H5P Common Questions

Once H5P is active in your book, you’ll see an H5P Content option added to your book’s admin dashboard menu at the bottom left of your screen.

Step 1: Select ‘H5P Content and then Add New from your book admin dashboard menu.

The H5P Hub interface will appear, listing a variety of H5P types you can create. You can search for a particular type of H5P or scroll to find the H5P type you want to use.

Step 2: Select the Details of the H5P you wish to use. Here, you can find screenshots and demos of the particular H5P type.

Step 3:  To begin building your H5P, select Use.

Step 4: Use the Tutorial guidance to help you build your H5P.

Step 5: Select Create to initially save your H5P. After the initial save, the Create button will change to an Update button to save your work.

Note: Be careful to save (Update) your H5P often. If you close the browser window or move to another part of your Pressbook, you will lose your unsaved work. 

Import H5P Activities

You can also import existing H5P activities that you have downloaded from Pressbooks or other public OER, an H5P repository, or an activity you created outside of Pressbooks.

Guidance for importing existing H5P into your H5P Hub in Pressbooks

If you are looking for H5P activities to import, you can look in the Pressbooks Directory. On the left side of the screen, you can filter your search results by the number of H5P Activities there are in a Pressbook.

On the card for each book, you’ll see a hyperlink that leads to that book’s H5P activities. From here, you can download H5P activities, then import them into your own book when appropriate.

LibreText offers an H5P Studio in which you can search for existing H5P. As the LibreText Studio figure shows, using LibreText Studio‘s search tool, you can further filter by Subject [1], by Keyword [2], and by Type of H5P [3]. These filters can reduce the time creators and adapters of OER spend hunting for a particular H5P.

The eCampusOntario H5P Catalog offers additional filters for finding H5P activities. You can filter search results by title and description, H5P type, keyword, subject, author, and license.

The H5P Catalogue is another place to search for existing H5P activities. The catalogue allows you to browse activities by information such as title, subject, license, author, date, and institution. The catalogue was developed by Mrs. Sushumna Rao Tadinada, a Moodle Certified Educator, ed-tech professional, and OER advocate whose work with H5P began in 2014 as a way to create interactive Telugu content. Her work reflects an important DEIA-centered purpose: helping educators locate, reuse, and share interactive learning materials across languages, contexts, and communities rather than requiring every teacher to start from scratch. By encouraging educators to use openly licensed materials thoughtfully and honor the 5Rs of OER, the catalogue supports more equitable access to adaptable, reusable, and culturally responsive learning resources.

All Pressbooks include a listing of all the H5P activities which have been created for that book. You can find the H5P listing page by adding /h5p to a Pressbook’s URL. You can view a sample H5P Activities List.

The H5P activities list shows the total number of H5P activities created in a given book, displaying them in groups of 20 with pagination controls at the bottom of the page. Activities are hidden by default. You can choose to expand all activities at once by clicking the Expand All button at the top of the page. Alternatively, you can select the Show Activity button to display a specific H5P activity.

If your institution provides access to an H5P.com account, you may be able to build activities there, download the completed H5P files, and import them into Pressbooks.

If you are building H5P at the same time as others on your team, or if you wish to build your own repository of H5P, you might choose to create H5P outside of Pressbooks and import your creations after they are completed. There are a couple of places you can do this. You can create a free account at H5P.org and build up to 3 H5P there, or sign up for a free trial at H5P.com and build there. When complete, download them to your desktop and then import them into your Pressbook.

Another option is to use Lumi.  Lumi is a free, open-source H5P builder. You can freely download the Lumi desktop editor and store your H5P on your desktop. (The Lumi Cloud is free to use for 30 days but then goes to a paid subscription.) Once you build your H5P in the Lumi Desktop, you can upload the H5P to your Pressbook H5P Library.

In Lumi, the same H5P Hub you see in Pressbook is available for creating H5P. This makes the learning curve small. However, just as in Pressbooks, you will want to save your Lumi H5P creations often to ensure you don’t lose your work if you close the window.

Directions for getting started with Lumi Desktop:

Step 1. Navigate to the chapter where you would like to add your activity and place your cursor at the spot on the page where the H5P is to be placed.

Step 2. Select the Add H5P button from the top of your page.

Step 3: Find the activity you’d like to add to your book and select Insert. An H5P shortcode will be inserted in your chapter.

Step 4: Save your chapter.

To view the H5P, select the Preview button on the left of your screen.

Start With Your Learning Objectives

Begin by identifying the learning objective or outcome the H5P activity should support. Ask yourself what learners should be able to do after reading the content. What do they need to practice?

Choose the Right H5P Type

Once you have identified the learning objective, choose an H5P type that matches what you want learners to do. Pay special attention to the action verb within the learning objective. It will help point you to the right H5P type. The “Look Book” chapters (H5P for Presenting Your Content, H5P for Formative Assessment, and H5P for Reflection and Deep Learning) in this handbook can also help you narrow down and choose the best H5P for your situation.

Consider Using AI to Draft Content

AI tools can be useful for drafting questions, answer choices, feedback, examples, scenarios, or reflection prompts for H5P activities. To get better results, provide the AI tool with your learning objective, audience, content summary, desired H5P type, and any tone or accessibility needs. This conversation with ChatGPT provides sample prompts and AI output you can replicate. Remember, AI-generated content should always be reviewed and revised. Check for accuracy, bias, clarity, alignment with your objective, and whether the language sounds like your own teaching voice. AI can help you get started, but you remain responsible for the final content and learning experience.

Plan Feedback

Provide your learners with immediate feedback as they practice to help correct errors in thinking, offer another layer of information, and improve their confidence. Before building, decide what feedback learners should see when they answer correctly, incorrectly, or partially correctly. Feedback should do more than say “correct” or “try again.” H5P types allow you to include explanations of why an answer is right or wrong, point learners back to a key idea, offer a hint, or encourage them to rethink a misconception. Well-designed feedback can make an H5P activity feel more like guided practice rather than a simple quiz.

Address Accessibility

Accessibility should be part of the planning process, not something added at the end. As you design your H5P activity, consider whether learners can access the content. Use plain language, strong color contrast, readable text, and meaningful labels. Include alt text and (if complex) image descriptions for images. Avoid relying only on color, sound, movement, or images to communicate important information. Some H5P types are more accessible than others, so it is worth checking accessibility guidance before choosing a content type.

Include Metadata

Before publishing or sharing your H5P activity, add clear metadata when the H5P type allows it. Metadata can include the title, author, license, source, and other reuse information. Just as with any OER, it helps others understand who created the activity, how it may be reused, and how to provide attribution. A clear title also makes the activity easier to find later in your H5P library, especially if you create many activities over time.

Coolers is a great place to come up with a color palette for your H5P (or your entire Pressbook). The website will help you find complementary color schemes, identify potential issues with color contrast for accessibility, and allow you to download a color palette with hex numbers that are easy to input in your H5P builds.

Canva is a wonderful place to build colorful, engaging graphics for your H5P. The free version is all you need to build cover slides for H5P Course Presentations, title pages for your H5P Quizzes, images for your H5P Image Hotspots, and more. You can use those hex colors you found in Coolers to make a cohesive set of images to use throughout your H5Ps in your Pressbook. Canva allows their free assets to be openly licensed, too, which works perfectly with OER builds.

Read and view Amber Hoye’s use of Canva in her amazing H5P builds.