In recent years, English language teaching trends, which parallel pedagogical tendencies for content classes, have become more focused on using technology. Scholars remain divided over whether technology has more positive or negative consequences. However, in contemporary education, many English language instructors now employ technology for teaching, and curriculum standards require students to demonstrate both technological and linguistic competency.

I strongly believe that both students and teachers will benefit by becoming comfortable and competent when interacting with diverse forms of technology. Digital communication, ranging from TED Talks to video gaming, support learning in and out of today’s classrooms. This article introduces the H5P website—an innovative, free, practical, and easy-to-use tech software that English teachers and students can use when engaged in the teaching and learning English.

The Problem

Two events brought my focus toward employing interactive video technology as a teaching resource. First, online teaching is now a reality. Second, today’s students are not only more tech savvy than their teachers, but they also expect to be entertained while learning. They prefer and better retain their edutainment in video or images, not text (Steffes & Duverger, 2012). When I understood the relevance of these two concepts, I changed my teaching and began advocating video projects that employ H5P in all of my courses.

My learning curve took time and focus. In fall 2016, my dean asked me to convert all the TESOL endorsement courses at my institution to a 100% online format. I quickly understood that in the United States, online courses are a massive trend in higher education because online classes accommodate more students while costing less money in infrastructure (Allen & Seaman 2007). In a series of workshops and trainings designed to teach faculty how to convert face-to-face (f2f) courses into engaging, relevant, and project-based online courses, I also became acquainted with Quality Matters, an organization that recognizes and supports excellence in online teaching.

Good online teaching parallels f2f teaching in that the goal is to engage students; it also offers projects, activities, and assessments that allow students to experience, practice, collaborate, and incorporate materials so that authentic learning happens. For English language learners, this means teachers must activate prior knowledge and motivate learning by making the learning objective relevant (Echevarría, Vogt, & Short, 2017).

Using interactive technology supports both online and f2f classes. Approximately 95% of my students—English language learners and aspiring TESOL educators—are millennials. They are tech savvy. When surveyed, they all reported watching more video than reading text. Because of this, online and f2f courses often bore them. One multilingual Ethiopian student responded to survey prompts with the following when asked “How do you best learn?”:

I’m sick of [sic] death by PowerPoint and reading dry textbooks.…After my classes, I go to YouTube, or special sites where I can watch animations or colorful lectures that are short but useful

He explained that he references the internet for all his academic courses, both f2f and online. All other student responses to this and similar questionnaires greatly resembled his answers. It soon became clear to me that students, ESL or otherwise, are captive audiences. They cannot shop and choose professors. Unless fabulously wealthy, our students cannot switch universities when seeking an endorsement or degree, no matter how dull their professors are. So they make do and endure boring classes, learn little, and then independently seek out engaging videos to compensate for ineffective teaching.

The Solution

My answer to this quandary was to create interactive videos for my students, and also to require the students to create interactive videos for me and for their classmates. My ratings went up wildly, and I also received letters of appreciation for allowing students to not only learn content, but also to acquire a relevant tech tool. You can learn to use H5P in less than 1 hour.

We have all seen videos on the internet that have pop-up questions. These interactive clips help students learn via a variety of formative assessments; they also engage students to enhance their knowledge by offering hyperlinks to related information. H5P is a free coding program that creates such interactive videos. English language teachers and language students can use it to offer information and to demonstrate competency. The format is simple:

1. You can use a YouTube video or create your own. Watch their tutorial and upload your video on YouTube. Set it as unlisted.

2. Go to H5P.org and import your video.

3. Watch the short and clear H5P tutorial titled: “Interactive Video.”

4. Add labels and questions (true/false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, open ended, summary) and embed hyperlinks or images into the video.

5. Embed or link the video into your online course or distribute the link via email.

See an example about the different aspects of teaching a lesson that I recorded for my TESOL endorsement students here. Next, endorsement students were assigned to videotape their own lessons. I asked them to use the various H5P labels to clarify or justify what and why they used a specific task or instruction while teaching. This request has several advantages in training ESL teachers:

1. By videotaping one’s self at work, strengths and weaknesses become self-apparent.

2. The video can be reviewed repeatedly.

3. Adding an assessment component (i.e., label and justify) positively promotes self-critique.

4. An engaging media format can be shared with others or placed into teaching portfolios.

The H5P format is also useful for English language students. Students are engaged with relevant technology while learning English; they learned a valuable tech skill in addition to language. Teachers can create videos and via H5P prompts ask students to correct or improve words, grammar points, phrases, or speech acts, and students can create their own videos and test their peers.

Conclusion

Whether you are an English language teacher in a remote area or a professor in a large college, we can all agree that the internet has changed our lives and our English teaching. Modern students study, learn, and pass on information using technology. H5P is one kind of website we can easily utilize to teach English. In the future, I also believe that interactive video games will be specifically designed to teach language. We are living in interesting times, thanks to ongoing technological innovations.

References

Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2007). Online nation: Five years of growth in online learning. Newburyport, MA: Sloan Consortium.

Echevarría, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. (2017). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. New York, NY: Pearson.

Steffes, E. M., & Duverger, P. (2012). Edutainment with videos and its positive effect on long term memory. Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education, 20(1), 1–10. Retrieved from http://www.mmaglobal.org/publications/JAME/JAME-Issues/JAME-2012-Vol20-Issue1/JAME-2012-Vol20-Issue1-Steffes-Duverger-pp1-10.pdf

Valerie Sartor is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Akron. She teaches ESL and trains K–12 teachers in best practices to support ELs. Dr. Sartor is in charge of the TESOL endorsement. She also teaches literacy classes to prepare teachers to effectively instruct culturally and linguistically diverse youth.