Wilfrid Laurier University partners on eCampusOntario H5P Studio to help share, create interactive content

Ontario post-secondary professionals who want to create and share H5P as part of a community have a new opportunity, thanks to a partnership between eCampusOntario and Wilfrid Laurier University.

The two organizations recently collaborated to create the eCampusOntario H5P studio, a digital platform where Ontario postsecondary professionals can create and share interactive content. Anyone with an Ontario postsecondary email address can create an account, experiment with different types of H5P, and share or browse content already created by others.

H5P is an open-source tool that lets users create over 40 types of interactive content, including quizzes, videos and more. No prior coding knowledge is required, so H5P has rapidly become a key element for those creating open educational resources (OER) who want their course material to be customized and interactive.

After the launch of eCampusOntario’s IdeaScale Campaign to crowdsource ideas for emerging educational technology needs, the community interest in H5P became apparent. “Educators fromacross Ontario were incredibly enthusiastic about the potential for H5P,” says Lillian Hogendoorn, Digital Access & OER Lead at eCampusOntario. “We decided to pursue a provincial offering right away.”

To nurture this enthusiasm, eCampusOntario’s Open Library team began searching for a way to develop a central hub for H5P creation, one that could also foster a community of practice. This led them to a team at Wilfrid Laurier University, which had already developed something similar on their own campus. The team at Wilfrid Laurier was more than happy to share their process and help bring the eCampusOntario H5P Studio to life.

“H5P is a great tool for developing and sharing interactive learning objects easily,” says Joanne Oud, an instructional technology librarian at Wilfrid Laurier who worked on both projects. “One of its most appealing features is the ability to share and reuse, so having a platform like H5P Studio that allows people from many institutions to create and share in a central hub just makes sense.”

Yasin Dahi, a developer at Wilfrid Laurier who designed and developed the eCampusOntario H5P Studio thinks content sharing can only benefit the higher ed community. “When you are first learning how to create H5P objects, it helps a lot to see what others have done,” he says. “Having one centralized space makes it easy for others to see what is out there, either to get ideas for what works well or to reuse and share content. The more people use H5P, the more there is out there to discover and share.”

To see a recorded webinar featuring Joanne, Yasin and Lillian talk more about the eCampusOntario H5P Studio, click here.