Which H5P content type is best for my students? Maybe we can help!

Penn State University in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., has plenty of H5P fans, some of us since not long after H5P’s inception. These days, H5P offers us oodles and oodles of content types. Where does the new user start? 

Presenting The H5P Pedagogy Guide

To help new users make the most of the myriad of creative opportunities that H5P offers educators, we present the H5P Pedagogy Guide (https://h5p.psu.edu/), from the Center for eLearning Initiatives at Penn State Behrend. The guide explores the pedagogical timing—the instances—suitable for H5P interactive functionalities.

The tool is designed to help answer two burning questions that the educator new user so often asks:

1. What can the student do with each stimulus?
2. Which interactive content type is best for my teaching intent?

What can the student do with each stimulus?

The Examples and Downloads | H5P page offers brief descriptions of each type. Entirely appropriate for the visitor (thank you, H5P!), nearly all of them are from the creator’s point of view. However, educators who build with H5P may sometimes wonder what students will actually be doing with their creations.

The H5P Pedagogy Guide attempts to provide learner-centered descriptions of selected H5P interactions. For example:

True/False

• H5P Short Description: Create True/False questions
• PSU H5P Pedagogy Guide Description: Choose a category for dichotomous questions or claims

Sort the Paragraphs

• H5P Short Description: Create a set of paragraphs to be sorted
• PSU H5P Pedagogy Guide Description: Arrange text in order

Interactive Video

• H5P Short Description: Create videos enriched with interactions
• PSU H5P Pedagogy Guide Description: Answer questions and/or reveal more during a video

Which interactive content type is best for my teaching intent?

 We have seen H5P interactives organized by time-to-create and information provided (Mohawk College, Intro to H5P, slide 7), by level of creation difficulty (Ng & Rekhari, 2018, p. 3-5), and even as periodic tables (Mealor, 2023; Rao, 2020). We have seen useful “best practices” (NC State University) and thoughtful considerations for choosing H5P interactives (Portland Community College, “Why Use H5P?). We have found the “Single Purpose vs Multipurpose” distinction from The H5P Kitchen meaningful. All of these and more are helpful to the new-to-H5P user who is just now discovering the possibilities! But what we have not seen in our investigations is an attempt to answer the question, “Which H5P interactive can best achieve the type of interaction I want to stimulate?”

The H5P Pedagogy Guide links H5P interactivity to teaching intent by starting with what educators want students to do. For example: 

I want students to Select or Choose

• Such as...Choose a category for dichotomous questions or claims
• You might try this H5P content type...True/False

I want students to Manipulate or Move

• Such as...Arrange text in order
• You might try this H5P content type...Sort the paragraphs

I want students to Interact in Combination

• Such as...Answer questions and/or reveal more during a video
• You might try this H5P content type...Interactive Video

For more information

The H5P Pedagogy Guide is now publicly available in its first iteration. The Center for eLearning Initiatives welcomes any feedback as we continue to work on this new tool to make it the best it can be for our H5P community!