LEVERAGING H5P TO DESIGN INNOVATIVE ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: A CASE STUDY AT A SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

The rapid shift to online learning has resulted in a need for innovative approaches to enhance student engagement and interactivity in higher education.This shift has allowed universities to explore their capability to design innovative online learning environments (ILE).Achieving an ideal innovative online learning environment for a South African university has been made possible with the introduction of the H5P open-source content creation tool.This tool has allowed lecturers to create, share, and reuse interactive and engaging online learning resources within Moodle LMS.Such developments permit lecturers to create dynamic and flexible learning environments that align with 21st-century teaching methodologies.An instrumental case study approach was adopted to explore how H5P's functionalities, such as interactive videos and quizzes, can be leveraged to design innovative online learning environments.The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 3 (UTAUT-3) model served as the theoretical framework and helped to interpret the data and ultimately frame the study findings.Following a qualitative research design model, six lecturers and eight pre-service teachers within the faculty of education were purposefully selected to participate in the study.Firstly, the participants engaged in a series of online activities, including online quizzes and interactive videos using H5P.Semi-structured interviews and qualitative questionnaires were used to collect data.Atlas Ti was used to analyse collected data, which followed a thematic approach, allowing for the identification of common themes and patterns in lecturers' practices and pre-service teachers' experiences.The findings indicate that lectures using the H5P tool have the potential to enhance student engagement, support diverse learning needs, and foster active participation.As such, this study provided practical recommendations for effectively integrating H5P into online learning environments and suggests its broader applicability in nurturing digital transformation in education.