H5P endeavours - a progress update

Following my hard influence and efforts to get H5P integrated into Nottingham Trent University's (NTU) digital ecosystem.  I thought I'd give a short update on the university-wide support I have been leading on - a similar approach I took with the PebblePad implementation.  Covered briefly in 'Planning and facilitating digital innovation - Snippets of practice'.  A quick background on my H5P history - I've been a keen user of H5P circa 2016 and then used it thoroughly to create online learning material during an eLearning Developer role in 2017.  So once I started at NTU later that year and quickly realised their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Brightspace, did not offer similar online content creation features.  I quickly adopted H5P and started to drum up interest and support as an ideal tool to enable our staff to create rich online interactive activities, resources and formative assessments.  I remain enthusiastic about it and champion it's capabilities that improves our flexible and online learning offer.

Following my previous H5P blog posts, I continued to offer introductory sessions but paused them back in December 2019 until we had a permanent solution in place and to avoid people using H5P.org to host content.  Like with PebblePad, as a result of my earlier work and interest I became a key stakeholder and still am, being invited to business account reviews, as with PebblePad.  In early 2020 a small working group was formed to provide supporting evidence/case studies of using H5P to develop a business case.  Later that year the VLE Manager, Adam Elce, successfully lobbied this (reinforced by the pressing pandemic situation) and the H5P VLE integration became available in August to staff.  Slightly late into the academic year resulting in a soft launch, but has had a decent uptake and is continuing to grow.

As I predicted last Summer, asynchronous learning and teaching is gaining momentum at the university - not all learning and teaching needs to be live and didactic.  As part of my support and digital leadership for H5P since the soft launch, I had already been explaining the asynchronous pedagogical benefits of H5P.  Coincidentally, in December 2020 I said to my senior Marcus Elliott that I needed to align my H5P work to current NTU strategies or related projects to keep importance and momentum going.  At the start of January 2021, as part of NTU's Redesigning Learning and Teaching strategy, I was informed that the asynchronous piece was picking up rapidly and we discussed how H5P could be broadly part of this.  Me and Marcus consulted with one and another and I shared my knowledge of asynchronous design, potential frameworks and identified gaps that we can support as a team, primarily me.  Using this information we arranged a follow up meeting with other Digital Practice Team colleagues.  To map out a process for the development of asynchronous learning and teaching design and to identify where in the process we could support it.  Our input into this formed a proposal of how our team can support this piece of work.  Specifically focusing on the content aspect 'Creating, Curating and Converting content'.  I went on to mapping potential support strategies, in the remit of the content – creation, curation and conversion, to enable quick wins around supporting asynchronous learning.

So to continue the effort to align H5P with current strategic or operational plans, before a service account meeting with H5P themselves, I suggested to the VLE Manager that we spent some time fleshing out a vision and action plan for H5P.  To ensure that we know where it is heading, delivers core objectives and covers the wider needs we had previously identified in the business case.  As well as ensuring that it has adequate support and resources behind it.  I will be overseeing: skills development (including instructional design mindset/process); guidance and support options and creation of a series of templates.  Collaboration is ongoing and I will then able to appropriately align my support work and develop needs around it.

My mission with H5P continues to be about enabling and empowering staff to create rapid asynchronous/online activities and resources in a DIY approach.  By developing the associated digital practices and processes that make these successful.

A little rundown of other H5P bits and pieces I have been involved in, internally:

• One-to-one consultancy with early and new H5P adopters exploring pedagogical and technical problems and ideas for application
• Created a comprehensive staff H5P support area within our VLE, including basic 'how to' videos, exemplars and related literature to help get people started - creating and inserting content guidance is the most popular
• Provided basic Course Presentation, Interactive Book and Interactive Video templates for staff to clone and use
• Designed and delivering an 'Introduction to H5P' briefing webinar to support the soft launch
• However, I have since provided the snippet video below for folks to watch beforehand, then demoing the H5P interface within VLE, introduce a couple of frameworks then asking attendees to bring along any questions/scenarios to ensure they get most out of it
• I created the short mini-Continuing Professional Development (CPD) snippet video for the internal TILTOnline academic community as part of the November 2020 theme 'flexible and resilient pedagogy':

• I'm currently mulling over ideas to offer H5P design workshops, to supplement the briefing webinar.  This is increasingly becoming important for academics as they start to get more comfortable with the interface and need guidance taking from content to activity
• Forthcoming H5P OER Hub - On 5 March me, the VLE Manager and another colleague were interviewed by H5P to develop their OER Hub due to be launched later this year.  We provided feedback and ideas (required and nice to have) on the functionality that would be useful to support, inspire and encourage high quality H5P objects.  I suggested particular features such as: enabling to submit screencasts/screenshots to illustrate the bigger picture/context embedded in a VLE with instruction etc (not just the isolated objects); activity builder; creative commons type publishing which led onto an idea about tracking/timeline adaptation of objects; rating, recommendations and upvoting to ensure a subtle quality measure; digital badges to motivate creation/uploading to OER Hub; overall connecting and collaborating with wider educators; possibly provocative, but to ask/request for certain OERs as some folk might have them or folks in community might want to create them willingly
• EDIT: 16 December 2021 - I suggested the following ahead of the Hub's arrival; I think it would be good for staff to contribute to the OER Hub. However, an initial concern I have that requires further investigation, discussion and clarification, is how H5P objects align to our internal intellectual property/copyright policies/procedures and how materials adhere to academic quality standards. Which may encourage or discourage staff from sharing widely.
• November 2022 - NTU Product Manager - "...do we want to enable the H5P OER Hub? Are there any considerations we need to think of or have in place once enabled?"  Me - "Is there anyway we can access a ‘preview state’ of it to evaluate?  I think we’d need to be thorough about it’s application and how we communicate it’s use to NTU staff.  Which Adam may want to scope first.  As I mentioned last December on this: “…an initial concern I have that requires further investigation, discussion and clarification, is how H5P objects align to our internal intellectual property/copyright policies/procedures and how materials adhere to academic quality standards.  Which may encourage or discourage staff from sharing widely.”
• EDIT: On 5 May 2021 - long story short that resulted in a bit of learning and recommendation to H5P...  When editing a content type and you change the type you will get a 'Change content type?' prompt.  If you confirm it will replace the content type and wipe previous content.  However, what it doesn't tell you is that it wipes the previous content type completely from the system.  I.e. it doesn't go into the central archive/trash area.  So I have recommended that H5P include subtext to the prompt to address this as a consequence of confirming this action.  Luckily I had downloaded my content type in question last year, so I can re-upload.  H5P agreed that they could be more clear in this.
• Planning a webinar for an internal conference with a team colleague on the topic of 'Beyond the MCQ'.  I'll be giving a focus to H5P on how you can mix things up using different question types and using multimedia
• Working with professional services staff to model alternative ways of providing information via Microsoft SharePoint, that is not just static documentation and text-heavy material
• Supporting experimentation with two leadership and management colleagues use H5P, through the creation of prototyping a usable object (catch up/extension material) that they can then model to their colleagues, for the Leading at NTU programme - which I will be lobbying my stored ideas in due course

Externally:

• Showcased and used the H5P WordPress plugin as part of my role as the Digital Design Lead with The Education and Training Foundation, to create online CPD modules for the Advanced Practitioners (#APConnect) Year 3 programme
• Critical friend to some colleagues at Vision West Nottinghamshire College and Bishop Burton College in the effective use of H5P

In a future blog post, perhaps I might talk about the popular questions and practices seen with H5P and how it is achieving and/or changing active online learning.

Jisc Digital Leaders 2021

As mentioned in the last section of my Dared to lead blog post, during 12 January to 4 February 2021 I participated in the inaugural online version of the renowned Jisc Digital Leaders programme.  This online version of the programme was well designed and facilitated - thanks to John Sumpter, Zac Gribble and Teresa Higgs for making it so and wider group for their quality contributions.  To echo that, during one of the sessions 'delivering strategy by building capability' we were asked to reflect on "What’s the best training you ever experienced?  What made it so great?" I replied:

"Hmm, I've too many criteria! 😁 Structure, seeing learning preferences, instruction and resources etc.  Got to say this programme 'so far' is shaping up to be one of the best - my reason, a good balance of thought provoking information, simplification, practical application, usable/adaptable resources, social and collaboration interaction - just a shame it's not the in-person."

Below are the personal objectives for the programme that I made as part of an introductory activity. I can confidently say that these and my expectations were met. The * however, there weren't explicit opportunities to assess and develop own confidence, but were given tools and techniques to set me off in the right direction. But as always confidence grows in time and with frequent opportunities to practise.

• Understand the role of digital leadership and in my own context
• Understand my organisations digital infrastructure and opportunities to improve it
• Develop own confidence and identify approaches and techniques to effective digital leadership*
• Develop broader communication and leadership/management skills, i.e. stakeholder and change management and influence skills
• Maintaining own digital leadership practice

After completing the digital leadership programme I could have completed additional tasks to earn Demonstrated and Implemented badges. However, as I'm approaching completion of my Chartered Management Institute (CMI) Level 5 Diploma in Management and Leadership qualification, which complements this.  I didn't feel the need to submit further plans and reflection to achieve them.  Anyhow - I'm proud to be part of the Jisc digital leaders alumni. 💪

Different to my previous event blog posts such as PebblePad Super User Academy May 2019 and ALT Annual Conference 2019 plus many others.  Originally I was going to present and disseminate my learning and key findings back into my organisation via an action plan in the form of digital storytelling - a technique emphasised in the programme.  That plays right into initiating the 'new ways of working' piece in my department, Organisational Development (Org Dev).  However, as this rapidly got into motion I settled for disseminating the following document with my colleagues - a small heap of detail to start conversations on the topic and application.

"...Below is a thorough summary and recommendations [later omitted] doc I have produced to share with you all.  There's lots of tools and techniques we can use to support our work, however I feel that there's further mileage in Org Dev adopting and piloting the following three.  But do scan the doc for further info and other opportunities you feel we can investigate.  I'm keen that we utilise some of this, so perhaps we could discuss it in a later Org Dev meeting?

• Digital mapping - to understand digital context and practices for new ways of working
• Action mapping and co-design process - to explore how we can improve our learning and development offer that better meets needs and current issues
• Design thinking - to build new learning and developments interventions from the ground up or assist in deconstructing and re-constructing existing ones"

Throughout the programme I recorded sketchy notes in our designated journals and will revisit them in due course, perhaps sharing them here at a later date.  I'll update the above document as I mull over my learnings and practise these tools and techniques in different situations and develop further ideas and recommendations.

Further to my journaling and document, I made some key critical thoughts/reflections I had, in no particular order and certainly not limited to (others are present in my sketchy notes):

• Understanding my organisation more digitally, in both depth and breadth
• Understanding my role and actions as a digital leader, including my personal mission(s)
• Understanding the current organisational scenarios and where I can best lead and support
• Identifying and understanding problems/issues to be addressed then turning into challenge statements and exploring potential solutions
• Amplify my voice and expand my leadership abilities in my department Org Dev and beyond.  However, slightly limited by my role boundaries/less ‘official’ seniority - some aspects are out of my remit.  I may not be in a position of upmost 'power', but can certainly influence, provide thought leadership and lead without instruction
• Importance of storytelling and analogies to aid change acceptance
• Understanding both sceptics and enthusiasts - with the view of focus on the enablers not blockers and channelling their energies into the team.  But find a way to engage blockers at a steady pace, until enthusiasts influence and energy shows impact
• Engaging with an audience and understanding that audience - one of the main challenges digital leaders’ face
• Disposition - not everyone has a natural inclination towards leadership, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible.  They have other redeeming qualities that fulfil the role of a leader - in my opinion you can’t/shouldn't be everything to everyone, its not sustainable
• Develop a strong plan of action using the tools and techniques learned here for precision and effective digital leadership

Again, I am happy to talk to anyone in more detail about the tools and techniques I have been introduced to as well as sharing my own reflections on the programme itself.

EDIT:  An article by Jisc on two delegates' experiences on the cohort I was in; 'Top tips for navigating the online digital leaders programme'.