Academic Professor

• Diverse and Enriching Challenges: TopCrowd supports a wide array of challenge types, including software development, ideation, data analytics, security focused topics, designing user experiences, automation, quality assurance and more. These challenges provide students with hands-on experiences that complement your curriculum.
• Competition and Skill Development: TopCrowd makes learning feel like play. Gamification keeps students on the platform and encourages  them to submit solutions and compete with their peers. This fosters healthy competition and motivates students to develop essential skills while tackling real-world problems.
• Enhanced Research Opportunities: You can  seamlessly integrate research opportunities into challenges on the platform. This enables students to engage in original research or creative activities within your academic discipline, furthering your contributions while enriching their learning.
• Easy Solution Review and Scoring: Submitted solutions are reviewed and scored by the challenge creator and/or panel of reviewers, ensuring fairness and quality assessment. You can participate in this process, or delegate to a TA or similar role, allowing you to focus more on teaching and mentoring.

TopCrowd deepens your teaching with hands-on challenges and real-world skill development, while enabling networking and cross-functional collaboration.

TopCrowd elevates your academic impact and has far reaching benefits for you, your students, and your department:

1. Maximize Student Learning: Integrate TopCrowd challenges into your curriculum to provide students with practical, hands-on experiences that reinforce theoretical knowledge. These challenges foster critical thinking, problem-solving, and unleash their creative potential, enhancing their overall learning journey.
2. Cultivate Collaboration: Friendly competition and open innovation empower students to work together, nurturing essential teamwork and communication skills. Students on TopCrowd become well-rounded graduates prepared for today’s fast-changing work environment.
3. Efficient Assessment: Use TopCrowd to streamline the assessment process. Challenges are a simple, well-structured way to r evaluate student work, freeing up your valuable time for more meaningful interactions.
4. Highlight Student Success: TopCrowd gives your students the opportunity to showcase their problem-solving prowess to potential employers, effectively setting themselves apart in the competitive job market. These achievements also serve as a testament to the excellence of your department.
5. Partnership Opportunities: TopCrowd also  enables universities to forge strategic partnerships with businesses. Business partners can launch challenges to the university community, where students can showcase their skills, innovate, solve problems and showcase their talents. Students can  apply their skills to industry-specific challenges and gain valuable insights into the professional world.

TopCrowd is easy to set up and use at your university.

1. Register: Users, which can include students, faculty members, and business partners, sign up and create profiles on the TopCrowd platform.
2. Launch Challenges: Universities and organizations have the ability to generate challenges on the platform. An OpenAI integration makes it easy to generate challenge descriptions and details, and . challenges can be tailored to your academic focus and department. TopCrowd supports any challenge or work type you can describe, including software development, design projects, ideation, automation, data science, and much more.
3. Students Submit Solutions: Students and other users opt to join challenges that align with their skills and interests, and submit solutions to be reviewed and scored.
4. Review and Scoring: Submitted solutions are reviewed and assigned scores by the challenge creator and/or a panel of assessors. This process ensures a fair and comprehensive evaluation.
5. Announce Results: After the review and scoring process is complete, the results are made public on the platform. Top performers are recognized and can showcase their achievements to the community.

Here’s how other professors and educators are using TopCrowd in the classrooms:

1. Curriculum Enhancement: Infuse TopCrowd challenges into your course curriculum to complement traditional teaching methods, enriching the learning experience for your students.
2. Reinforce  Concepts: Utilize challenges as practical applications to reinforce theoretical concepts, fostering  deeper understanding and retention..
3. Customized Challenges: TopCrowd supports challenges and skill development in every academic discipline..
4. Streamline Assessment: Most teachers don’t love grading. Use TopCrowd to simplify the grading process and ensure consistent evaluation of student work, freeing up your time for more meaningful interactions.
5. Personalized Mentorship: Engage directly with your students through TopCrowd challenges, offering mentorship, constructive feedback, and guidance on their submissions, enriching their academic journey.
6. Teamwork and Collaboration: Help students build skills that will serve them in the workplace and beyond by assigning group challenges that mirror real-world collaborative projects.
7. Monitor Progress: Keep track of your students’ progress and performance in TopCrowd challenges, identifying areas where additional support and guidance may be beneficial.
8. Skill Development: Leverage TopCrowd to help students develop  essential skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective communication.
9. Career Readiness: TopCrowd challenges  prepare students for their future careers, give them a place to showcase their practical skills to potential employers, and enhance their employability, all of which reflect positively on your department.

TopCrowd is easy to set up and simple to use. Here’s how to get started in your department:

1. Sign-Up: Begin by signing up at TopCrowd.net. Register using your academic email address, and check out  the platform’s features and capabilities.
2. Create Challenges: Identify courses or modules where TopCrowd challenges align with your curriculum, and launch challenges to enhance your students’ learning experiences.
3. Invite your Students: Invite your students to join TopCrowd, using either an email invitation, or  a shareable link. They can sign-up in just a few easy steps.
4. Get Students Engaged: Promote TopCrowd to your students by highlighting the gamified experience and opportunities to advance their career prospects. Encourage them to join and actively participate.
5. Collaborate with Your Department: Explore how TopCrowd can be integrated more broadly into the curriculum in your academic department. Share your experiences and successes to pique your  colleagues’ curiosity.
6. Hype Achievements: Showcase the achievements of your students who excel in TopCrowd challenges, highlighting their skills and problem-solving abilities. Students get bragging rights and you enhance your department’s reputation.

Enrich your students’ learning experiences and contribute to their growth with TopCrowd. Together, we can inspire the next generation of leaders and thinkers.