Moodle in English: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 7:47 AM

As sites start to upgrade to Moodle 3.9 over the coming months, this might be a vitally important question. Already we see a number of discussions in this very forum around this topic. In simple terms the question is "Should we use the H5P plugin, or use the H5P integration that now exists in Moodle Core from version 3.9?"

The answer to this is not entirely simple, and in fact may be different for different Moodle sites. However, H5P recently released an important statement on H5P.org [https://h5p.org/moodle-plugin-vs-moodle-core-vs-h5p-com]

Please do read the full press release (it's not too long) but here is the summary:

Comparison of the three options [for Moodle users/sites]

The H5P Plugin (recommended)

Includes the full version of H5P including the H5P Hub, making it compatible with the OER Hub and future versions of H5P.
Maintained by the H5P Core Team.
Available as a plugin on Moodle.org, allowing for self-hosting and managing of the H5P content.

H5P.com (recommended)

The best version of H5P delivered as a service; hosted and supported by the H5P Core Team, integrates via LTI.
Will soon include premium features allowing for a better authoring experience and several unique H5P dimensions that need special server side technologies to work.
Includes the full version of H5P including the H5P Hub, making it compatible with the OER Hub and future versions of H5P.
This is a paid service, so if you use H5P.com you also help fund the development of H5P.

The Moodle core integration

Partial integration of H5P as an optional feature in Moodle core, developed and maintained by Moodle HQ.
Offers a tighter integration with Moodle and the Moodle Mobile App.
We currently do not know if and when a full integration of H5P will be in place.

So what does this mean in the real world? I suggest...

If your site is not currently using the H5P plugin, and you will be upgrading to Moodle 3.9, use the core functionality. Even though there are issues, and maybe some missing H5P features, the core H5P functionality is likely to get better in Moodle 4.0 released next year.
If H5P is not a big part of your plans, if it's being used a little bit, or just here and there, and it's not critical, then you should probably just use the H5P in core Moodle.
However, if H5P is a major part of your Moodle site already, and you see H5P as a critical and central part of your e-learning within Moodle, then you may want to continue to use the H5P plugin, and disable the core H5P functionality within Moodle (it would be confusing to have two ways of adding and managing H5P).

It's also important to note that if you are linking your Moodle site to H5P.com (paid service) the LTI integration works well (I've set this up and it's not too hard for admins) and H5P.com also provides some data and metrics not available with just the Moodle plugin or the new H5P core in Moodle functionality.

I don't believe there is a "one size fits all" answer here. But I look forward to this discussion, because it will help organisations and administrators make the best choice for their organisations right now, with an eye on the future.

Stu.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Bernat Martinez - Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 11:31 PM

Thanks Stuart for your post.

Using M3.9.1 I have not quite clear the situation. When I go to activities selector I have two H5P icons, black and blue.

For the moment I'm using the black one for embedding H5P in a label using Atto editor and the blue one for stand alone activity. .

For the moment, it works fine in some H5P tools, except the interactive video, which is unable to show as the wheel keeps turning when I try to upload an item from H5P site.

any hint about making interactive video working?

Thanks in advance

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Thursday, 6 August 2020, 1:44 PM

Hi Bernat
If you have two icons in the Activity Chooser, one blue colour, and one black colour, it means you have Moodle 3.9 (with H5P in core), and also have the H5P plugin (which was likely there when you were using Moodle 3.8).
My advice, and I think we will have more useful opinions as people transition to Moodle 3.9, is to only use one.
I've heard about the spinning wheel, which means a resource is not loading. However, I've not experienced this with H5P in Moodle, and not in the Interactive Video. But it's possibly related to the actual file size, the network speed, of the browser.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Bernat Martinez - Thursday, 6 August 2020, 7:21 PM

Thanks Stuart for your quick reply.

Following your advice I get rid of the H5P plugin, now I have only the H5P core. Everything is OK except the interactive video tool.

Debugging at web level I get this error

Uncaught TypeError: H5P.Question is undefined <anonymous>https://benedu.net/pluginfile.php/1/core_h5p//cachedassets/153377ce298081680cccf8606e0784abdb709778.js:1765

Unable to find constructor for: H5P.InteractiveVideo 1.22

Do you have any suggestion how to solve it?

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Daniel Thies - Thursday, 6 August 2020, 8:40 PM

This may be an issue with using two different implementations. Did you edit the content with the older plugin and then try to display it with the Moodle implementation? This might be a problem if the to systems have different versions of the content type installed. You might try running the cron task that update the content types so that Moodle is on the most recent version.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Bernat Martinez - Saturday, 8 August 2020, 2:20 AM

Thanks for your feedback, I will try to reinstall Moodle latest version

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Baskar Kannaiah - Wednesday, 23 November 2022, 8:32 PM

Hi Bernat,
I have fixed this issue by update the h5p library, please see this video for more details.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Sara Arjona Téllez - Tuesday, 11 August 2020, 11:54 PM

Stuart, thanks a lot for starting this interesting discussion and sharing your findings!!

I agree with you that there is not an easy and simple answer to the question raised here because it depends on the way each institution will be using H5P.

Just in case it might help users using mod_hvp and planning to move to mod_h5pactivity, I would like to share the link to the migration tool we created in order to make easy for admins to migrate the existing mod_hvp activities: https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/H5P_migration_tool

Kind regards from sunny Barcelona! :-*

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 1:09 PM

Thanks so much for adding that Sara !
I had intended to refer to that in the original post, but by the time I'd finished writing that post I just forgot to include it - so tan you - this is a vital part of the decision process for people too

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Joseph Rézeau - Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 12:33 AM

Thanks for starting a very useful discussion, @Stuart!
One important feature of the h5p plugin I am missing in the Moodle core H5P integration is the "save content state" feature. For H5P activities with a large number of questions, it's important to offer the student the ability to quit that activity at any time and resume where they left later on.
I do hope this will be available in a fuller integration in Moodle 4.
Joseph

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 1:10 PM

Thanks for adding this to the thread Joseph !
Yes, that's an important feature, and for some administrators it might be a deciding factor for their migration plans

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Christian Niemczik - Wednesday, 14 April 2021, 8:59 PM

Hi Joseph,

some moodle installation use h5p a lot, so the "content state" feature is very important for the learners. I just commented this issue (it was planned for 3.9):

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-67789?focusedCommentId=849853&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#comment-849853

May be you can also vote for it.

All the best,

Christian

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Benjamin Waller - Saturday, 12 September 2020, 2:29 PM

Thanks for the summary and suggestions Stuart.

Here's my take! First and foremost all these ways of using H5P are positive for both the H5P and Moodle communities, all content creators, educators and ultimately students etc.. because it allows H5P to be used in a variety of ways across numerous platforms not only Moodle and that's important because it is free and open source software like Moodle.
However, this Content Bank implementation from Moodle does not seem to be fully in line with H5P's visions to make interactive content accessible to everyone because it has chosen not to implementing the H5P Hub as they designed and how it is implemented in every other platform.

Therefore, it's clear that at present, Joubel, is recommending the H5P Plugin over the Core integration because the Core Integration doesn't include the H5P Hub and thus all its features and including its upcoming OER Hub integration and is not not maintained by H5P. It seems like the Content Bank solution was not done collaboratively with Joubel which is disappointing. Though, I hope this will not mean that Moodle go its own way and that the H5P OER Hub will be integrated within the next release of Moodle. Clearly though, the Core integration as it functions now using the Content Bank still works well, on the Moodle side, for creating and managing H5Ps because you can insert H5Ps from virtually anywhere you can find the Atto editor. Also, the ability to use the alias/shortcut feature to link to H5Ps within your course and or across your site is a really nice and of course the other integrations such as grades and activity completion are too. So, for me to get the best of both worlds would be for Moodle to include the H5P hub natively from H5P. But all that said, I would say the best option is using H5P.com for the reasons listed above but mainly for its premium hosting and LTI platform integrations just to mention a couple. But I will leave it there for now.

Regards,
Ben

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Monday, 14 September 2020, 5:53 AM

Thanks for posting Ben, and expanding on this conversation.
I think you are correct, that there is a political dynamic here.
"Moodle does not seem to be fully in line with H5P's visions to make interactive content accessible to everyone because it has chosen not to implementing the H5P Hub"
H5P have a fundamental strategy to enable sharing of content, and the H5P OER Hub is central to H5P.
Moodle also has a similar aim, to make course sharing possible, through MoodleNet.
Although there are differences in intentions, it's clear that at some level these two 'sharing standards' are competitive.

I believe there will be some Moodle Net sites that will be really productive and positive.

But I think the H5P standard, which can work across many Learning Management Systems, WordPress, Drupal, etc. is fundamentally a more portable and sharable format (similar to SCORM in some ways).

So, to some extent, it may depend on the 'integration mention' of the Moodle site as to whether the core H5P functions, or the H5P plugin, would be the best option.

However, given that every new Moodle installation will have the H5P core functions, I expect 99% of people will use the H5P core functions out of the box, and miss out on the H5P OER Hub possibilities - until if/when Moodle HQ integrate this.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Sander Bangma - Wednesday, 16 September 2020, 9:14 AM

Hi Stuart, Ben and all,

For the H5P integration in Moodle we set out to find a tighter integration which has resulted in some of the benefits mentioned above. Needless to say this has not been a trivial task and we've taken an iterative approach - starting in 3.8 and with more work completed in 3.9. We have been working with Joubel as much as possible during the process. Of course, at the same time both platforms evolve and Joubel is moving forward with their vision of the HUB, just as Moodle is working on other aspects of our platform.

We will be considering how to incorporate the Hub within Moodle's H5P integration - it's something that requires a bit more thought. I'd be keen to hear people's ideas on this. With regards to MoodleNet; it has a broader view of educators sharing any OER content and curating collections of high quality resources. This could even include H5P and potentially there is an integration pathway between the H5P hub and MoodleNet.

At the same time the team is working towards the UX improvements for 4.0 - I hope within that we can also deliver some further improvements for the H5P integration. I'd love to do everything, but we do have to make choices where we focus our efforts.

In summary; definitely keen to look at best ways to include the H5P hub, at the moment this requires some more thought and feedback. And we have to balance our efforts on the H5P integration with other work on the platform.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Tomasz Muras - Wednesday, 13 January 2021, 2:58 AM

I would also hope that H5P OER Hub integration can be added to the core H5P functionality in Moodle.
Unfortunately I don't think it's planned anywhere - I didn't find any matching issue on https://tracker.moodle.org

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Oliver Tacke - Wednesday, 13 January 2021, 6:42 AM

May not be planned, but does not seem off the table, cmp. https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=408251#p1655961

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Claudia Ballerstedt - Thursday, 12 May 2022, 6:10 PM

Since 17/Feb/21 there is a ticket in the tracker https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70925

we can vote for it

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Beatriz Rojo - Wednesday, 16 September 2020, 4:48 PM

Thanks Stuart for starting this thread and to everyone contributing to it. Here is my scenario:

We work with a Moodle Partner and therefore saving some money by replacing the plugin-in was a great thing and we decided to go for the core feature without any doubt. ❤️Thanks❤️ to Sara and her team for making it possible (gràcies!!! 🙌)
for me, the use of the core H5P has two main advantages:
- it can be seamlessly integrated into any resource
- it can be better tracked (I know there are issues, but I can live with them by now)
I actually like the idea of the Content Bank and I'm happy about any improvements, such as the possibility to directly download activities.
From my experience, having access to OER is not a requirement. I usually spent much more time looking for inspiration or for an appropriate OER resource than creating it by myself from scratch - so I'm happy without this feature.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by William Lu - Tuesday, 13 October 2020, 10:40 AM

To be able to use Nicolas Bannier's smart H5P sharing database, you must use the "H5P core functionality in Moodle3.9". It won't work with H5P plugin for previous versions.

Check this thread for details: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=411551

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Sunday, 18 October 2020, 5:31 AM

Thanks for highlighting this Willian - very useful to know.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Sergio Rodriguez - Thursday, 10 December 2020, 12:24 AM

Hello everyone

Excuse my ignorance.
I use version 3.9.2 of Moodle, to start using the H5P activities I downloaded the mod_h5pactivity plugin (blue icon) and that is the one I started using, now I see that they speak of the H5P plugin (I suppose it is mod_h5pactivity) or the main functionality H5P in Moodle.

My question is can I keep implementing that one? What is the main functionality of H5P?

Thank you

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by scott hallman - Tuesday, 26 January 2021, 9:51 AM

Good question Stuart
we have both installed and are transitioning. At present with our testing the plug in is still winning for us. Although having a content bank is a great idea, at present it will cause too many issues. With core we have found:
Creating an H5P activity is more difficult, for staff as they have to go into the content bank then link to it
Editing is a nightmare as again you have to find it in the content bank, but with our testing it is not automatically updating the activities its linked to. The changes do not appear and the only way to update is to deleted and relink. Then results becomes a little meaningless as you are able to add questions and new marks and therefore the earlier students will say out of 10 and the rest on the updated on out of 12. (it needs to lock it like moodle quiz does)
Grading is better in core in that you can assign a scale however you cannot set a time limit or how many times the student can repeat the activity which would have been a better step

Once these niggles have been ironed out then we can see the advantage but if you have any insights about why the activities don't auto update once edited in the bank that would be great. We are running 3:10

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Wednesday, 27 January 2021, 5:32 AM

Hi Scott - great to see you in the conversation here.
Yes, I generally agree with you, that the plugin is smoother and easier for teachers to add H5P content.
Although there are of course issues - like the content cannot be moved from one course to another as the links break.
I agree the current H5P implementation in core is clunky, and not consistent with any other method of adding standard activities in Moodle. I hope that can be improved.
Just to add to the discussion...
We have migrated quite a few clients from the H5P plugin to the H5P core function now.
That makes sense for us as a hosting provider, as it's one less plugin to maintain and update.
General feedback is there is a bit of pain for teachers initially learning the new ways.
We have used the migration tools, and although it had some issues at first, it seems to work well now.
However, I have recently noticed that if the H5P plugin is disabled, then activities still show in the Gradebook. I expected these would be hidden too. Again, it's a plugin, and isn't following core Moodle operation here.
Stu

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Todd Irvin - Friday, 12 February 2021, 7:27 AM

Hi all. So my organization decided to stop using the H5P Plugin several years ago due to issues with interactive videos. We found that Moodle didn't really seem to support the Plugin when we reached out for help with these issues, and encouraged the use of the LTI approach. So we have a large number of partners using H5P.com and LTI Integration, which is working well, but isn't free .

My question has to do with this new Core H5P functionality. Can the new H5P Activity type still be used if we turn off the Content Bank somehow? It seems like that adds tracking and grading options pretty seamlessly for H5P content. It would be nice if this new H5P Activity Type allowed for the H5P Domain to be selected somehow under the File Picker, like the Content Bank currently is. Hopefully that may come in the future.

Thank you for any insight on the above. Loving that H5P is coming to Moodle, and hope to see it added to other LMS' too!

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Ri: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Cosmo Furno Palumbo - Monday, 8 March 2021, 5:20 PM

If I may share my idea... derived from my modest experience... for easy management of the installed platform, I am of the opinion that you should use only one plugin with preference of the one distributed with the Moodle core. However, the H5P module (with blue icon) included in the Moodle core is still young and needs some improvement. The one managed by the Core Team H5P would seem to work better and in a more user-friendly way.
For example: I have two similar installations with both plugins installed, one installation with Moodle version 3.10+, the other with version 3.10.1+; well, on version 3.10+ of Moodle both components work without problems, on version 3.10.1+ the one distributed with Moodle freezes, without releasing apparent errors, asking to wait for the editing of the H5P component chosen in the library.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Four Buckets Design - Wednesday, 10 March 2021, 3:37 AM

Hello Stuart, thank you for this post.

We cannot create content/use the H5P plugin using Moodle 3.10.2, Boost theme, which was transferred from Moodle cloud to our own server (pre-.2 release update).

Further explanation is posted in a new post to this H5P forum, which Beatriz responded to, and again, we responded to her, but unfortunately remains unresolved. As the moderator of this forum, would you mind reading/responding to our original March 5 post?: "Cannot create H5P content..."

With appreciation,

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Stuart Mealor - Thursday, 11 March 2021, 4:04 AM

Please note that the role of a forum moderator here is to moderate, not to answer every question.
I can see that Beatriz is already making very useful comments and suggestions

However I have added some comments that may be useful for you

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Frank Madison - Tuesday, 18 January 2022, 1:17 PM

For systems on 3.11+, should we start to fully imbrace H5P via moodle core. Any limitations between using core vs the plugin?

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Oliver Tacke - Tuesday, 18 January 2022, 9:04 PM

Each approach has advantages over the other. In total, I think that moodle's core integration is the winner, currently. Choosing one over the other may depend on what your (long-term) requirements are, however. It's so hard to predict the future ...

Obvious plus for moodle's core integration: admins don't need to take care of one extra plugin.

The moodle core integration is more versatile when it comes to integration with moodle's gradebook. You can, for instance, set whether to use the first or the latest attempt, an average, the best, etc. The plugin integration will store the latest only. Both solutions keep all attempts in moodle's history, however. Plus for moodle's integration: The default score to scale to is 100 and not 10.

The moodle core integration is better in handling H5P libraries. The option to automatically install the latest version via a cron job is particularly neat in my opinion. As far as I know, doing backups of moodle courses works way better using moodle's core integration.

People that I have talked to don't like the extra steps involved in H5P creating and adding content via the content bank of moodle's integration. I assume it's a matter of taste and of what you are used to though. Being able to organize content can be useful.

Being able to copy existing H5P content and paste it to create a clone of the exercise or to include in as subcontent in other content types is not possible on moodle's integration for some reason.

A feature that I think is not yet supported in moodle's core integration is resuming tasks - called "save content state" in the options of the H5P plugin where it can be activated.

If I am not mistaken, only the H5P plugin has a dedicated development mode that allows to patch H5P content types easily if you want to/need to.

Since the moodle core integration does not use the H5P Hub, users cannot use the H5P OER Hub which is a global repository of openly shared content that people can use, reuse and contribute to. That's really a nice feature. The moodle team has, however, not ruled out to use the H5P Hub in some way in the future.

Having the H5P Hub (or some replacement) will eventually be important, because it is planned to use it more extensively for other things, too, e. g. for adding subcontent to compound content types like Course Presentation. If the H5P Hub is not supported, then it might become impossible to use compound content types like Course Presentation or Interactive Video in the future.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Joseph Rézeau - Thursday, 20 January 2022, 11:48 PM

Thanks for this detailed & useful comparison, Oliver.

1. "Being able to copy existing H5P content and paste it to create a clone of the exercise or to include in as subcontent in other content types is not possible on moodle's integration for some reason."

It's still possible to do that, but in a more convoluted way than the "normal" one. Here is a comparison:

with the H5P plugin

view existing content "H5P my exercise"
click Reuse
Select Copy content
Add content
Interactive content
Under the "Select content type" title, from Create Content / Upload / Paste select Paste
... et voila!

with the H5P integrated activity

In the Content bank
Select and Edit an existing content "H5P my exercise"
At the top right, click the Copy (Copy H5P content to the clipboard) button
Exit content "H5P my exercise"
In the content bank, click the Add button and from the dropdown list choose any content type, I suggest the very first one, which usually is Accordion
In Edit mode for Accordion, Click the Paste and replace button in the top right corner
... et voila!

2.- "A feature that I think is not yet supported in moodle's core integration is resuming tasks - called "save content state" in the options of the H5P plugin where it can be activated."

That's correct, and IMHO this is a pity, since the "save content state" option is a vital feature for those H5P activities which should allow the student to quit an un-finished state and come back to it later on, e.g. Dialog Cards.

3.- "The moodle core integration is more versatile when it comes to integration with moodle's gradebook." Yes, that is a strong point of the core integration. The integrated H5P activity also allows more detailed attempts results to be displayed, when several attempts are allowed.

4.- IMHO, in order to avoid confusion in the end-user (teacher) a Moodle site admin should probably not enable both the H5P plugin and the integrated H5P activity on a Moodle site.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Oliver Tacke - Friday, 21 January 2022, 1:01 AM

It's still possible to do that, but in a more convoluted way than the "normal" one.

You live and learn, thanks a lot! I wonder why the "copy" option was removed from the "reuse"-menu - or maybe it's a bug ...

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Clemens Arnold - Sunday, 6 March 2022, 4:50 AM

IMHO, the core activity with the content bank includes useful possibilities. However, I really hope that in Moodle 4, the integration will be much easier as it is at the moment. For the stuff at my school (and I believe that this is not a unique example), it should be way much intuitive if someone wants them to use it on a regular basis. And for people who use it for Moodle and for other websites, for example, using Wordpress, there should be something halfway similar.

And it would be also useful if a user could create directories in the content bank.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Melanie Scott - Saturday, 6 January 2024, 12:47 AM

Mine doesn't work that way. I click paste and an hour later it is still loading. It never finishes.

My work around is that I download the file and then upload it creating a new version and have to rename. But you have to be careful, sometimes it isn't exact.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Claudia Ballerstedt - Tuesday, 17 May 2022, 6:58 PM

Our team from Service Center for Teaching (Hochschule Hannover, Germany) is currently evaluating the integration of H5P activities into our Moodle LMS. We have been discussing a lot about the pros and cons of the core integration and/or the usage of the H5p-plugin.
Now we’re wondering what are the future plans for the integration of H5P question types into Moodle core and will the question types already integrated be maintained from Moodle 4 onwards? Might there be any problems arising out of the implementation of the OER hub regarding the compatability and/or regarding several question types? How about the motivation to keep H5P up to date following the H5P development?

Sara mentions in this comment (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70925) that Moodle will evaluate the integration in core after the release oft he H5P OER hub. May this be interpreted as a sign for future support and maintenance of H5P question types within Moodle HQ?

Still, we don’t see any evidence of H5P in the Moodle Roadmap for now (https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Roadmap#Moodle_3.8_and_beyond:_planning_in_progress ).

We’d be more than happy to hear any statement „priority-wise“ concerning the ongoing maintenance of H5P question types in Moodle core by Moodle HQ (Sander?).

Looking forward to a reply or discussion in this thread.

Thank you very much!

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Jean-Pierre Mouret - Tuesday, 20 December 2022, 5:54 AM

I've been thinking a lot about that.

After discussions with colleagues, I came to the following conclusion:

We use the Moodle Core Impementation. We see nothing that speaks against it and everything is packed into one course.

BTW: We use moodle 3.11 and 4.1 without any problems.

Regards,

Jean-Pierre

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Benjamin Waller - Tuesday, 20 December 2022, 8:15 AM

Hi Jean-Pierre,
I just wanted to comment here after using Moodle's implementation of H5P for the past 1.5 years. There are a number of limitations and caveats. The first one, I did mentioned in an earlier post that this implementation doesn't take advantage of the H5P Hub which now includes the sharing of H5P globally. Here are my other observations - my day-to-day practical take on using H5P in the Content Bank.

No sitewide centralised Content Bank to develop and share H5Ps (i.e. no collaboration and sharing). I think the Admin has this feature/functionality, with a Content Bank site wide but other uses don't and I am not aware of the ability to change this in the settings. While the idea of a course context for creating H5P seems good but ultimately you are working in silos. It is very unproductive to have to download or export H5P in to multiple other courses many times when you want to share content across courses. Sharing of H5Ps is one of the cornerstones of the technology but unfortunately in Moodle is it not the case. The lack of a H5P Hub for sharing is a real shame. Also there is no way to collaborate with colleagues unless you are working in the same course. Because what I am finding is teachers/ed designers in other teaching areas are developing similar content without any knowledge of this happening and this is partly due to the fact that there is no central place to develop H5P sitewide and manage content with other people.
Duplication of content because of above & bloat in LMS over time It is not uncommon to me to have 20 plus H5P activities in a single course these days the more I create and use H5P activities. The duplicate is just ridiculous and clearly not an efficient way to manage this content. This is strong argument for hosting your organisations H5Ps externally and using LTI to bring in your content in to your LMS.
Creating H5P in the Content Bank is not an intuitive way to develop. Here I want to mention that fact that every other activity you create in Moodle starts with creating an activity or resource then when choosing that activity, it opens immediately for you to create. This is an exception and is not the workflow for creating H5Ps using Moodle's implementation. You are can't create a H5P when "creating" an activity, you are only 'adding' a H5P, that you have already created to the activity.
Documentation Tool does not have the 'save the state' function. I can't really use or recommend using the Documentation Tool in Moodle because it doesn't allow for saving the work of your users as you write text into fields. This might be changing and pls anyone who knows comment here. Also this limitation may affect other content types but that have text inputs but I can't be sure.

I hope that gives you some ideas of what you will have to contend with using Moodle implementation of H5P but I am sure you will cope. It is just not ideal and there is room for improvements.

Best regards,

Ben

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Clemens Arnold - Wednesday, 21 December 2022, 2:14 AM

Hi everyone,

as we are talking about it - as it is, for me, it works more or less the way it is - I create H5Ps with Lumi or with the Plugin and if I want them absolutely to be used with the app, I upload them into the core activity. Honestly, I would like to use the core version more often as the content versions are kept very well up to date. But unfortunately, there is still the one knock-out criterion that makes me avoiding it, it's the bug that makes that pre-existing Metadata copyright information is destroyed when a H5P is imported (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-74129). I really hope that it's possible to fix this quite soon! Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer, but if anyone here tries to fix it and needs someone to test it, I could do it, just contact me.

Kind regards,

Clemens

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Gemma Lesterhuis - Friday, 27 January 2023, 4:47 AM

To share the experience of 4 different organisation in different Moodle versions: h5p core in M3.9 - M4.0

Switching from H5P black to blue - Manage content types as a teacher
organisations that are switching from black to blue, are obvious compairing the two. reason for switchting was: creating an effective workflow proces in creating,reviewing, releasing and evaluating content - main painpoints where:

Course Resetting did not clear the 'save content state' + attempts of students in H5P.
Making small changes like an image or text could not managed well between courses. They re-used alot of the content in different courses, so the smallest change (like a typo) needed to be done in every single activity and course where this content was present.
They work with contenttype templates for the employees that placed content in, duplicating and coping in the black H5P seemed time consuming.

Switching to the blue h5P made it easier for them to manage their content. They solved issues in a pragmatical way, and looking forward to upgrade to the latest version to experience the improved searching in the content bank.

Of course they also mentioned pain points:

They had prefered that the could build their own folder system in the content bank, and managing the "access" instead of following the Moodle structure. They solved this issue by creating "content bank courses"
if you use a non boost theme (prio to 4.0) you had no way to navigate to the contentbank since there is no link in the administration block to the content bank.
We encountered various bugs in contenttypes due to not updated PHP files in Moodle 3.9, these won't be fixed until they move to m4.1 - we had to find 'smart' work around to avoid this.
There is no Save content state, which gave 'complains' from students because they don't see if they have went through the content.

Summary :

The new contentbank prevents a painfull proces of clicking and going through courses to by example replace an image, or correct a type.
Reviewers responded postive because they where no sure that they just have to check on 1 place.
Course builders found that it saved time because now they did not had to use the import functionality to pull out the contenttypes.
Working with 'templates' became easier.
They would had like the save content state in H5P core BUT also point out that this should work with Course Reset. (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-67789)

H5P core for new users
new users need to be explained carefully on how to use the content bank. It is already a 'steap' learning curve on finding your way in Moodle, and the way the content bank works feels counter initituive. This is until they start to realize that the content bank gives them the flexibility and much easier use to add content typesto the Moodle Book, Lesson, Page - we even find them as part of Quiz questions.

As siteadministrators and implementors we realized very quickly that with the way the content bank works now, teacher/content creators that start are more aware of the fact that h5P is met to be an 'interactive addition to your content' and not ment to be for quizing or anything formal in reporting.

View as a site admin

Postive: we saw a reduction in using the H5P activitity, more and more contenttypes where appearing as 'embedded' items in other Moodle activities like pages, books and even part of quiz questions.
Positive: a more effective workflow proces goal was achived.
Needs investigation: how the cron taks that pulls in new updates of contenttypes works vs the way we update in H5P black. Where we not only updated the contenttype, but also had the option to see 'upgrade' created contenttypes.
Concern: within 1 year of implementaton the hvp_xapi_result table in the database is 3x large then the question attempts, current size: 144GB.
We do worry that there is no simple way to 'clean' this data. We would had loved an option (like with the logstore) to say we only want to save this data for by example 6 months or 1 year on a sitelevel from a GDPR point of view.
Concern: implementing Save content state in H5P core integration
Will the option to 'remove attempts' will be forgotten to add to the course reset? And how will this be implementated, as an option or 'as is'. In the latter we will find ourselves again searching for a work around.
Concern: how will Moodle HQ deal with 'regressions' due to an update H5P framework handler in still supported versions of Moodle.

I might bump into more things, and will added in a later time, noting the time / date of the change.

Gemma

PS: we also have organisations that build their content in Lumi to avoid unnecessary access to Moodle. They send the file to the organisation, so they can upload it either in the contentbank/H5P activity and have full control of maintaining the content themselves.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by scott hallman - Thursday, 27 April 2023, 5:47 AM

Hi Gemma
good read and summary of the current state of things. You mentioned the use of templates. I am interested in this since duplication in Blue is a nightmare (with download and upload of content). Are you creating a template in the bank and then somehow you are able to duplicate this in the bank to make a similar content type? If so how is this done as I currently cant see a way

cheers Scott

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Gemma Lesterhuis - Thursday, 27 April 2023, 5:15 PM

Hi Scott,

As a general update:
Moodle 4.2: has now a save state option, and the course reset removes grades + the save state concept so students start over.

As for your question:
There are various ways to do this

You buiild a Moodle Course within the contentbank several templates, when you duplicate that course the contentbank will be duplicated as well.
We created templates in Moodle, downloaded those files, placed them on a Google/one Drive and teachers upload that file as a template.

But I cannot wait until https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-76338 gets released

I think it woudl be great if we just could come up with a list of things we are missing, and start a MUA project for it and put it up for voting

- Gemma

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Friday, 12 January 2024, 9:30 PM

None of them. The "competition" killed both!

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Oliver Tacke - Friday, 12 January 2024, 10:00 PM

So, you use neither? Something else?

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Friday, 12 January 2024, 10:40 PM

I'm sorry, I was just sarcastic. I support a whole bunch of teachers who use H5P systematically. When they started it was only the mod_hvp. The "competition" confused them, and me too. Now we have two halves. You know, they don't make one full.

Wanted to vent. I don't want to dive deep, I don't know the waters.

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Re: Should you use the H5P plugin, or H5P core functionality in Moodle?

by Joseph Rézeau - Saturday, 13 January 2024, 12:47 AM

Visvanath "I don't want to dive deep, I don't know the waters...."

Many rivers to cross
And it's only my will that keeps me alive
I've been licked, washed up for years
And I merely survive because of my pride.

Jimmy Cliff

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Re: I don't want to dive deep, I don't know the waters.... [a rant]

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Saturday, 13 January 2024, 1:22 AM

Hey man, isn't that a boost!

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