I was thankful that my awesome team was willing to investigate H5P branching scenarios for our team project since I’m looking at using it to create my final Digital Consulting Project for MALAT.
The technology of H5P is free and open source and is capable of creating individualized content. There are many different types of content available from flip cards to branching scenarios. The branching scenarios are a choose your own adventure style that can be used in may fields such as healthcare. The downside of creating this type of content as an educator is that the more complex the scenario, the more time it takes the build (French, 2020).
Complex branching scenario may take time to create, but since H5P is free and open source, it is possible to build on other’s previously done work so long as they have allowed the appropriate creative commons licence. As more people get involved, the more resources will be available to make the creating of such content less time consuming. A great resource is the H5P PB (Pressbook) Kitchen that has great resources on creating H5P content for open educational resources in Pressbooks (https://kitchen.opened.ca/)
Another benefit of H5P branching scenarios, is that it has the ability to be fully accessible according to guidelines such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG, 2021). For instance, the contrast of the font and background colour and closed captioning on video clips is required to be part of the instructional design. Again, while the technology has the ability to create accessible content, it is the creator/author’s responsibility to deliberately design accessibility into the learning activity.
As more content is created, it will be exciting to see where things can go!
Hi, Shelley!
I was intrigued to learn about H5P branching scenarios when your team presented to our class. I found myself contemplating some of its similarities and differences with my team’s topic of augmented and virtual reality. For example, both tools are more learner-centred, immersive, and interactive than other common learning tools and techniques such as video-based learning and traditional lecturing.
However, both face the challenge of providing relevant and accessible content to learners, and the onus may be on the teacher to have the skills, time, and incentive to create, find and use relevant content. Another possible similarity is security concerns. Although H5P is open source, what is the possibility of software security vulnerabilities? H5P branching scenarios appear to be a fantastic learning tool, but, as with augmented and virtual reality, there are certainly questions to be answered regarding how to best use their affordances for effective student learning while minimizing their shortcomings.
Great post, Shelley. I, too, am excited to see where the future leads!
Great question about security-H5P does address this, but I don’t have the technical know how to understand this (not a software developer!)
https://h5p.org/documentation/installation/security
It does not appear that many learning analytics are collected if H5P are used in LMS plugin and therefore it is not currently recommended to be used for formal testing purposes
Cost is also a definite consideration-H5P is free compared to comparable vendor created software that is very pricey, but may save labour on the instructor end. This review compares H5p to commercial branching scenario software that I found interesting.
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/h5p
As a language teacher, you may find the “Speak the word” H5P content interesting:
https://pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca/h5pbook/chapter/speak-the-words/
Hi Shelly,
Prior to your presentation I was not familiar with Hp5 branching scenarios, I have never used it as an educator or learner. I do feel that I would have benefited greatly from using it for my own learning.
I love that t H5P is free and open source and you can individualized content to suite your needs. As well as its like a choose your own adventure where the outcome can be different dependent upon your choices.
I do believe this type of LMS would benefit my students as it allows the students to critically think about scenarios.
Thank you for introducing me to the new technology, I look forward to seeing what the future brings.
I have not had to chance to dive deep and create something of my own, I am wondering if you have to make modifications to the scenarios is it easy to do?
With myself, I am constantly updating my content within my medical field, I would not want to have to recreate something each time.
The downside of creating this type of content as an educator is that the more complex the scenario, the more time it takes the build (French, 2020)
There do not seem to be many healthcare specific ones currently built so there is a lot to do still in that regard. The specific one we reviewed, interestingly is free to share, but I don’t see a way to download and edit it. I have also lookeed at the eCampusontario collective and there does not seem to be similar content there.
I think we would have to do the heavy lifting to get this going for healthsciences other than nursing. CAMSIM has some good templated and best practices put together to help with the background video, but it is nursing specific content. In the past they have used paid software called articulate, but I see that they are starting to branching into H5P.
Still a lot of work to be done with this!
Hi Shelley,
I will be working on a H5P grant project in the coming weeks and need to do a little reading in preparation. Did you come across any strong papers summarizing best practices, implications of design, or anything else that would help inform the implementation of H5P?
Thanks,
Jonathan
Yes! I can send you a bunch of links. Cognitive load and technology adaptation model frequently came up in relation to design.
Perfect. Thanks, Shelley. Please send to jonathantcarpenter@gmail.com