Digital Tools for Interactive E‐Content Development

Abstract

The rise of e-learning on digital platforms has brought in the necessity to develop interactive e-contents to suit all type of learners who are in their different stages of life. With the shift away from classroom teaching, the biggest challenge is to provide the online learners with the same learning experience and benefits as that of the face-to-face learning. The distance education teaching methods earlier were based on behaviorist models and later based on cognitivist model. The interactive online learning goes beyond the passive one-way learning of reading, listening, and watching the content. An H5P digital tool enables to expand the pedagogic knowledge and experience to the digital learning environments focusing on connectivity, communication, collaboration, and convergence leading to an interactive learning model. The three most important H5P tools helpful for developing interactive e-contents are Course Presentation, Branching Scenario, and Interactive Video. Course Presentation is the interactive form of power point presentation using slides which includes multimedia, multiple choice questions, interactive summaries, fill in the blanks, drag and drop options and other interactions. Course Presentation thus could increase student participation through more interactive and meaningful engagement. Students could watch the videos and answer various quizzes thereby testing their knowledge on their way. Branching Scenarios are another interactive form of learning which takes the learners on a route through the learning content based on their answers. They are not linear and have multiple routes. The route the learners follow through learning varies depending on the decisions made and it is possible to award and subtract points based on the route they take, and the specific skills developed. Interactive Videos are enriched with interactivities and the interactions may or may not pause the video. The interactive questions support adaptivity thereby enabling the learner to jump to another part of the video based on the learner's input. Evidence based research have identified that interactive learning contents have increased student engagement in learning, offers opportunities for students for self-directed learning, increases the relevancy and quality of the instructional materials and provides an innovative way of instruction to be personalized in an online learning environment. The chapter describes the application of the H5P tools in developing interactive E-contents, discusses the advantages of using these tools for E-content development, and highlights the situations where each of these tools would be effective in the online learning environment.