Exploring H5P for Language Classes

What is H5P? 

H5P is a program to create interactive content for websites or your learning management system (LMS). There are many kinds of content to choose from, including interactive videos and presentations, games, quizzes, questionnaires, dictation activities, flashcards, and more. Check out the full list of content possibilities with examples here at H5P.org.

How to use H5P

Because my university's LMS is Moodle, I am able to create content on H5P directly in Moodle. I can also see how students performed on the activity with results for each question or prompt in the LMS. In addition to Moodle, H5P integrates with other common learning management systems, including Canvas, Blackboard, and Brightspace. 

Here the yellow arrow is pointing at the option I select in Moodle to create an H5P activity.

If you want to use H5P and do not have access to it via your LMS, there are a few other options. You can create an account on H5P.com, but there is a cost after the 30-day free trial. There is also a free plugin that can be used with sites created with Wordpress, Drupal, and Moodle. 

I got started by using H5P.org, which allows you to create a free account and experiment with H5P. The site provides tutorials and examples, and you can create H5P activities that you can download and embed to use on other sites. For example, I created my interactive video about dalgona coffee (see example below) in H5P.org, then I embedded it to share in a Canvas discussion board. I also downloaded the activity from H5P.org and uploaded it as an H5P activity in my Moodle course for fall semester. I will only be able to see student results, however, in Moodle because I uploaded it as an assignment using the H5P integration. In Canvas, I simply embedded it as a participant in the discussion board, so I am unable to see results. 

In terms of learner experience with H5P, the activities are accessible via computer, smart phone, and tablet. 

Pros and cons of H5P

I have only been exploring H5P for the past week, but here are some of the pros and cons that I have observed as I have started to work with it.

Pros:

• So many options! I have experimented with a few of the activity possibilities and provide a few examples below. I am excited to explore more ways I can use H5P!
• Students have a variety of ways to interact in the activities, including multiple choice, fill in the blank, drag and drop, true or false, drag text, and more.
• Students get immediate feedback, so it's a great tool for formative assessment. 
• Because it is integrated with our LMS, students' scores on the activity are automatically added to the grade book. In comparison, when using an outside program, such as Edpuzzle, I have to manually enter those grades. Regardless of the program, I usually set up grades for an activity like this as complete / incomplete to keep the activity low-risk. 

Here you can see the toolbar with the variety of ways you can create interactions in the video.

Cons:

• Maybe it's just me, but it seems like it's not the most intuitive tool. I tend to learn technology by a bit of trial and error, but I have needed to use the step-by-step tutorials fairly frequently while getting started with H5P. I have also had to backtrack to fix errors.
• Some activity limitations and possibilities were not clear to me as I was getting started. For example, the drag-and-drop option will allow you to create a single activity. If you want to create a series of drag-and-drop activities, you have to create an interactive slide activity and select drag-and-drop for each slide.
• The many features of H5P means that it can get a little complicated. In fact, per the recommendation of one of my course professors, I joined a Facebook group called "H5P: Ask and share." Just scrolling through the discussion and questions in the group has given me some ideas for what I can do with H5P. However, some questions also give insights into how complicated it can get. 

A few examples of H5P activities for my fall courses

This fall, I will be teaching a second-semester Spanish course with a unit on food. I frame the unit around the essential question "How does food bring us together?" and tie in some content related to social media use with food. Here are a few activities in H5P that I plan to use this semester. 

Interactive Video for Interpretive Listening 

I created an interactive video in H5P for this YouTube video about Dalgona coffee, which has been popular on social media platforms, like Tik Tok, over the past several months. 

I chose the "poster" option for the display of the questions instead of the "button" option, which requires students to click a button to see the question. The poster option makes the questions or interactions appear over the video content, and you size the frame. You can see in the second screenshot below that I created two interactions and sized them a little differently. 

I included a few different types of interactions, including single-choice options and a drag-text option, which you can see below. I also included a couple true-false questions and an open-ended response at the end.

Drag and Drop for Vocabulary Practice 

I also created a drag-and-drop activity for students to work with vocabulary in our food unit. Here students will drop the vocabulary word over the picture of the food that it best pairs with. I got this idea from a post I saw shared on social media of "taste buds." I thought it was cute, so I hope it will give my students a different way to work with vocabulary instead of just standard matching the vocabulary with the picture. 

Image by Philip Tseng: http://www.minicubby.com/

Interactive Slides for Interpretive Reading

As part of this unit, we will discuss a few dishes that represent cultural identity. One such example is el chile en nogada, an iconic Mexican dish. To prepare my students to read a few authentic reviews of restaurants in Mexico City that serve el chile en nogada, I will have my students read some short descriptive texts of the dish. 

On the first slide, I created text to appear when students click the buttons on each element of the dish and on the Mexican flag. 

On the other slides, I created a multiple choice question, a fill-in-the-blank question, and a drag-and-drop interaction.