Ladies and gentlemen, you’re about to witness…

I have to admit that I was a little nervous going into this week’s activities.  I had never heard of Lumi, or H5P, let alone used them before.  Turns out H5P stands for HTML5 package; essentially it uses JavaScript to create interactive elements that we can share on our websites.  Since my online course uses a lot of video elements I thought it would be most fitting to add interactions to several of them.

There was only one small problem – I didn’t have any videos yet.  So I decided to create a few from scratch.  But isn’t that placing the cart before the horse?  My course would certainly need a syllabus.  Right?  Okay, no problem I can put one of those together.  What about a teacher introduction?  A quick start guide?  How about several sleepless evenings of feverishly creating content so I could get back to adding interactive elements to the videos?

I forgot.  I hadn’t made them yet.

Cue the internal screaming.

On your mark, get set, CREATE!

If you didn’t get a chance to read my ADDIE profile (if you didn’t I don’t blame you – its longer than the manifestos of some political parties) here is my course in a nutshell: I am making a unit on leasing and buying vehicles for students who failed grade 12 workplace mathematics (in my province workplace mathematics focuses on on practical day-to-day applications).  My grand scheme is to eventually create several units so students with attendance issues can earn a credit in the course.

Before I could create my nifty videos I needed to set the stage and create the shell of the course in Google Classroom.  I apologize for not linking to it directly, but my school division has created an electronic walled garden of sorts, and outsiders aren’t allowed past the gates (to be fair we did suffer a massive ransomware attack – so the paranoia is somewhat justified).

The preliminary work is below.

Boring Teacher Stuff

• The aforementioned ADDIE profile

Getting Started

• A quick start guide
• Meet the instructor
• Introduce yourself – this is the first assignment for my students.  They will create a short video introduction (under 30 seconds) including their name, an interesting fact about them, and why they took workplace mathematics.  I have provided an example of what I am looking for.
• A course syllabus – I included a code of conduct to set my expectations for student-to-student online interactions

H5P content, assessment, and my rationale

Have you ever been shopping for jeans and you can’t seem to find the right pair?  The pair that are the correct size aren’t the right colour.  The ones in the right colour are way too big, etc.  This is how I felt about the videos I found on YouTube comparing buying and leasing cars.  Some hit on several key points, but left a few out that I wanted to discuss.  The ones that were comprehensive enough went way too long.  So I rolled up my sleeves, fired up PowerPoint, plugged in my microphone, and made my own video.

Next it was time to add H5P content throughout.  But what to add?  Interaction for interaction sake defeats the purpose.  In other words I wanted my tools to enhance the lesson in some sort of meaningful way.  For starters I wanted to keep obtrusive pauses to a minimum.  Every time I threw out a factoid I placed an optional link for students to click on if they wanted to see the source material.  Secondly I used text to summarize the main points made in major sections (again, an optional button rather than something that would kill the pacing of the video).  At several key intersections I placed quizzes to provide formative assessment to students so they could gauge their understanding.  These do stop the video so I tried to keep them spaced apart.  Due to my crippling need to organize everything I placed chapter markers throughout.  This allows students to jump to specific parts of the video when they complete their first written assignment (more on that in a second).  Lastly, there is a summary quiz to wrap up.

Here is a link to my first H5P enabled video created with Lumi.

As my first video is fairly neutral in terms of leasing and buying vehicles I then have students watch a video from Dave Ramsey (an internet finance advice guru) lambasting leasing and an article from a popular driving website defending the decision to lease.

For an assessment I provided the following written assignment (to be submitted through Google classroom).  My priorities where for students to engage in critical thinking and application of the content.  Understanding terminology is important, but I am really interested in how they apply this new knowledge.  The assignment description is below:

For this assignment you will answer the following questions:

1) Why is Dave Ramsey so strongly against leasing (which he refers to pejoratively as “fleecing”) vehicles?  Cite 3 reasons that he directly addresses in his video.  Your answer should be 3-4 sentences long.

Example: Dave Ramsey is strongly against leasing vehicles.  Firstly, he notes that when you lease a vehicle ________________________.

3 marks

2) In his article Benjamin Hunting describes why he ultimately decided to lease a new vehicle for 2 years.  Explain why he reached this decision noting two of his strongest arguments.  Your answer should be 2-3 sentences long.

Example: Although Benjamin Hunting didn’t initially want to lease a vehicle he came to this decision for several reasons.  First, when he ______________________.

2 marks

3) Based on the video in lesson 1 (part 1) and video/article in lesson 1 (part 2) which do you feel is a better option for you, buying or leasing a vehicle?

You cannot “sit on the fence” i.e. you must make a decision.

Example: Given my circumstances and preferences I think it would be best to…

You need to give a minimum of 4 reasons to support your position that should be specific to you and your context.

Example: One of the reasons I chose to lease a vehicle is that I intend to teach English in Korea for two years after graduation.  If I lease a vehicle then I won’t have to worry about selling it when I return home at the end of my contract.

2 marks for clearly stating your position (buying or leasing)
8 marks for your 4 reasons (2 marks each)

15 marks (Assignment Total)

You may submit your assignment as Google Doc, or if you are more comfortable speaking, as a short video on your cell phone (you may have to speak to your instructor on how to do this).

And then I made a bunch more stuff…

I then made several more lessons linking videos and articles.

I made another Lumi video for my second module which you can view here.  It pertains to reading window stickers on new vehicles.  As this is heavily focused on terminology I felt it was appropriate to assess this knowledge using a multiple choice quiz.  Multiple choice quizzes are not always the best – but the worlds of finance and car dealing have a lot of jargon (I think intentionally to confuse the consumer) that needs to be understood.

My Final Thoughts on H5P and Lumi

I like it.  But like all web tools like WordPress it omits the fine granular control that you get from writing your own JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.  It makes the tools accessible to all, but when something doesn’t work the way you want it to, you aren’t left with a lot of options.  As long as you are okay with some of the baked in limitations I think it is an excellent way to enhance content.

But be warned, all the neat interactions cannot compensate for the weak base content.  If the underlying video is inaccurate, biased, or poorly created all the interactive quizzes in the world won’t make it better.