Canadian startup, Top Hat, which turns mobile devices into classroom tools, has made it known that it has added two new executives to its team. The name of the first executive is Gene Murray, who has plenty of experience in education technology and will take up the role of Vice President of Technology at the Toronto-based startup. The second new executive of the company is Matt York, who has expertise in SaaS engineering and he will take the post of Vice President of Technology at Top Hat. With the help of these new executives and the rest of the team Top Hat is looking to push itself to the next level of development, as the startup is en route to campus-wide adoptions.
On this occasion, Murray, who has more than 12 years of experience in sales at the leading learning management system, Blackboard, said that “I am excited to be coming on board at such a transformative stage for Top Hat. Its technology is second to none, and its user base is already impressive. There is considerable momentum from educators already, and I look forward to working with the team as we make Top Hat the campus-wide solution to drive student engagement at universities around the world.”
The CEO of Top Hat, Mike Silagadze said, “At our current rate of expansion, it is imperative that we have an experienced, visionary VP of Engineering. Matt [York] will focus on scaling our engineering team and process so we can continue to build innovative products which meet the needs of our rapidly growing client base. In parallel with that, he and his team will build out scalable architecture to meet the user growth accompanying that adoption.”
Initially Top Hat used to rely heavily on adoptions by individual professors in order to boost its revenue. However, after receiving several requests from various institutions, the Canadian startup made some adjustments in its approach and then, focused on campus-wide licenses.
With Top Hat students can respond to real-time polls and questions that are raised by various instructors. Furthermore, they can also take part in discussion, run interactive simulations, compete in class-wide tournaments and lot more through their mobile devices or smartphones that are web enabled. Due to this smart method of working through SMS or WiFi Top Hat has been able to increase the retention, engagement, comprehension and overall experience of learning.
In addition to this, various data and studies of current professors have shown that with the usage of Top Hat grades of students have increased from 3 to 5 percent, while the attendance has also went 30 percent upwards.
Source: TechVibes