Celebrating the H5P Community at D2L Fusion 2026
This year's D2L Fusion reminded us why we love bringing this community together in person.
The room stayed full and the energy never dipped. People leaned forward, compared notes with whoever was sitting next to them, and left already planning what they'd try when they got home. If you weren't in the room, here's what you missed:
Inside the H5P Deep Dive Session
During the H5P Deep Dive session, Nils Viken, our Senior Director, opened by returning to the idea that's driven H5P from the start: empowering everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content. Ryan Barber followed with a look at a few product features we’re most proud of, and Linda Feng, D2L's VP of Product Management, closed things out with a look at what's coming next.
But if you were to ask Linda what her favorite part of the day was, it wasn't the session she gave. It was a 5-minute lightning talk from Katherine Fullerton, instructional systems specialist from Pellissippi State Community College, walking the room through several H5P content types she's used and why, in a presentation built entirely in H5P itself.
"Katherine’s session was so interesting and engaging," Linda told us. "Just a really delightful introduction and inspiring way to learn about all of the ways that you could use H5P for various learning activities."
The title of that session was ‘Stop Scrolling, Start Doing: H5P Interactives for all Disciplines’ – and that's the H5P community in a nutshell: people showing other people what's possible, one piece of content at a time.
What we heard from the room
One of the clearest signals from the day was how the conversation itself has shifted. In past years, a lot of the questions we got were about whether H5P was worth adopting in the first place. This year, almost nobody asked that. People wanted to know how to use more of it, faster, and across more of their courses.
We heard that most clearly from the people already deep into it. Harold Watkins at Western Michigan University has been running H5P for around 4 or 5 years now, and interactive video is still his faculty's favorite. "Drag and drop has been huge" for teaching anatomy, he told us, especially for nursing instructors trying to get past what a quiz on paper can show. Western Michigan just expanded from 15 licenses to 50, with unlimited access on the way next year.
Sylvia Garcia gave us the student's view. She's studying at the University of Arizona and also works with the university's assessment and teaching technology team. Pop-up questions inside a video, she said, are "the most useful" thing H5P does for her, especially in an era when "it's a lot easier to get less distracted" than staying locked into a plain lecture.
There were plenty more stories like these in the room – on accessibility, on H5P’s new OER Hub, on just plain better outcomes for students. Have a flick through some of them here:
Creativity had its own moment in the spotlight too, with the H5P Annual Awards. This year's Outstanding Visual Design award winners Dr. Simon Lolliot and Dr. Kayli Johnson at the University of British Columbia were present, and it was a genuine highlight watching their work up on the big screen.
The research, and what’s coming
We also shared some research-backed figures about what changes once H5P enters a course. Completion goes up. People spend more time with the material instead of skimming past it. They come back to it more often, too, which is usually a sign that something's truly clicked. This is what can happen when proper interactivity is built into the fabric of your course content.
Linda's roadmap session gave the room a glimpse of where H5P is headed through 2026: faster authoring with AI assistance, better visibility into how content actually gets used, a smoother experience inside Brightspace and other platforms, and continued investment in the editor, accessibility, and stability people already depend on.
See you in Denver!
By the end of the day, the room felt like it always does at these H5P sessions: full of people who'd rather build something than just talk about it. That's exactly why we keep doing this.
Thank you to everyone who presented, asked questions, or just came along to see what's new. We'll see you at the next one, in Denver, CO!
