If you’re teaching in today’s postsecondary classrooms—whether online, hybrid, or in person—you’ve likely wrestled with a familiar set of challenges: How do you keep students actively engaged with your learning materials? How do you help learners better track their progress and provide meaningful feedback at scale?
Research has shown that interactive learning materials are important because they provide opportunities for students to practice, test their knowledge, and get immediate feedback on learning progress. That’s where Pressbooks Results comes in. Our grade passback solution builds on the power of interactive H5P activities—like quizzes, reflections, and problem-solving tasks—embedded right in your course materials. These activities are fully trackable through seamless LMS gradebook integration, making it simple for instructors to build formative assessments directly into course content and for students to become more self-directed in their learning.
We recently sat down with a panel of faculty users to explore their experiences with Pressbooks Results. They shared compelling stories about how they are using it to support flipped classrooms and active learning, provide more flexibility to students with demanding schedules, and build confidence through low stakes formative assessments.
Reducing Course Withdrawals with Flexible, Affordable Learning Materials
Philip Sookram, Associate Professor of Accounting, Saint Peter’s University
Quick Overview
- Phil’s focus is on making accounting — a traditionally difficult and cumulative subject — learnable in a compressed timeline (45 days).
- His use of Pressbooks Results centers on creating flexible learning for students balancing internships, jobs, and other responsibilities.
- A key outcome is a reduction in DFW (drop/fail/withdrawal) rates through a self-paced, mastery-driven model.
Read Phil’s full story 👇
Background
At Saint Peter’s University, Associate Professor Philip Sookram set out to solve a persistent challenge in accounting education: providing flexible, affordable resources that support student success, even when life circumstances make consistent attendance difficult.
Over the past two years, Phil has used Pressbooks to develop an openly licensed set of learning materials aimed at making the basics of financial accounting learnable in 45 days. Supported by the university’s O’Toole Library, his project organizes the first five chapters of an OpenStax Accounting textbook into eight self-contained modules—each designed to be completed in a day. The resource includes over 50 embedded H5P activities, such as multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and matching exercises, which promote active, self-paced learning.
Course Context and Adoption
Phil has now used Pressbooks Results in multiple courses, including both his senior Capstone (AC480) and an asynchronous graduate course (AC520). Integrated with Blackboard Learn, the Pressbooks textbook and its H5P activities offer flexible learning paths for students balancing coursework with tax internships, full-time jobs, and other commitments.
Addressing Key Challenges
By building in interactive formative assessments through H5P activities, Phil has created a learning environment where students can receive immediate feedback, assess their understanding, and stay engaged throughout the course, whether attending live classes or studying asynchronously.
Pressbooks Results allows him to track student performance across different modules, view detailed breakdowns of individual and class-wide activity scores, and better identify areas where students are struggling or need additional instruction. This granular insight was particularly valuable in the graduate asynchronous course, where real-time engagement has historically been more difficult to monitor.
Phil’s use of Pressbooks Results directly addressed several barriers:
Affordability
Through Pressbooks Phil provides free and perpetual access to course materials, removing a potential financial burden for students.
Engagement
Interactive H5P activities encourage regular and persistent engagement with course content, even with material that can be dense and conceptually difficult.
Student Success
Since adopting an openly licensed textbook and incorporating Pressbooks Results in his courses, Phil has observed a notable drop in D/F/Withdraw (DFW) rates, traditionally a major hurdle for degree completion.
Flexibility for Late Starters
Students missing even a few early classes often struggle to recover because of the highly cumulative nature of the content. By using Pressbooks Results, Phil is able to ensure that all learners have day one access to the learning material and that any students facing emergencies or administrative holds can still complete assignments and stay enrolled in the course.
One example involved a graduate student who, initially marked as “non-attending,” began completing assignments asynchronously. Thanks to Pressbooks Results sending grades to the course gradebook, Phil received documented evidence to demonstrate the student’s engagement and prevent administrative withdrawal from the course.
Impact
Phil notes that these individual stories are part of broader improvements to both retention and student success in his courses. “Shifting toward open access resources has been a gamechanger for my course,” he noted, highlighting how Pressbooks Results streamlined both learning and teaching.
Initial feedback from students has been positive. Students appreciate the interactive structure and the self-paced flexibility the platform offers. They also note that these low-stakes practice opportunities increase their confidence leading up to major exams or final projects.
By eliminating costly textbooks, reducing barriers to re-entry after absences, and providing rich, formative learning opportunities, Phil’s adoption of Pressbooks Results exemplifies how open educational resources offer an innovative, flexible approach to supporting student success in accounting education.
Watch Phil's Story on YouTube
Enhancing Language Acquisition through Interactive, Scaffolded Practice
Kate Neff, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Spanish Language Program, University of Virginia
Quick Overview
- Kate uses Pressbooks Results to embed regularly-spaced, low-stakes H5P activities directly into her Spanish course materials.
- Her focus is on scaffolded learning, frequent practice, and formative feedback to build language skills steadily over time. She specifically addresses common barriers in second language learning, like fear of making mistakes and the need for repeated exposure and reinforcement.
- By using Pressbooks Results, she can track and intervene early when students struggle with vocabulary, grammar, or comprehension — key pillars in a cumulative skill-building course like Spanish.
Read Kate’s full story 👇
Background
At the University of Virginia, Senior Lecturer Kate Neff is leading a transformative open educational resources (OER) initiative in the Spanish Language Program. Her goal is to improve accessibility, affordability, and pedagogical effectiveness in language education, while shifting away from traditional grammar-based instruction to a proficiency-focused model.
By leveraging Pressbooks Results, Kate has created an innovative, interactive Spanish textbook that integrates cultural content and flexible learning opportunities.
Course Context and Adoption
Kate’s OER project focuses on the Spanish language courses SPAN 2010 (Intermediate Spanish) and SPAN 2020 (Advanced Intermediate Spanish). These courses serve between 600 and 700 students each semester, and the OER initiative is part of a broader curriculum redesign.
The project uses Pressbooks, supported by the UVA Library, to develop interactive resources, including over 200 H5P activities, and integrates these with the Canvas Learning Management System to streamline course management for instructors. The project is currently focused on Spanish 2010, with plans to expand to Spanish 2020 in the future.
Addressing Key Challenges
One significant pedagogical challenge Kate and her team are addressing is the need to shift from a grammar-centered approach to language learning focused on proficiency and cultural understanding. Applying findings from second language acquisition research, Kate and her team aim to prioritize comprehensible input—real-world language use—over memorization of discrete grammar rules.
To achieve this, they have reorganized their course materials around cultural texts, using both OER resources and instructor-created materials. Their openly licensed textbook includes “Lecciones” (lessons) centered around cultural themes, and invites students to engage with vocabulary and grammar in context through H5P activities embedded in the lessons.
Additionally, optional “Referencia” pages provide grammatical explanations and more practice exercises, giving students the freedom to review material at their own pace. This approach allows students to take ownership of their learning while providing ample opportunities for repetition and self-assessment.
Because Pressbooks Results records the details of student performance on each individual activity and provides course designers with a range of grading options, Kate is able to include a mix of both required and optional activities, and to organize the course gradebook to reflect the relative importance of each type of assignment.
Impact
Their departmental adoption of Pressbooks has had a significant positive impact on both students and instructors. By integrating H5P activities and a flexible, interactive textbook, they have been able to:
Provide Affordable, High-Quality Resources
Students no longer have to purchase costly textbooks, making language learning more accessible.
Increase Engagement and Participation
Interactive activities, such as vocabulary matching, grammar quizzes, and cultural readings, help keep students engaged in the course between class sessions.
Support Self-Paced Learning
The variety of H5P activities included in their book allows students to practice at their own pace, with multiple opportunities for repetition and feedback until they master the material.
Reduce Repetitive Set Up
Pressbooks Results also enhances instructor efficiency through its seamless integration with Canvas. Kate sets up the Pressbooks content and graded assignments in a ‘parent’ course, which is then shared across multiple course sections. Thanks to the LTI integration, any updates made to the Pressbooks book are automatically reflected in all linked courses—eliminating the need to manually update each section and significantly reducing setup time and maintenance.
The student response to Pressbooks Results has been overwhelmingly positive. During a mid-semester survey, students shared their appreciation for the diverse forms of practice available, the ease of navigation, and the flexibility of the material. Kate shared some sample responses:
- “I really like the practice in the textbook and I find it helpful that there are different forms of practice because the diversity keeps me engaged.”
- “I appreciate how forgiving the activities are; I can try again until I get it right.”
- “The textbook is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. I think the way it is set up works perfectly.”
- “I really like the practice in the textbook and I find it helpful that there are different forms of practice because the diversity keeps me engaged.”
Pressbooks Results has helped transform Kate’s courses by supporting active, student-centered learning and streamlining course management. Students benefit from engaging, flexible activities, while instructors save time through seamless Canvas integration and centralized content updates. The result is a more accessible, efficient, and effective learning experience.
Watch Kate's story on YouTube
Empowering Faculty to Create Interactive Learning Materials without Publisher Dependency
Rebecca Lindsay, Instructional Designer & History Instructor, Utah Valley University
Quick Overview
- Rebecca is both an instructor and an instructional designer focused on faculty empowerment.
- She is working to build institutional capacity through the use of Pressbooks: helping UVU faculty create, customize, and maintain their own textbooks and activities.
- She addresses both student engagement and faculty autonomy, providing cost-free resources while giving faculty creative control over their content and assessments.
Read Rebecca’s full story 👇
Background
At Utah Valley University, Rebecca Lindsay, an instructional designer and adjunct History instructor, has adopted Pressbooks Results in order to address multiple challenges faced by faculty and students in general education history courses. Through her use of Pressbooks Results, she has created a flexible, cost-effective learning environment that allows students to access course materials from day one, while empowering faculty to easily create and track interactive content for their students.
By leveraging Pressbooks Results, Kate has created an innovative, interactive Spanish textbook that integrates cultural content and flexible learning opportunities.
Course Context and Adoption
As an instructor, Rebecca teaches general education History courses at UVU. For her, the primary draw of using Pressbooks was that it allowed her to provide students with free access to course materials from the start of the semester, eliminating the financial burden of traditional textbooks. Her use of Pressbooks Results also provides her with a seamless integration into Canvas, UVU’s learning management system (LMS), allowing her to link Pressbooks content directly in her courses, track student progress, and monitor activity completion.
Addressing Key Challenges
In her history courses, Rebecca faced several key pedagogical challenges, which she addressed through the use of Pressbooks Results and H5P:
Encouraging Deep Engagement with Reading Assignments
Because reading historical texts is a core skill required for her courses, Rebecca wanted to find better ways to ensure students were truly engaging with assigned readings. To accomplish this, she incorporated frequent knowledge checks within the Pressbooks content, allowing her to quickly gauge student understanding and hold students accountable for completing assigned readings.
Creating and Updating Interactive Content Easily
Putting on her instructional designer hat, it was also important to Rebecca that the solution she adopted in her courses be easy for other, less technical colleagues to adopt and use in their teaching. One of the reasons Pressbooks Results appealed to her was that creating and modifying both course content and interactive H5P activities was both simple and intuitive for her and her non-instructional designer colleagues.
Adaptability has also been essential: if knowledge check questions become too easy or she finds that answers are widely available online, she is able to easily update them and maintain the effectiveness of the assessments.
Empowering Faculty to Build and Track Custom Content
Beyond her own courses, Rebecca supports other faculty members in developing their own custom textbooks with embedded interactive activities. Using Pressbooks Results, instructors are able to independently create and adapt their own resources. They can integrate knowledge checks, interactive elements, and student progress tracking without constant instructional design support. In an era where budgetary pressures and staffing challenges abound, Rebecca values the autonomy this gives the instructors she supports, noting:
"Faculty can develop their own textbooks, they can bring in OER materials... and they don’t have to depend on an instructional designer to build it for them. They can do it for themselves."
Impact
Using Pressbooks Results, Rebecca has brought graded interactive reading assignments directly into Canvas, allowing her to track student progress at a more granular level and make timely instructional adjustments based on performance trends. In the past two yearsl there have been nearly 3,000 students who have used Pressbooks across four different history courses.
Her efforts have also empowered faculty creators and helped foster increased instructor choice and autonomy at UVU. By providing instructors with access to Pressbooks Results, she enables them to create and customize their own course content without needing as much external support as before. Not only has this increased instructor agency and creativity, but the flexibility and adaptability of the platform has allowed instructors to better tailor the learning experiences they design to meet the specific needs of their students.
Watch Rebecca's Story on YouTube
Managing Large Enrollment with Individualized, Interactive Learning Experiences
Cameron Ford, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Central Florida
Quick Overview
- Cameron teaches high-enrollment courses (400-800 students) where every student must develop and pitch their own startup idea — an individualized project in a massive class.
- He uses Pressbooks Results to “flip” his classroom: ahead of each class, interactive video content prepares students with foundational knowledge so they can participate effectively in personalized coaching and active learning.
- Autograding saves time and allows Cameron and his GTAs to focus on engaging students individually, while compulsory assessment settings motivate students to study more efficiently and effectively.
Read Cameron’s full story 👇
Background
At the University of Central Florida (UCF), Cameron Ford faced the challenge of teaching a large, project-based entrepreneurship course to 800 students per semester. He needed a way to ensure that students developed foundational knowledge and engaged with his lecture content with less time and effort spent on check-ins and grading. This would allow him and his graduate assistants to focus more energy on the higher-order personalized learning that he wanted the course to focus on.
To help address this problem, Ford has adopted Pressbooks Results, using it to create interactive, free, and flexible learning content in his very large blended courses.
Course Context and Adoption
Ford’s ENT 3613: Creativity & Entrepreneurship course serves 800 students in the Fall and Spring and 400 in the Summer. The course is centered around helping each student develop their own startup business idea, an undertaking that requires an enormous amount of personalized feedback and attention. Cameron uses a ‘flipped classroom’ model where students are responsible for doing readings and watching recorded lectures asynchronously during the week. They then attend bi-weekly “experience labs” where they work with Cameron and the course’s Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) to develop and get feedback on their larger projects.
With just four GTAs available for his course, Ford needed an efficient way to assess and provide feedback for the asynchronous work students were doing so that he could free up more time and energy for mentoring them on the capstone project: their business ideas. He adopted Pressbooks Results in large part to make the course more manageable for both students and teaching staff by automating more of the assessment for asynchronous parts of the course (the regular reading and lecture watching assignments).
Addressing Key Challenges
Ford used Pressbooks to address several pedagogical challenges:
Enhancing Student Engagement
With large classes and complex material, Ford needed a system that would keep students engaged and accountable. Using a Learn-Practice-Perform model in Pressbooks, he built interactive learning modules featuring over 120 brief, topic-focused videos—typically 6 to 12 minutes long—and 360 embedded questions. To encourage careful viewing and thoughtful engagement, he intersperses ‘check your understanding’ questions throughout the videos, disables fast-forwarding, and records students’ first attempt on each activity in the gradebook. While students can’t skip ahead, they can rewind to review material they didn’t grasp the first time through.
These instructional design choices have increased active participation with the asynchronous elements of his course and helped distribute learning more evenly across the semester.
Scalability for Large Enrollment
The practical realities of managing a course that enrolls 800+ students per semester meant that Cameron needed scalable, automated approaches for some course assessment. Pressbooks Results has enabled Ford to automate many of these formative assessments, provide relevant pre-built feedback without a huge time burden, and to observe and understand individual and class-wide performance in real time.
Another reason Pressbooks Results has become an essential part of Ford’s teaching strategy is that the Pressbooks Results viewer allows students to see exactly which activities they have and have not completed and to make better decisions about how they spend their time and effort during the asynchronous portions of the course:
“The Results viewer has been a godsend for me, because it allows students to monitor their own progress as they’re doing their learning modules.”
Supporting Personalized Learning Paths
Because so much effort is spent in the course helping each student develop and refine their own startup project, Ford needed a flexible system for the other foundational learning essential for the course. By eliminating traditional exams and using Pressbooks’ embedded assessments instead, students can engage with material at their own pace. This not only preserves class time but allows for spaced repetition that fosters greater confidence and deeper mastery of key course concepts.
Impact
Ford observed several measurable benefits from using Pressbooks:
Increased Student Engagement
By using embedded assessments in his lecture videos (via the Interactive Video H5P activity type), students are consistently engaged with asynchronous course content at a much higher rate than before. Because a small portion of their grade comes from their completing these embedded knowledge check assessments, Cameron now has both anecdotal and empirical evidence that more students are not only doing the reading and watching the required lectures, but understanding the concepts and ideas covered.
Enhanced Learning and Skill Development
The video-based, self-paced approach allows students to review content at their own pace. Not only has it helped students develop their foundational knowledge in entrepreneurial skills, it has also reduced student anxiety about the requirements of their end of term projects. Cameron has observed that students now express greater confidence in their ability to apply course concepts introduced by the readings and lectures to their startup projects by the end of the term.
Improved Efficiency and Scalability
Ford’s adoption of Pressbooks allowed him to scale his course effectively while maintaining a high level of personalization and engagement. Automating lower-level assessments through the use of Pressbooks Results frees up more time to provide individualized coaching and feedback on student projects, which he regards as the most important evidence of learning in this course. These efficiency gains have allowed him to scale the course to serve thousands of students annually while simultaneously improving the quality of support he and his GTAs are able to provide on students’ final projects.
With 2,000 students enrolled annually, Pressbooks has become a critical tool in transforming how entrepreneurship education is delivered at UCF.