H5P: A Tool for Gamifying Learning
This article is a translation of a text first published in the French edition of Profweb.
In April of 2019, the VTÉ (Vitrine technologie-éducation) organized a laboratory entitled Innovative Pedagogy: Play, Gamification and Serious Games in Service of Seriously Motivating Lessons! (La pédagogie innovante: le jeu, la ludification et les jeux sérieux au service d’apprentissages sérieusement motivants!) During the laboratory, all kinds of ways to gamify learning were discussed, including the use of a web-based tool named H5P that integrates well with Moodle. H5P allows you to create a remarkable variety of attractive and fun interactive exercises. This on-line tool has proven its worth, notably amongst the “francization” teachers at Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne.
Would you like to:
- insert questions within your videos to make them interactive?
- create quizzes that contain
- multiple choice questions?
- “drag and drop” type questions?
- fill-in-the-blanks questions?
- create interactive presentations?
- create timelines?
- create interactive 360-degree virtual tours?
H5P allows you to do all this and much more! This open source tool, integrated with Moodle is an open door towards gamifying learning. François Lizotte, the Coordinator of DECclic, previously wrote about H5P on Profweb, but following one of his presentations during a laboratory organized by the VTÉ (Vitrine technologie-éducation), I would like to revisit the subject.
H5P presentation during a lab organized by the VTÉ
On April 9th, 2019, the VTÉ organised a laboratory entitled Innovative Pedagogy: Play, Gamification and Serious Games in Service of Seriously Motivating Lessons! (La pédagogie innovante: le jeu, la ludification et les jeux sérieux au service d’apprentissages sérieusement motivants!)Laurent Gosselin, a Multimedia teacher from the Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne, was the game master for the lab, and presented les fondements théoriques derrière la ludification des apprentissages et les jeux sérieux (the theoretical basis behind gamification of learning and serious games).
During this laboratory, all kinds of ways of gamifying learning were discussed. François Lizotte, one of the speakers presented the web-based tool H5P. H5P allows you to create a remarkable variety of interactive exercises that are visually appealing and fun.
François Lizotte’s H5P presentation
Just about every activity you can dream of
Image-based matching exercises?
Dictations?
Flash cards?
Memory games?
These are but 4 of the 42 types (for the moment) of activities that you can create with H5P. Curious? Have a look at all the possibilities the tool has to offer.
Choose your own adventure style activities
In his presentation, François Lizotte mentioned the new branching scenarios activities that you can create in H5P. Here is an example:
A European art history learning path created with H5P]
The branching scenario style activities are like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, which teachers Katie Duhamel and Jonathan Gordon [in French] designed using Moodle’s “Lessons.” With H5P, these learning paths can incorporate videos and they become as immersive as they are impressive… Try an immersive path designed for Nursing students.
H5P inside of Moodle and outside of Moodle
Since H5P can directly integrate with Moodle, using it is very easy for Moodle users. However, if you are not a Moodle user but have a website (like a WordPress site hosted on Profweb‘s free web space), you can also use H5P! You can create an activity on h5p.org, and use the HTML integration code that will allow you to seamlessly integrate the activity into your site. (If it is a WordPress site, you can install a plugin that allows you to create your activities directly on your web site, without having to use h5p.org.)
H5P as used by francization teachers at the Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne – A testimonial from Jessika Groleau
After François Lizotte finished his presentation, Jessika Groleau, a Pedagogical Counsellor and Moodle administrator from Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne, took over the VTÉ lab on serious games and gamifying learning.
Légende: Jessika Groleau’s testimony]
Jessika spoke about how the francization program coordinator came to visit her when the printing budgets cutbacks for teachers were announced. These teachers work with a huge amount of paper, but also with audio cassettes, acetates, and were told that the College’s outdated overhead projector was not going to be replaced. In other words, digital media had just become the new lifeline for these teachers.
Jessika, a Moodle consultant in her college, evidently coaxed the teachers towards this rich and versatile learning management system that has demonstrated its usefulness in the college network. Moodle nicely met the needs of the francization teachers at Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne for a number of reasons:
- The teachers can place all of their documents in Moodle (by scanning their paper-based documents, for example).
- Teachers can also put all of their audio and video recordings in Moodle, allowing all the students to have access without requiring them to travel to the language lab to borrow a cassette or a DVD. Moodle is available on-line 24-7 and can be accessed by any connected device.
- In time, teachers will gradually learn to create their own interactive digital material. And Moodle allows for sharing this material between teachers.
- Colleges generally offer support to teachers who use Moodle, which is an advantage when compared with many other on-line platforms. (At Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne, it is Jessika who is the designated Moodle administrator… Find out who is in charge of Moodle at your college!)
For students, Moodle is a sort of gateway for the whole course. It’s certainly an asset. They don’t need to connect to one platform to respond to questionnaires, then another platform to view videos, etc.
From this perspective, the use of H5P, which integrates with Moodle, suddenly became very interesting for the teachers. The francization teachers offer fun activities to their students (including recording of oral activities, which are very useful in second language training) and they can follow the progression of their learners with marks which are automatically compiled by Moodle.
The francization teachers at Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne were up to the challenge of transforming their “crisis situation” into an opportunity for improvement. Bravo!
