H5P is an open source plug-in that allows us to embed interactive questions in Pressbooks. H5P is important for equity-minded curriculum design because it allows students to engage more deeply in course concepts and to test their own comprehension of course materials in a low-stakes way. Self-check questions encourage students to revisit chapter content and build recognition of key terms and concepts, while receiving automated instructor feedback on their answers to guide further study and review. Answer feedback is critical to ensuring that each H5P activity is relevant and meaningful for students.

Your chapter closers include a self-check question set with at least 3 multiple choice or true/false questions with automated answer feedback. This is a required chapter element because it supports two equity-minded frameworks that were introduced in the matrix in Unit 1. It supports Transparency in Teaching and Learning by letting students know that they have met the learning objectives for your chapter. And it supports Universal Design for Learning by offering multiple means of engagement with the chapter content. This is why it’s one of our Learner Focus criteria for success: Chapter includes at least 3 accessible H5P interactives that are tied to chapter learning objectives.

When you submitted your first chapter for developmental review, you may not have had time to draft your question set. By the end of Unit 9, all chapters in your textbook will include a question set with answer feedback.

H5P Drafting Strategies

Get started right now! Open up {Course #} H5P Questions. Each project has one drafting document for all chapters.

For each chapter you draft, you will write at least 3 questions total in a question set. A question set groups all H5P questions so that they appear in a sequence rather than as individual questions in the Pressbook. Your H5P questions can be multiple choice or true/false to ensure accessibility for screen reader users. Each individual question includes a question title, question text, answer options with correct answers marked in parentheses, and answer feedback text. Remember that you can’t actually build functional H5P in Google Docs. By following our template, you’ll include everything we need to import your question set into Pressbooks. When writing multiple choice questions, keep the question text and answer options as concise as possible. Only use language directly lifted from your chapter to reduce confusion.

To start drafting H5P questions for your chapter, notice which keywords, learning verbs, and skills described in chapter learning objectives could be revisited or emphasized. Authors are usually keenly aware of which concepts or ideas are most likely to confuse or surprise students. Any concepts that are particularly complicated, challenging, or unsettling for students are good material for self-check questions.

As you consider the content that supports the chapter learning objectives, look for places in your chapter where you have introduced ideas with phrases like, “in contrast to…” or “although many people assume that…” This is likely a point that you can effectively emphasize with a self-check question.

H5P questions should always include answer feedback. Your feedback must be limited to 255 characters (otherwise the box will cut you off). Your answer feedback will be the same whether a student gets a question wrong or right. The purpose is to contextualize a right answer or wrong answer, direct student attention to relevant chapter sections, and provide encouragement to students as they learn.

You will be able to revise this draft of your H5P questions when you receive your full manuscript developmental edit.

You may be wondering whether Generative AI can draft your H5P. Along the lines of our chapter drafting guidance in Unit 6, the short answer is no. In 2025, our team experimented with two different GenAI tools to generate H5P questions and determined that generating H5P interactives with GenAI approximately doubled our time investment when we tried it out. We can’t commit program resources to support its use since it’s demonstrably inefficient. (We go into more detail about this in Year 2, Unit 8 if you’re curious.)

Licenses and Attributions for Adding Interactivity with H5P

“Adding Interactivity with H5P” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.