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UMass IT and the Office of the Provost have announced a new classroom polling platform and a change to digital transcription services, reflecting the university’s ongoing commitment to inclusive, accessible teaching and learning, and to reducing financial barriers for students,

In an effort to support increased engagement and inclusion practices for the campus, the university is moving to a single classroom polling platform and enabling transcription services by default for lecture capture and video-based platforms.

UMass Amherst has selected Top Hat as the campus-wide platform for classroom polling and attendance tracking replacing iClicker and Qwickly. Top Hat will be available to instructors beginning in April 2026 for Summer and Fall 2026 courses.

The decision to move to Top Hat followed pilots across multiple schools and colleges, feedback from instructors and students, and feedback from the Faculty Senate's Information and Communication Technology Council (ICTC). Top Hat addresses common concerns about iClicker and Qwickly, including course setup complexity, direct student costs, redundant tools, and limited software updates. 

Key features of the Top Hat platform include:

• Intuitive interface with active learning features
• Device-based participation (no physical clicker required; no direct cost to students)
• Digitally accessible for students using assistive technology
• Unified tool for both engagement and attendance tracking

iClicker and Qwickly access will end May 31, 2026, for UMass Amherst users. Instructors currently using iClicker or Qwickly should continue to use it through the spring semester. After the end of the semester, instructors should transition to Top Hat for Summer and Fall 2026 courses. 

To prepare for the transition to Top Hat, instructors are advised to review the Getting Started with Top Hat guide for Instructors support article and attend the 30-minute information session that will be  offered Monday, April 6 at 11 a.m. Two 60-minute Top Hat attendance and polling “how-to” workshops are also being offered, Thursday, April 2 at 11 a.m., and Wednesday, April 8 at 1 p.m.

Faculty who have used Qwickly or iClicker within the past year and have not synced those grades with Canvas must back up any student/course data before May 31, 2026. Those records must be preserved for one year after the end of the semester for the course in which they were used. Export Records in Qwickly here, and export the iClicker Gradebook here.

Additional info sessions and workshops will be shared on the IDEAS website. 

Further, to support instructors in meeting ADA Title II requirements for multimedia content, which includes transcripts for audio and captions for video media, UMass Amherst will enable automatic transcription or captioning services by default for any supported video platforms for teaching and learning starting this April. While this will streamline the process for transcription for instructors who want to make use of it, instructors are strongly encouraged to review their transcripts for accuracy.

This change will affect the following video services:

• EchoVideo – By default, any content added to a course will be transcribed and captioned. This will produce an interactive transcript for students and allow them to turn on captions for a video. Instructors may opt out of this by disabling ASR in their EchoVideo courses.
• Canvas Studio – Automatic transcription and captioning is enabled by Canvas and cannot be disabled.
• Zoom – Transcription and captions will be available by default for non-HIPPA accounts. This allows individual users to access transcripts or captions during a meeting.

For technical questions or support for Top Hat or the lecture capture platforms, contact [email protected].