What are the best practices for using H5P to create interactive e-learning content?

1 Know your learning objectives

Before you start creating any e-learning content, you should have a clear idea of what you want your learners to achieve. What are the skills, knowledge, or attitudes that you want them to develop or improve? How will you measure their progress and success? Having well-defined learning objectives will help you choose the right H5P content types and interactions for your e-learning project. You can use the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to formulate your learning objectives and align them with your course design.

2 Choose the right H5P content type

H5P offers a wide range of content types that you can use to create interactive e-learning content. Some of the most popular ones are interactive video, course presentation, drag and drop, branching scenario, and memory game. Depending on your learning objectives and your target audience, you should choose the H5P content type that best suits your e-learning needs and goals. For example, if you want to create a video-based lesson with embedded questions and feedback, you can use the interactive video content type. If you want to create a scenario-based learning activity that adapts to the learner's choices, you can use the branching scenario content type.

3 Design for accessibility and usability

One of the benefits of using H5P is that it supports accessibility and usability standards, which means that your e-learning content can be accessed and used by a diverse range of learners. However, you still need to pay attention to some design aspects that can affect the accessibility and usability of your e-learning content. For example, you should use clear and concise language, avoid unnecessary jargon and acronyms, use contrast and colors wisely, provide captions and transcripts for audio and video content, and test your content on different devices and browsers.

4 Balance interactivity and cognitive load

Interactivity is a key element of engaging and effective e-learning content, as it allows learners to interact with the content, receive feedback, and apply their learning. However, too much interactivity can also overwhelm or distract learners, especially if it is not relevant or meaningful for the learning objectives. This can lead to cognitive overload, which is the situation when learners have too much information or stimuli to process at once. To avoid cognitive overload, you should balance interactivity and cognitive load by using appropriate levels of challenge, providing clear instructions and guidance, chunking information into manageable units, and using multimedia and visuals strategically.

5 Evaluate and improve your content

The last best practice for using H5P to create interactive e-learning content is to evaluate and improve your content based on feedback and data. You can use various methods to collect feedback and data, such as surveys, quizzes, analytics, or user testing. You can then use this information to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your e-learning content, and make adjustments or improvements accordingly. For example, you can use H5P analytics to track how learners interact with your content, how long they spend on each activity, how many attempts they make, and how they score. You can then use this data to optimize your content for engagement and learning outcomes.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?