Thomas Niederkofler about interactive learning materials in H5P

Thomas Niederkofle
My goal is to offer students more practice and make learning more fun in the meantime
Name
Thomas Niederkofler
Current role
Assistant professor Business Economics

Lecturer Thomas Niederkofler offers students from his course Accounting interactive learning materials with the help of software H5P. This way students can learn and practice interactively, and they will receive feedback about their learning performances.

'Among other things, I teach the course Accounting with my colleague Roeland Aernoudts at the Nijmegen School of Management. This is a course with first-year bachelor students from both Business Administration and the Economy programmes. In total there are over 700 students participating in this course. This makes it challenging to interact with students on a continuous basis. It can also be hard to tell whether students have understood the content and achieved their learning objectives. H5P gives immediate insight into how students are dealing with the materials. It provides them with guidance and feedback, while it also adds some additional flavour to accounting. Specific concepts they are having trouble with can be repeated in the next class.'

'H5P is software that lets you add different interactive learning materials to your Brightspace courses. The learning materials range from interactive videos, crossword puzzles to drag-and-drop questions. Take a look at the H5P website for all 42 question types. I mostly use the interactive video. With this type of learning material the students will receive interactive questions or assignments while they are watching a video lecture. This provides them with immediate feedback. When they are right, it confirms they have understood the materials. If they are wrong, it might motivate them to go back and repeat that part of the class. Hopefully, it is also diverse and interesting for the student. At the same time, it offers you as lecturer some immediate feedback: where are a lot of the students making mistakes? Where are the problem areas? It is good to know this during the course, instead of finding out when the students have taken the exam.'

'For intrinsically motivated students this method can be a nice confirmation of their knowledge. The questions can also be skipped – they are not mandatory. For the students that are less motivated it can be a moment of feedback which might motivate them to view the explanation twice, whereas they would not be inclined to do so beforehand. My goal is to offer students more practice and make learning more fun in the meantime. Students have provided us with positive feedback in the course evaluation. They have said that they thought watching the videos was fun, enjoyable, and helpful.'

Tip from Thomas

'As a lecturer it is a relatively small task to integrate H5P into your education, but with a potential large effect. Make sure you vary between question types when you use H5P. 'Use different question types, this keeps things interesting and fun for students! I myself am still a beginner, but I would recommend to just get started. The software is very easy to use and you will learn as you go.'

Getting started with H5P

H5P is integrated in Brightspace. You can use the H5P website to learn how you can use different content types in your education. There are manuals for Radboud lecturers as well. Please contact the Teaching Information Point of your faculty if you need any help or advice in using H5P in your course.