Evaluation of H5P interactive videos in enhanced elearning of an environmental engineering course during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In the autumn session of 2020, COVID-19 outbreak forced the transition of teaching and learning from face-to-face mode into remote delivery in Australian universities. Over this unplanned, unprepared, and rapid move to remote delivery for lecturers and online learning for students, many strategies, designs, and technologies were applied to replace conventional classes, tutorials, laboratory classes, project assignments, and assessments. PURPOSE OR GOALThis study investigated the design, use and impact of videos for lectures, tutorials, and laboratory experiments for a combined undergraduate and postgraduate Environmental Engineering course during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The course was delivered through both face-to-face and online delivery modes, which we employed conventional video recordings and H5P interactive videos to support e-learning on the Moodle platform. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODSH5P interactive videos, slides and quizzes were also used to design the pre-lab and recorded lab experiments, as our labs were closed due to social distancing requirements. Students' performance was evaluated through their marks of weekly quizzes; and their engagement was analyzed using Moodle activity logs and anonymous surveys through teacher evaluation and polling in Zoom meetings. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMESThe attendance to online Zoom lecture and tutorials ranged from 70-87%. These data collectively demonstrate a high level of student engagement and satisfaction under the COVID-19 impacted teaching and learning environment compared to rate of lecture attendance at traditional lectures. H5P interactive videos helped students to achieve higher marks, compared to conventional videos. Student has watched the video more than once to obtain enough information to write the lab class report. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARYIt was shown that H5P interactive videos had higher views than conventional videos, which subsequently led to higher marks in weekly quizzes. The tutorials were delivered using Zoom meetings, supplemented with pre-recorded videos which supported students who could not attend the tutorial or for their revisions. The virtual laboratory experiments enabled with H5P provided adequate data and information for students to write their lab reports comparable to the requirements of a real-life lab class. Different approaches of video design and their limitations and improvements are discussed for the future development of e-learning in the post-COVID era.