In this supportive guide you will find resources on how to use this tool in your teaching. 

  • For general information about this tool, please see back to the tool's main page.
  • For details on technical help with this tool, please refer to the support section on the main tool page.

Overview

H5P is a free and open-source collection of tools you can use to create interactive content. This tool allows you to make simple interactive activities quickly and easily.

There are over 50 content types, which can support you in creating interactive, engaging and meaningful learning experiences.

Teaching examples

Enhance

Enhancing Student-Content Interactions

H5P allows you to tightly integrate separate media such as text, audio, or video, but also to introduce two-way information transfer between the material and your students. For example:

  • H5P’s Interactive Video tool includes a wealth of options to captivate your audience. H5P offers several quiz question types (true/false, multiple-choice, multiple-select, and fill-in-the-blank questions), as well as drag-and-drop, drag the words, mark the words, and open-ended written questions add label, text, table, and image overlays when more visual detail is needed. This can be helpful if you forget to include something or want to offer more up-to-date information without re-recording the video content. There are also special ways your students can navigate your content with H5P, such as crossroads interactions to transform your video into a choose-your-own adventure, as well as navigation hotspots to jump to one key moment in a video (such as replaying a related topic). Here is an example demo video (2:24 long): H5P Example Video
  • H5P Branching Scenario content type is a choose-your-own-adventure builder; it allows you to create a self-paced, “serious game” built around a simulation, dilemma, or real-world scenario. It offers a form of adaptive learning that puts the learner into an active role, requiring them to make informed decisions and react to new information, while also giving them formative or summative feedback along the way. The content may be text-, image-, or video-based, and can be integrated with some other H5P content types, such as image hotspots. Explore some real examples:
    • Horn Circuit Diagnosis (technology & engineering) – Perform a simple horn circuit diagnosis by selecting where in the circuit to test and noting the voltage drops measured.
    • PPE Removal Simulation (health sciences) – A quick video-based scenario on the correct way to remove PPE.
    • Skills Practice: A Home Visit (nursing, social work) – This award-winning game promotes the application of knowledge and skills related to establishing a therapeutic nurse-client relationship and completing a mental health assessment. In this simulation you will assume the role of a community health nurse assigned to complete a home visit.

Extend

Extending Student Engagement with Timely, Relevant, and Specific Feedback

Many of the H5P content types allow immediate feedback on a task presented to students. The feedback that can be provided goes well beyond correct/incorrect and can guide students through the concepts in your course and correct misconceptions early on. Low-stakes opportunity to practice, along with feedback, is one way H5P can support student learning in your course.

In addition, students could click on an image or a video with H5P hotspot activities that can be used to provide feedback or additional explanation (in the form of a video, audio or additional text) to articles, videos or images. Explore examples of H5P Image Hotspots

Extending Student Opportunities for Self-Reflection with Pre-assessment Activities

Instructors can use H5P drag and drop, fill-in-the blanks, and multiple-choice questions to guide students as they determine their knowledge on a topic before the beginning of the lesson. Pre-assessments bult in H5P can be used in in-person, hybrid, and blended courses and are a great way to gauge the knowledge of your students on the topic and thus guide your decisions about the focus of your courses and the ways in which you will present the course content.

Empower

Empowering Students with Interactive Learning on the Move

H5P is built using HTML5 technologies, meaning that it displays and works on both laptops/desktops and mobile devices. This means students can access it the same way they access their course materials. Not only is it responsive, but it also does not require additional logins to platforms outside of your course, making its integration into your content seamless.

Empowering Students through Managed Cognitive Load

H5P allows you to chunk content into manageable pieces of information, thus reducing cognitive load. H5P also allows you to arrange the chunked content in a way that is accessible, not just by web standards, but in a way that connects ideas. Students can check their understanding in the context of the information they encounter, unlike using another quiz or simulation tool that takes students to a completely different space in the virtual classroom.

Resources to support

*The links below may require a USask NSID login to access.

When starting to use H5P, you have several options. You will need a place for creating H5P content that can then be embedded within Canvas, WordPress, and/or Pressbooks. Select the method that seems most convenient to you:

  1. If you have a site from USask Sites (WordPress) then you can create your H5P activities in any of your sites. Login and look for H5P Content on the left-hand menu.
  2. If you have a project in OpenPress then you can create your H5P activities in any of your book project sites. Login and look for H5P Content on the left-hand menu.
  3. Create an account by visiting https://h5p.org/ and click Create New Account. These accounts are intended for trying out the tool and for practice. The H5P types here are a limited selection and capacity, but it’s a perfect way to get started.

If you don’t know which option is best for you, the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning’s Flexible Learning and Technology team would be happy to discuss your H5P project(s) with you. Request support from flt@usask.ca

 

Additional resource links:

  • eCampus Ontario H5P Studio - The eCampus Ontario H5P Studio is a central place where many Ontario-based educators create and share their H5P creations. Containing over 1000 activities, the majority of which are licensed under Creative Commons, this is a place where you are going to find inspiration for your project if not something that you can download and adapt to your needs directly.
  • Pressbooks Directory - This directory provides an index of over 1600 open textbooks, course outlines, monographs, lab manuals, works of fiction, and more, published across 75+ Pressbooks networks. Many of the books listed in the Directory are available under a Creative Commons License, which enables you to make your own copy of the resource, combine resources, and customize the resource for your specific class or project. When searching for books, you can search specifically for books that include H5P Activities. Once you navigate to the book of your choice, if you type “h5p-listing/” at the end of the book’s URL you will see a list of every H5P activity in that book.  For example, Professional Communications H5P Activities List.
  • H5P.org Showcases - This forum is a place where the wider H5P community shares projects they have created using H5P. While you might not find something to directly adapt for your own project, you may find some inspiration for novel ways to use a particular content type in these pages.