What would you think if the students at Harvard were using their smartphones to participate in classroom quizzes and polls? Emergence Capital Partners and iNovia Capital certainly think its a good idea as they raised $8M in Series A funding for Top Hat Monocle’s student engagement platform. Originally intended to be a classroom polling device to compete with the iclicker, Top Hat Monocle has become a comprehensive platform featuring quizzes, interactive demos, file-sharing, homework assignments, and even progress reports for students. Professors, who get to use it free of charge, also can use the program to track engagement among students. Another great feature is that Top Hat Monocle works on all platforms, whether it be laptop, mobile, tablet, or even SMS. The platform received $1.2M in revenue during the 2011- 2012 school year and has been used by 65,000 students in over 150 universities worldwide. While Top Hat Monocle is not the first platform to provide such an offering, it is always good news to hear companies innovating to combine the this generation’s digital lifestyle into the classroom.
via Betakit
