As e-learning continues to grow and advance, educators are searching for new ways to elevate the learning experience and take testing to the next level. H5P, short for HTML5 Package, is an open-source standard that allows creators to craft and share rich and interactive content like quizzes, games, videos and presentations. Designed to make creating and sharing content as seamless as possible, H5P is open source, free to use and easily integrates into a number of web publishing platforms. “H5P allows educators to drop in dynamic interactions directly into their LMS or other platform and easily integrate the new and existing content together,” says Doug Wilson, Managing Partner at Breakthrough Technologies.
For assessments, H5P can unlock new opportunities for instructors and learners. The framework makes it easy to create content that is often time-consuming, complex and expensive to develop using other standards. With no special software required, H5P has a free builder to craft assessment items and gives creators the ability to incorporate rich media, graphical elements, and interactivity that is very engaging. A powerful benefit of H5P is the built-in feature of formative feedback, giving learners instant feedback on a question they answered. “Formative feedback within an assessment can aid in the learning process and the longer-term retention of the subject matter,” says Wilson. “Students are not only receiving the benefit of the assessment process, but are given opportunities to learn from mistakes in real time or think about topics in a new way.”
With over forty-five content types and applications to choose from, H5P can help turn a static piece of content into an interactive, dynamic experience. “For example, creating interactive video content where questions are asked throughout the clip is easy to do,” shares Wilson. “Steps include installing the content type, configuring it, uploading the movie, adding the questions and marking the correct answers—all without writing a line of code. The item you create can be ingested directly into your LMS and you will quickly have an interactive video live as part of your class content or quiz. Since content types are open and configurable in surprising and interesting ways, customization can be accomplished by those who are actually creating the learning content. This evolution of web content platforms and learning tools is exciting progress and mimics a pattern seen in other areas of the software ecosystem.”
H5P adds new content types frequently and is compatible with the largest learning platforms available. “At Breakthrough, we believe the more assessment we can imbed in the learning experience as low-stakes, innovative and supportive operations, the more we can reduce the need for summative assessment. H5P allows you to look at assessments as a value proposition and decide where you want to spend your assessment dollars to deliver the most effective learning experience. H5P is wired for the learner and is a better, stronger platform for the future; this is why Breakthrough will be leveraging it in a very big way going forward.” For more information related to using H5P for formative assessments contact Kevin Leonard at kevin.leonard@breaktech.com/