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Using H5P Interactive Content in Moodle

H5P is a content authoring tool that allows instructors to offer rich, interactive content in Moodle.

In this article

Best Practices for Using H5P

IMPORTANT: H5P will not be available once a course is offered in Canvas rather than Moodle. Creating new content using H5P is not recommended.

Make sure H5P activities support your learning objectives

To effectively facilitate engagement in the course, H5P activities should align with your learning objectives. H5P activities should allow students to build and practice applying knowledge that will help them be more successful in formal assessments, and ultimately achieve the desired learning outcomes. Avoid adding H5P activities that don’t connect meaningfully to the instructional content just because they look fun and add “interest.”

Learning ObjectiveAligned H5P activity
Translate common phrases from Spanish to EnglishDialog Cards with the Spanish phrase and audio pronunciation on one side of the card and English translation on the other side.
Identify components of a residential hybrid solar energy system.Image Hotspots activity using a labeled diagram of a residential hybrid solar energy system. Students click on each part of the image to view the name and a brief description of that component.
Calculate the slope of a line given the coordinates of two points.Single-choice question with an image of a coordinate grid showing two points. The answer choices include the correct answer and 3 incorrect answers.
Explain the process you would use to determine the pH of an unknown sample.Branching Scenario virtual lab exercise that walks through the steps of determining pH of a sample and allows students to make choices leading to different outcomes.
Examples of learning objectives and H5P activities to support them

Ensure you are using H5P activities for low-stakes knowledge building and practice, not major assessments

H5P is not recommended for major assessments because answer data can’t be tracked/exported securely like Moodle activities.

H5P interactive content types are best suited for content delivery or low-stakes knowledge checks that assess learning at the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, such as Remember and Understand.

A rainbow-colored pyramid equally segmented into 6 sections ordering the levels of human cognitive processing from highest to lowest. The highest, first tip is “Create: Produce new or original work; Design, assemble, construct, conjecture, develop, formulate, author, investigate.” Second is “Evaluate: Justifying a stand or decision; Appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, critique, weigh.” Third is "Analyze: Draw connections among ideas; Differentiate, organize, relate, compare, contrast, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.” Fourth is “Apply: Use information in new situations; Execute, implement, solve, use, demonstrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch.” Fifth is “Understand: Explain ideas or concepts; Classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate.” And sixth, forming the bottom or base of the pyramid and representing the lowest order, is “Remember: Recall facts and basic concepts; Define, duplicate, list, memorize, repeat, state.”

Provide clear instructions for each activity

In the description box for each H5P activity, we recommend that you include:

  • A description and instructions for completing the activity
  • Full-screen viewing instructions, if the activity is best viewed that way
  • Whether the activity will count in the Moodle gradebook
  • If it will be graded, how many points it is worth (make sure that you specify the correct number of points in the “Maximum grade” field in the grade settings.)
  • The learning objectives the activity is intended to support

Example description:

This interactive presentation will introduce you to Bloom’s Taxonomy and how you can use it to create learning outcomes, or objectives, for your course. View the slides and answer the embedded questions. This activity is for practice only; your score will count for activity completion but will not be calculated into your overall course grade.

This activity supports the following module learning objectives:

  • MO 1.1 List the levels of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
  • MO 1.2 Explain how using Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used to create learning outcomes

Manage non-graded H5P activities in the Moodle gradebook

Every H5P activity you create in Moodle will add a column to the gradebook, whether it is gradable (allows answer selection) or not. We recommend putting non-graded H5P items in a separate category in the Moodle gradebook that will not get calculated into the overall course grade.

  1. Create a category in your gradebook for “Non-graded H5P” activities and give it a weight of zero (see Using Weights in Moodle’s Gradebook).
  2. When you create an H5P activity that cannot or will not be graded, select the “Non-graded H5P” category in the Moodle grade settings for the activity.
  3. Optional: Provide an explanation in the activity description about how the activity will not count towards the course grade.

Practice and test

We recommend that you practice creating H5P activities in a WolfWare Project space so that you can explore the different content types and settings before putting H5P into your live course.

  • Save your progress often to avoid losing your work.
  • Use the Student View feature in Moodle to make sure that the H5P activities look and work for students the way you expect them to.

Examples

There are more than dozens of different H5P content types that you can use in Moodle. You can view examples of many of them in the H5P Resource Library (go.ncsu.edu/h5p). (Note: You must be logged in with your NC State ID in order to self-enroll in this Moodle resource site). Below are some additional examples of learning objectives and H5P activities that could be used to support them.

Example 1

Learning Objective: Define key terms related to economics.

H5P Content Type: Fill in the Blank definitions that contain blanks where the correct words must be typed.

A Fill in the Blanks activity allows users to type the correct answer into a blank space inserted within a sentence.
Example of a fill-in-the-blank question type

Example 2

Learning Objective: Describe stages in a plant disease cycle

H5P Content Type: Image Hotspot where the background image is a diagram of a plant disease cycle. When clicked, hotspots show additional information about the various stages. (Note that the image is a screenshot and does not have functioning hotspots.)

Diagram of plant disease cycle with several hotspot buttons placed to provide additional explanation of each stage.
Diagram of a plant diease cycle

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