Creating Interactive Content for Brightspace — Free, Fast and Fun!

If you are look­ing for adding more inter­ac­tive con­tent to your Bright­space cours­es, come join the NIC H5P Stu­dio Space!

NIC has a space for instruc­tors to quick­ly build small inter­ac­tive con­tent items for adding to a Bright­space course.

This free space is housed on a Word­Press site that NIC has set up for all instruc­tors to cre­ate their own inter­ac­tive con­tent.

A num­ber of work­shops were offered in late Octo­ber 2024 but now all the con­tent, steps and sug­ges­tions are on the Teach Any­where site.

This is a CTLI-sup­port­ed tool (not NIC IT) that is avail­able because of the gen­eros­i­ty of BC insti­tu­tions who have installed Word­Press with the H5P plug-in via a free plat­form (called the OpenETC). User­names are free to all instruc­tors in BC post-sec­ondary insti­tu­tions.

What is H5P Content?
  • H5P (HTML5 pack­age) is an open source con­tent plat­form to pro­vide any­one with the abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly cre­ate, update, share, reuse inter­ac­tive con­tent – with­out any sort of cod­ing or pro­gram­ming need­ed! Coders and pro­gram­mers from around the world have built these inter­ac­tive com­po­nents and freely shared them with H5P.org who then pro­vide inte­gra­tions for their use in plat­forms like Dru­pal, Moo­dle and Word­Press. Check out these exam­ples on the Teach Any­where Page: H5P Con­tent Exam­ples
Who Can Access and Create Content?
  • H5P is inte­grat­ed into a BC Word­Press site (part of the OpenETC) and NIC has set up a H5P Stu­dio Space with over 50 inter­ac­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties from quizzes, pre­sen­ta­tions, time­lines and videos to con­tent dis­play with accor­dions and image slid­ers.
How Do I Get a Username to Get Started?
What are the Steps to Create H5P Content?
How do I Embed H5P Content into a Brightspace Course Page?
  • Once you have your user­name and have cre­at­ed some con­tent, be sure to embed using dynam­ic resiz­ing via the tips on the page: Embed­ding H5P in Bright­space
Where Can I Learn More and Follow Some Guidelines?
  • Be sure to check out the 6 short pages on H5P found with­in this Teach Any­where site. The land­ing page, H5P Inter­ac­tive Con­tent, will get you start­ed.
Why Use H5P Content?

There are many learn­ing ben­e­fits in using inter­ac­tive con­tent. Here are a few exam­ples!

  • Allows for prac­tice with recent­ly learned con­tent (retrieval prac­tice)
  • Pro­vides engage­ment with con­tent to help rein­force con­cepts and con­tent (active learn­ing)
  • Cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty to self-test under­stand­ing for self-reg­u­lat­ed learn­ing (for­ma­tive assess­ment)
  • Gives the brain anoth­er modal­i­ty for learn­ing to assist in learn­ing process (mul­ti-modal learn­ing)
  • Breaks up larg­er com­po­nents or con­tent (chunk­ing learn­ing)
  • Some of the H5P inter­ac­tives allow for con­tent dis­play options (instruc­tion­al design)
  • Can assist in sum­ma­riz­ing key con­cepts and learn­ing near end of a mod­ule (con­sol­i­da­tion)
  • Aids in sup­port­ing inde­pen­dent learn­ing (asyn­chro­nous learn­ing)

In 2022, UBC held a sym­po­sium show­cas­ing projects using H5P and record­ed the ses­sion.

If this is of inter­est to you, reach out to CTLI (ctli@nic.bc.ca) for any assis­tance.

Post Writ­ten by: Liesel Knaack with image cre­at­ed by Chat­G­PT (2024)