have most assignments pre-graded by SmartThinking; it told the professor what to think! The whole system seemed an embarrassment.

EDIT: I should add that for the amount of time spent in "smarthinking", many physical classes could just as well be conducted remotely. Many students pay for a traditional course, but end up with the majority of their curriculum occurring remotely/digitally. If this is to be so, then the tuition should reflect accordingly and presently it doesn't. Also, I misspelled "smarthinking" by adding two "t"s.

[coldpie]

Yeah, I was kind of hoping when I read the article title that this was someone actually making an impact in the school text space, but it seems to just be more of the same shitty software that provides no advantage over actual books, just with a different cost structure. Woo.

[JosefStoolen]

I am a current undergraduate student using TopHat software. My professor stated that he was unable to typeface using Latex for the class notes. This should be a feature if it hasn't been updated already.

Additionally, at my school there is a centralized online interface for professors and students to post notes, quizzes, updates about the course, grades, forum discussions etc. Myself and many students were upset when we had to pay for a 'premium' service which offered no features outside what was offered for free in all our other classes.

All I can say is in order for TopHat to impress STEM students they will have to be very creative in the features that they offer. Though they are sometimes liked by professors, interfaces like TopHat and McGraw-Hill/Pearson are almost universally seen as a rip off by students. Access to propriety notes isn't a feature when very few students pay for any textbooks in their STEM subjects.

[SpaceRaccoon]

My university has a platform very similar to TopHat - assignments, lecture notes, text, quizzes, grades, and all- but for free (or, included).

The only reason our Quantum Mechanics prof used TopHat instead was because it gave him the opportunity to gouge an extra $100 out of us for a terrible "textbook" that in any other class would be considered lecture notes, full of errors and typos, proof-read by nobody and held to no standard, with atrocious equation rendering and a terrible interface.

He ended up uploading our assignments to TopHat as PDFs but since it doesn't support PDF-viewing we just download those as zip files anyway. Our in-house service supports PDF-viewing in browser, along with powerpoint and other formats.

Not really sure why TopHat exists besides a way to gouge more money out of us students if we want to be enrolled in a course. I could get by without my professor's poor excuse for a textbook, but I would lose 5% immediately if I couldn't participate in the silly attendance system, and more for the online quizzes (although we could use our in-house system to the same effect) so I have no choice but to fork the money over straight to my professor's pocket. As if my 15k tuition wasn't already enough.

[withdavidli]

I would report that to their department head. I thought teachers assigning their books was a conflict, needing to shell out $100 for crappy notes is a scam.