Creating Interactive Content Using H5P

Head to the eCampus Ontario’s H5P Studio. Once you are there, you will see a page with the heading “Catalogue of H5P Content.” You can either click “Register” or “Login” on the top right corner of the screen above this heading. If you have not visited the H5P studio before, you will need to click Register and fill out the form, but if you know you already have an account you can just login with your username and password.

Once you have logged in, you’ll see the Dashboard, which contains all content items you have previously created. In a numbered list, which can be sorted differently by clicking on a column heading, you will see your content items. The headings are: Title, Type, Subject, Authored On, Last Updated, License, Published?, WIP?, Views, Favourites. At the end of each row is an Edit button, which you can use to update content made at a previous time. If you are new to H5P, this page might be blank.

If you toggle to the Catalogue tab, at the top centre beside the Dashboard tab, you can see content that others have created. This page contains two columns. A more narrow column on the left side of the screen is titled “Title & Description,” and contains a search tool where you can use different fields to find content created by others. The much wider column beside the Title & Description column is titled “Catalogue of H5P Content” and contains a list of others’ contents. The headings are: Title, Type, Author, Subject, Last Updated, and License.

To begin creating your own content, click “Create” in the top right corner of the screen. This button will take you to a screen with a small column on the left side, titled “Description” where you can fill in important information about your new content. If you click the “Tour” button above the Description column, you can take a quick orientation designed to show the different elements to fill out before creating content.

Beside it, a larger column titled “H5P Editor” shows the types of content you can choose to create! If you click “Details” you can see a detailed explanation of the type of content, seeing examples and any available demos. We will explore different types of content in the next section of this module!

To reuse others’ content, consult this text-based online tutorial.

Make sure content you plan to reuse is licensed under Creative Commons licenses which allow reusing and/or remixing content in the ways you desire.

The Description column on the page with the H5P editor will ask you to select a type of Creative Commons license for your new content.

For a breakdown of the different types of Creative Commons licenses, check this online text resource or see the Finding, Creating and Using Open Educational Resources module in this Learning Catalogue.

It is also important to understand which types of H5P content are accessible. This H5P Chart provides this information.

Students can create or co-create course presentations as a form of assessment, to include video and audio recordings, photos, and text for asynchronous or synchronous evaluation by an instructor. These course presentations can then be embedded for viewing in your Avenue to Learn course, or can be viewed directly on H5P for students to be evaluated by their peers and/or instructor, or be shared with partners within or outside the University.

Students can curate practice questions for course content, including multiple choice and true and false questions, to then share with their peers in anticipation of major quizzes, midterms, or final exams. In addition, students can create hotspot images for courses that involve the selection of a particular location on an image.

Students could be evaluated on the completion or quality of this practice, creating an ongoing repository of practice for the current and future years. These questions can be embedded into Avenue to Learn or accessed directly on H5P.

Teaching students about a complex flow pattern? Consider having students either use a drag-and-drop flow diagram you create or have them create their own drag-and-drop activity for a course concept. These flow diagrams can be helpful in summarizing complex concepts and be used for practice for evaluations in the course.

As part of development of a course project, some instructors have used the timelines tool to have students develop their own historical timeline as part of a course project. This interactive tool allows students to integrate media items through a timeline to showcase as part of a course presentation, research paper, or as a tool for preparing for course evaluations like midterms and final exams.

Want to challenge your students? The branching tool is a highly effective strategy for having students complete a step-by-step guide through a process or concept. For example, students in media studies, film, or dramatic arts may benefit from the storyboarding that is permitted through the platform, while students in lab environments may use the branching tool to develop a process through a lab protocol.