Creating Essay Submissions

An Essay content type can be used for various types of exercises. In this tutorial, we will use Essay to get a summary of the book the learner has read. Also, we will define some keywords for which we will give points/feedback if the learner mentions them in his or her answer.

Accessing H5P in Canvas

You can access H5P in Canvas through the Rich Content Editor (RCE), which is accessible via the edit view of Page, Assignment, Discussion Board, Announcement and Quiz questions.

For this example, we will be adding H5P onto a Canvas page. The first thing you will need to do is either open the page you want to embed the H5P content into or create a new page. Then click the ‘Edit’ button which will open the RCE. (You will automatically go into edit mode if you create a new page.)

Next, you will need to locate H5P in the RCE toolbar.

When you click on the H5P menu item a pop-up will show your H5P library.

From here, you will have the option to either insert previously created content or create something new.

Select the Add Content option to new content.

Type Essay in the search bar and then choose Essay from the list of Content types generated:

Creating an Essay

The Essay editor should now appear.

As with every H5P content type you will need to add a Title. This will not be visible to your learners but can be used for searching, reports and copyright information.

Media

There is an option to add media to display above the question. This can be audio, image or video.

Task Description

In the Task Description, the user can input the task description which appears above the text input area e.g. 'Please describe the novel "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien with at least 100 characters and up to 500 characters.'

Help Text

Give the learner a line to help start the writing process. This text will appear as a placeholder text inside the input field where the learner will type his answer. This will help the user to get started. This section is optional.

Sample Solution

You can add a sample solution to show the learner.

You can provide an explanation in the Introduction area first and add your sample solution text in the box Sample Solution Text

This is an example

Keywords

The next section is Keywords

Using keywords we define how many points we will attribute for the appearance of a specific word. In this example we want to set points for these keywords:

Keyword	Variations	Points
Bilbo		10
Gandalf		20
Smaug		20
dwarfs	dwarves	10
adventure	quest, journey	10

It is possible to add variations for each keyword, for example: (adventure or quest or journey).

In the 'adventure' example the learner will get 10 points if they mention any variation of this word.

Start filling in the keywords and points for your essay submission task

Add new keywords by clicking on the

button.

If a keyword has variations, use the

button.

If the word has more than one variation, use the

button.

The points for each keyword are set under Points, Options and Feedback section.

When you are finished adding all keywords, it should look like this:

Various options are available per keyword such as:

Points - The No. of points a learner will earn if they include this keyword or its alternative in the answer.
Occurrences - How many occurrences of the keyword or its variation should be awarded with points.
Case sensitive - Is the answer case sensitive or not
Forgive minor mistakes - Accepting minor spelling mistakes ( 3-9 characters: 1 mistake, >9 characters: 2 mistakes)
Feedback if keyword included - Provide feedback if the user has used this word
Feedback if keyword missing - Provide feedback if the user did not use this word
Feedback word shown if keyword included - This option allows you to specify which word should be shown in front of your feedback if a keyword was found in the text e.g. answer shown/ alternative given/ none
Feedback word shown if keyword missing - This option allows you to specify which word is shown in front of your feedback if a keyword was not found in the text e.g. none

Behavioural settings

Below are some of the optional settings for this content type such as:

Minimum number of characters - the minimum no. of characters the user must enter.
Maximum number of characters - the maximum no. of characters the user can enter.
Input field size - the no. of lines the text will cover
Enable Retry - choose whether the learner can retry the task
Ignore scoring - choose whether learners only see feedback provided for keywords, but no score.
Passing percentage - percentage necessary for passing
Mastering percentage - percentage necessary for mastering. Setting this percentage below 100% will lower the maximum possible score accordingly. It is intended to give some leeway to students, not to 'graciously accept' solutions that do not contain all keywords.
Override case sensitive - This option determines if the 'case sensitive' option will be activated for all keywords
Override forgive mistakes - This option determine if the 'Forgive Mistakes' option will be activated for all keywords.
Replacement for line breaks - By default line breaks will be replaced by a space character. If you want to check for line breaks e.g. in regular expressions, you can set different replacement here.

Finishing up

Save & Insert to complete set up of Essay Submission content type.

Knowledge Base