Interactive learning materials

Interactive learning materials are interactive resources designed to teach a specific learning outcome. They may comprise of a single or multiple pages that can contain any combination of text, images, audio, video - including screencasts, animations, self test questions and other interactive activities. They are usually aimed for self study and delivered via Blackboard, but can also be made available online on different platforms.

Interactive learning materials can be provided as supplementary resources or as an integral part of a core activity, e.g. a prerequisite to attend a time tabled seminar. Because of the benefits they offer, they are becoming common place within both programmes of learning and on a number of support service web sites.

Advantages

Reasons to consider providing online interactive resources for students (and staff) include:
  • Allow learners to study in their own time and at their own pace
  • Provide scalable (cost effective) and flexible training for staff
  • Ensure learners have a baseline knowledge in particular subjects – e.g. incoming first-year students who have varying levels of prior knowledge
  • Teach the more straight forward factual aspects of your subject, therefore freeing contact time for more complex or contested ideas
  • Prepare students for lectures or lab work
  • Facilitate consolidation and revision
  • Cover aspects of the curriculum which are not covered in the time tabled part of the course
  • Address time table clashes
  • Support distance learning
  • Enable students to practice skills learnt in class, e.g. language listening skills using audio, self test questions and feedback, or medical diagnosis skills by providing videos of patients describing their symptoms accompanied with self test questions and feedback.
Screenshot of an H5P drag and drop resource, where the learner needs to drag types of charts labels (bar, line, pie) under the relevant charts.

Drag and Drop H5P resource

Tools

Support & Guidance

We offer a workshop and individual consultations with a member of the Digital Education Office on request.

Further reading

Planning

You'll need to think about:

  • What will the learning objective of the interactive resource be?
  • How will the resource be structured?
  • What activities will it contain?
  • Who is the intended audience?
  • How and when will they use the resource?
  • Providing clear instructions and using appropriate language and terminology

Getting started

If you wish to develop your interactive learning materials for your learners, we advise you to contact us via email or phone to request a consultation. We can help you to develop you ideas and provide advice and training in:

  • Best practice
  • Effective design
  • Appropriate authoring tools
  • Delivery options

If you already have an idea of what you would like to do, but you are not sure which tool to use, our decision tree may help:

Decision tree in full screen

Note: It is sometimes possible to purchase commercial interactive learning materials on specific topics. If funds are available it might be worth looking to see if there is anything on the market that suits your needs before spending time building your own. However, it is rare to find commercial interactive learning materials that fully meet your needs. Some commercial licences allow you to tailor the materials to an extent, but it is often the case that by the time you have done this you may have well built a resource in-house.

Case studies