Losing students to disengagement?
You’re trying to boost retention, but students feel disconnected from the tech you provide. It’s a frustrating and costly problem for your institution.
The real challenge is that choosing the wrong software wastes your budget and doesn’t solve the core issue of student apathy.
In fact, an Educause report found that 72% of students believe their institutions aren’t using tech effectively. This highlights a massive gap between investment and student experience.
The right platform can bridge this gap by making engagement simple and measurable, directly impacting your retention rates and institutional goals.
In this article, I’m going to guide you through the best student engagement software for 2025. I’ll help you find a tool that fits your institution.
You’ll find options that integrate with your existing systems, provide actionable analytics, and automate key communication tasks to save you time.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Top Hat → | Mid-sized educational institutions | |
| 2 | Quizizz → | Academic administrators & IT directors | |
| 3 | Anthology → | IT directors & academic admins | |
| 4 | Element451 → | Institutions leveraging AI workforce | |
| 5 | Mentimeter → | Academic admins & IT directors |
1. Top Hat
Struggling with student engagement and retention metrics?
Top Hat offers key features like interactive polls, quizzes, and real-time insights to transform your lectures. This means you can easily spark participation.
You can also personalize content with dynamic eTexts and assessments, helping you identify learning gaps and track student success.
Ready to elevate student interactions?
Top Hat solves this by empowering you to create engaging assessments and implement evidence-based learning strategies. This streamlines your workflow and enhances educational outcomes.
The platform’s AI-powered assistant, Ace, delivers 24/7 personalized study support, saving you valuable time. Additionally, the seamless LMS integration ensures direct links to course materials and synced grades for improved teaching. Plus, real-time data from attendance and engagement provides actionable insights, making it simple to track student success.
This helps foster deeper institutional relationships with students.
Key features:
- In-Class Engagement: Spark lively discussions and keep students focused with interactive polls, quizzes, and activities that provide real-time insights for addressing learning challenges.
- Interactive Content: Personalize textbooks from a vast catalog, create your own dynamic eTexts, or build interactive labs with built-in assessments to extend engagement beyond the classroom.
- AI-Enhanced Tools: Leverage Top Hat’s AI-powered assistant, Ace, to create engaging assessments and provide 24/7 personalized study support, freeing up your time and enhancing student learning.
Learn more about Top Hat features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Top Hat provides a robust platform for enhancing student engagement, ideal for mid-sized educational institutions seeking the best student engagement software. Its interactive tools, AI-powered features, and seamless LMS integration help overcome challenges like decision paralysis and justify costs by delivering actionable insights and improving student retention.
2. Quizizz
Struggling to boost student retention and engagement?
Quizizz offers an AI-supported platform designed to bridge classroom realities with curriculum expectations. This means you can easily find and adapt standards-aligned resources for your needs.
You can differentiate materials for each student using AI, ensuring content is always just-right for individual learning styles. This dramatically improves engagement by making learning personally relevant.
How can you create “aha” moments for every student?
Quizizz provides a vast library of resources mapped to your curriculum, allowing you to motivate all students, not just the fastest. You can vary the student experience across numerous formats and question types. This gives you clear data, celebrating student progress and making learning more effective. Additionally, you can assign over 25 unique modifications and accommodations, applied automatically to ensure inclusivity without singling students out. Plus, Quizizz connects seamlessly with your school’s existing ecosystems, eliminating password juggling and missing assignments, which is a huge relief for IT directors.
The result is increased knowledge acquisition and improved pass rates.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best interactive teaching software helpful.
Key features:
- AI-supported differentiation: Use AI to adapt any material to individual student needs, ensuring personalized learning experiences and higher engagement.
- Extensive content library: Access standards-aligned resources for all grade levels and subjects, allowing you to easily find and customize materials for your curriculum.
- Seamless integration & security: Connect with existing school systems for ease of use, coupled with enterprise-grade data protection to safeguard student privacy.
Learn more about Quizizz features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For academic administrators and IT directors seeking the best student engagement software, Quizizz stands out by providing an AI-supported, teacher-first platform. Its ability to differentiate content, offer varied experiences, and integrate seamlessly with existing systems directly addresses pain points around customization, engagement, and operational efficiency, contributing to improved pass rates.
3. Anthology
Struggling to keep your students engaged and retained?
Anthology offers a complete SaaS solution suite, featuring a Learning Management System (LMS) with modern learning and built-in AI capabilities.
This means you can simplify teaching and effectively engage learners at every stage. This comprehensive approach directly addresses the complexity IT directors face when selecting software.
Here’s a powerful solution for you.
Anthology solves critical challenges by uniting siloed data from across your campus, delivering key, actionable insights. This empowers institutions, educators, and learners to succeed exponentially.
You can leverage Anthology Illuminate, a holistic data and reporting platform, to gain enhanced analytics for predictive intervention strategies. Additionally, the Student Information System (SIS) streamlines operations, while the Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) solution ensures institutional sustainability and strategic growth. Plus, with a deep commitment to data privacy and security, you can trust your data is protected.
This comprehensive ecosystem simplifies your decision-making.
Key features:
- Complete SaaS solution suite: Provides an integrated ecosystem with LMS, SIS, and CRM tools to manage the entire student lifecycle.
- AI-powered learning capabilities: Features a Learning Management System (LMS) with built-in AI to simplify teaching and enhance learner engagement.
- Holistic data and reporting: Anthology Illuminate unifies disparate data sources, delivering actionable insights and enhanced analytics for informed decision-making.
Learn more about Anthology features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Anthology stands out as a strong contender for the best student engagement software, offering a complete SaaS solution and AI capabilities that streamline operations and provide actionable data. This helps IT directors and academic administrators address retention pain points and justify ROI to stakeholders.
4. Element451
Is your institution struggling with student engagement and retention?
Element451 offers an AI workforce platform designed to activate AI agents alongside your staff, boosting student engagement.
This means you can address key pain points like overwhelming inquiry volumes and staff burnout, allowing your team to focus on higher-value student interactions.
This is your AI workforce, ready to go.
Element451 provides specialized AI agents for admissions, student success, engagement, and marketing, streamlining critical processes.
For example, their student success agents detect risk, send personalized nudges, and drive retention by monitoring progress, keeping students supported and on track before issues escalate.
Additionally, [engagement agents handle thousands of inbound inquiries] simultaneously across chat, email, web, text, and voice, providing instant, consistent answers. Plus, admissions agents manage file completion and application scoring, freeing up staff to focus on yield. The result is more personalized, proactive support for every student journey, from prospective to post-graduation.
While Element451 focuses on student data, gaining actionable insights is crucial across sectors. My article on [best healthcare analytics software] delves into this concept.
Key features:
- AI Workforce Platform: Activate AI agents for admissions, student success, engagement, and marketing, working alongside your staff to manage student journeys.
- Personalized Student Support: Deliver proactive, personalized touchpoints to students across various channels, including 24/7 inquiry handling and targeted nudges.
- Automated Workflow Management: Streamline application processes, retention efforts, and outbound communication campaigns, significantly reducing manual staff time.
Learn more about Element451 features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Element451 stands out as a top contender for the best student engagement software, especially for institutions aiming to leverage AI for improved efficiency and student support. Its ability to automate tasks, provide personalized interactions, and integrate with existing systems can save significant staff time, as seen in the 160,000 minutes saved by one college.
5. Mentimeter
Struggling to keep your students truly engaged?
Mentimeter offers interactive presentations that turn passive listening into active participation, creating a dynamic learning environment. This means you can easily create and deliver engaging content.
You’ll find it simpler to capture attention with live polls, word clouds, and Q&As, transforming your lectures into vibrant discussions. This directly addresses the challenge of decision paralysis when evaluating new tools.
Discover a new way to connect.
Mentimeter makes it incredibly easy to gather real-time feedback and foster inclusive classroom participation. Here’s how, allowing you to ask questions and get instant insights from your students directly within your presentation flow.
This allows you to tailor your teaching approach on the fly, ensuring every student feels heard and valued. You can also gain valuable data to understand student comprehension.
Additionally, Mentimeter’s intuitive design means you can quickly integrate engaging activities without disrupting your existing workflow, making it a perfect fit for busy academic administrators and IT directors. Plus, it simplifies the process of making data-driven decisions that improve retention. The result is a more vibrant learning experience.
Speaking of interaction, if you’re exploring direct student communication, my guide on best live chat software can help you elevate your support.
Key features:
- Interactive polls and Q&A: Instantly gather real-time student responses and questions during presentations to boost comprehension and participation.
- Word clouds and quizzes: Transform lectures into engaging activities with dynamic visualizations and quick assessments that encourage active learning.
- Easy content creation: Streamline the process of building interactive presentations with a user-friendly interface that integrates seamlessly into your teaching.
Learn more about Mentimeter features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Mentimeter stands out as a strong contender for the best student engagement software, directly addressing the pain points of IT directors and academic administrators. Its focus on real-time interaction and ease of use allows for immediate implementation, fostering deeper student relationships through consistent, personalized interactions that deliver actionable engagement analytics.
6. Padlet
Struggling to foster genuine student connection and participation?
Padlet empowers you to create engaging, collaborative canvases where students can share ideas instantly. This means you can easily overcome the challenge of passive learning.
You can say goodbye to disconnected discussions, as Padlet offers a flexible canvas for diverse educational activities, ensuring every student has a voice.
Here’s how to elevate your student engagement.
Padlet solves the problem of static communication by providing a versatile platform for collecting ideas, organizing content, and facilitating interactive learning experiences. Plus, its intuitive interface allows you to create dynamic spaces effortlessly.
With Padlet, you can visualize thoughts in real-time, whether through text, images, videos, or links, allowing for a rich tapestry of student contributions. Additionally, its collaborative nature promotes peer interaction, making it perfect for group projects and brainstorms. The result is a more vibrant and participatory learning environment.
This means you’ll drive higher retention and active involvement.
While we’re discussing enhancing student contributions, you might find my article on best AI writing tools helpful for generating prompts or content.
Key features:
- Intuitive creation and organization: Easily build and organize visual boards for collecting student ideas, assignments, and collaborative projects, simplifying content management for educators.
- Multimedia content sharing: Enable students to express themselves using various media like text, images, videos, and links, fostering diverse communication and creativity.
- Real-time collaboration tools: Facilitate instant peer-to-peer interaction and group work, allowing students to contribute simultaneously and build on each other’s ideas.
Learn more about Padlet features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Padlet stands out as a strong contender for the best student engagement software, particularly for institutions aiming to boost participation and retention. Its collaborative features, ease of use, and visual organization capabilities address key pain points for educators, fostering a more dynamic and interactive learning environment.
7. Nearpod
Struggling to boost student engagement and retention?
Nearpod helps you deliver impactful interactive instruction, fostering active learning and 100% participation. This means you can easily create and find engaging resources.
Nearpod addresses your need for actionable engagement analytics through real-time insights and dashboards, allowing you to differentiate instruction effectively.
While you’re optimizing educational tools, you might also be interested in how accounts payable software can improve your organization’s financial operations.
See every student succeed.
Nearpod’s award-winning platform provides formative assessments and real-time insights, helping you spot learning gaps instantly. Additionally, you can access a library of 22,000+ standards-aligned lessons, videos, and activities. This allows you to save time finding and creating resources while making existing materials interactive and engaging. Plus, features like AI-generated multiple-choice questions further streamline your preparation, ensuring students remain actively involved in lessons. The result is deeper student understanding and improved instructional experiences.
Key features:
- Interactive Instructional Delivery: Delivers engaging, active, and data-rich lessons with formative assessments and real-time insights to promote 100% student participation.
- Extensive Content Library: Provides access to over 22,000 standards-aligned lessons, videos, and activities, saving you time in resource creation and differentiation.
- Real-time Feedback & Analytics: Offers dashboards and reports for instant feedback, helping you visualize student understanding and adjust instruction for every learner.
Learn more about Nearpod features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Nearpod stands out as a strong candidate for the Best Student Engagement Software, particularly for mid-sized educational institutions. Its focus on interactive instruction, a vast content library, and real-time analytics helps address pain points around engagement, retention, and demonstrating ROI, with educators reporting a 20% rise in student assessment scores.
Conclusion
Ready to fix student disengagement?
Choosing the right platform is tough. The wrong one wastes your budget and fails to fix the real problem of student apathy and low retention.
The real issue is the gap between the technology you provide and how students experience it. This disconnect directly impacts your retention rates, making the right platform choice absolutely critical for your institutional goals.
Here’s what I’d suggest.
From my experience, Top Hat is the best choice to solve this. It transforms passive lectures into active, engaging experiences that students actually enjoy.
Its seamless LMS integration and real-time data provide actionable insights that faculty can use immediately. The best student engagement software makes tracking success simple, and Top Hat excels here.
For those exploring other design tools, my guide on best pattern making software offers valuable insights for creating perfect designs.
I highly recommend you visit the Top Hat website to see how its features can directly impact your student retention metrics.
You’ll foster deeper institutional relationships.
