Exploring H5P: Enhancing teaching and learning

A technology you may not even have heard of is having a big impact on learning at SFU—thanks in large part to the team at the Centre for Educational Excellence (CEE).

H5P (HTML 5 Package) is a technology that enables users to create interactive and engaging online course content. It has over 50 different interactive content types, such as interactive videos and fill in the blanks, that can be used to implement multimodal learning, enhance learning experiences, and make learning more inclusive for diverse learners.  

H5P was designed to enable  individuals to create interactive content without requiring any knowledge of HTML coding.

Over the past few years, instructor usage of H5P at SFU has increased dramatically. When it was launched in 2017, H5P was used to create a total of 17 pieces of course contact. Today, that number has grown to 3500 pieces of content, which have enhanced the learning experiences of over 20,000 students.

According to CEE director, Kanthi Jayasundera, there are mutiple reasons for H5P’s growing popularity amongst SFU instructors.

“H5P helps encourage active learning through problem-solving and gamification, it supports self-directed learning with asynchronous access and immediate feedback and it can reduce academic integrity concerns by making learning visible for the instructor while improving learner confidence with the retrieval practice and feedback."

Jayasundera adds that many instructors use access to these analytics to identify what concepts students are struggling with and adjust their teaching methods accordingly.

SFU instructors are able to access this technology as a result of the work of the Centre for Educational Excellence.

“Our IT team, Jake Wang and Adam Young, created the customized Canvas H5P integration which is hosted on the SFU data centre. This allows grades and detailed student analytics to be accessed by instructors directly from Canvas,” notes Jayasundera.

CEE’s H5P expertise was recently recognized by the H5P Global Ambassadors group. Parm Gill, among the 100 global ambassadors, submitted CEE-created H5Ps resulting in three nominations for the H5P Academy Awards competition in the areas of Outstanding Visual Design, Best Use of Course Presentation (content type), and Innovative Use of Multimedia (image, video, audio). 

Examples of H5P Use at SFU

Interactive Fill-in-the-Blank Map: Geography instructor Michelle Wiens utilized H5P to create an interactive map for her GEOG 162 course, allowing students to test their knowledge of Canadian regional geography.