LT Incubator Project – CREATE: Generating Interactive Learning

Gallery – Team Members

Dr. Roger Beckie | Professor, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science

Meet CREATE

CREATE is a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tool that instructors can use to generate interactive elements and embed assessment materials into their Canvas course content, not only to evaluate students, but to promote active learning through self-testing.

Why did we make CREATE?

How do we find out that we know something? Turns out, we ask ourselves questions and try to answer them. Student evaluation is the cornerstone of common pedagogical practice – but it plays a critical, less recognized role in students’ learning and retention of content. In an applied cognitive psychology study, Agarwal et al. (2008) found that a short practice quiz improved academic performance as much as two additional study sessions! The testing effect has proven efficacious at helping students learn, remember, and make new conceptual relations between topics. This is intuitive to students in the sciences, who strive to do as many practice questions as possible to understand their course material better.

In addition to self-evaluation after an initial study session, engagement with course materials during study itself is an important predictor of learning achievement. When the course materials are presented online, it is crucial to foster bidirectional communication that stimulates active learning and critical thinking.

By making CREATE, Dr. Roger Beckie and his team provide instructors with the tool they need to effectively and ethically incorporate more self-evaluation and interactivity in their Canvas courses – thus raising pedagogical standards and better preparing students for a high-demand academic environment.

Thoughts from the team

Watch an interview with Dr. Roger Beckie
Watch Manuel Dias discuss some ethical considerations about AI use
Watch Haocheng discuss the technical hurdles in making CREATE

Video: CREATE Demo

Transcript – “CREATE Demo”

Visual:

The landing page for the CREATE app. The page displays options for “Getting Started with CREATE” (“Follow these steps to create your first AI-powered quiz”). The options are:

“Create a Course Folder” – “Start by creating a folder for your course (e.g., ‘EOSC 533’). Specify how many quizzes you’ll need.”
“Upload Course Materials” – “Upload PDFs, Word documents, or add web links containing your course content.”
“Set Learning Objectives” – “Define learning objectives for your quiz, or let AI generate them from your materials.”
“Generate Questions” – “Use Auto Mode for quick generation or Manual Mode for targeted question creation.”
“Review & Export” – “Review, edit, and reorder questions, then export as H5P for Canvas.”

Above this main content, there is a series of cards that read as follows:

“0 Active Courses”
“0 Total Quizzes”
“0 Questions Generated”
“~ 0 min Time Saved”

To the left of the main content, within a sidebar, are the following elements:

“CREATE” (the app name)
“Create Course” (a control)
“Search..” (a text input). A keyboard shortcut (“⌘K“) is listed alongside the input.
“Courses” (a heading)
“No courses yet. Create your first course folder to get started.” (a paragraph)
“Guest User” (may be a control, or may just be plain text)

Speaker (Rich Tape, LT Incubator Lead):

“Welcome to CREATE. CREATE helps you create course quizzes and questions within those quizzes which can be exported to H5P or PDF. We’re going to show you a quick demo. We’re going to create a demo course […]”

Visual:

Using a mouse, Rich activates the “Create Course” control in the left sidebar, which opens a modal dialog (“Create New Course”). The dialog contains the following elements:

“Create New Course” (a heading)
“x” (a “close” control, denoted visually via an “x”)
“Course Name” (a text input with placeholder text that reads “e.g. EOSC 533”)
“Cancel” (a control)
“Next” (a control)

Rich focuses the “Course Name” field and types “DEMO101”, then activates the “Next” control. The dialog’s content updates, and the following elements are now displayed within the dialog:

“Create New Course” (a heading) (unchanged)
“x” (a “close” control, denoted visually via an “x”) (unchanged)
“Upload Course Materials” (a heading)
“Add materials to your course (optional). You can also do this later.” (a paragraph)
A file input (with placeholder text that reads “Click to upload files or drag and drop” and “PDF, DOCX files accepted”).
“Add URL” (a control)
“Add Text” (a control)
“Back” (a control)
“Skip for Now” (a control)
“Create Course” (a control)

Rich:

“[…] and the content for this demo course is going to be just one lecture from an open physics course right now.”

Visual:

Rich drags and drops a file called “Lecture_3_Principle_of_Least_Action.pdf” onto the file input. The following elements then get added to the dialog, in between the “Add Text” control and the “Back” control:

“Materials (1)” (a heading). The “1” serves as a counter to show how many materials are currently uploaded.
“Lecture_3_Principle_of_Least_Action.pdf – PDF • 2025-11-07″ (a “remove” control). There is an “x” adjacent to the text to denote, visually, that this is a “remove” control.

Rich [while moving the mouse cursor over the elements that pertain to what he is discussing]:

“You can add as many of your course materials as you like. You can add it from a URL, or you can copy and paste the text itself. Right now, I have a lecture on Principle of Least Action. You can see that the document itself is being processed. This then allows us to actually use the content within this document as part of the course and quiz creation.”

Rich:
In making this app, we realized that in order to get the best possible quiz questions, we actually need more than just the course material. We need to know what the learning objectives are for this particular part of the course or this particular lecture or the course in general. And we realize that not necessarily everyone has those to start with, but if you do, you can actually add your own manually. You can copy and paste the content from your course. Maybe you already have your syllabus and AI can help you classify that.
Or you can generate from the materials that you’ve uploaded.
I’m going to ask it to generate four learning objectives for the particular lecture that I’ve uploaded, and it will go off and do that for me.

And here, as this is a lecture on the Principle of Least Action, it’s naturally generated some learning objectives to do with that particular topic.
We can change these should we wish, we can refresh them, we can get a new one should we wish, or we can delete it. Let’s delete this 4th one.

Text on screen:
The speaker is now on a screen titled “Demo 101.”
The top section of the screen is a space to upload more course materials.
The materials uploaded thus far are listed below that section.
The section underneath the materials shows the quizzes generated thus far.
The user clicks on “Quiz 1” within this section.
Within the page, there are four tabs. The user is currently on the tab titled “Materials.”
Then they switch to the tab titled “Learning Objectives.”

The options on this screen are: “AI Classify”, “Add Manually” and “Generate from Materials.”

When the user clicks “Generate from Materials,” the CREATE tool generates 4 learning objectives that are listed on the screen.
Each learning objective has an option to edit, regenerate, or delete listed next to it.

The user clicks on a button titled “Next Generate Questions.”

Rich:
Now we can generate some questions. There are different modes in generating questions, and each of these modes essentially creates a different strategy for the types of questions that you’re going to generate.

Here, for example, Support Learning will generate questions of the multiple choice, true, false, and flashcard styles.
Assess Learning has “Multiple Choice”, “True/False”, and “Discussions”.
Gamify Learning does “Matching”, “Ordering”, “Multiple Choice”, “Flashcards”, and then you can also create your own custom formula with whichever question types you would like.

For now, we’re going to go with “Support Learning”, and I’m going to ask it to generate two different questions per learning objective and then set it off. And you’ll see that it actually reads the course material. It then generates the different types of questions that we’ve asked it to do. This will take a few seconds, obviously, because we’re generating a bunch of questions. But it will hit the different learning objectives for the different types of questions that we’re asking for.

So here, for example, this is a flashcard, and we’re basically saying, understanding the Principle of Least Action is crucial in classical mechanics, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that we’re able to do is actually interact with these directly. We can see what these look like. So, here’s a flashcard. How does the Principle of Least Action apply to the trajectory of a thrown ball? If you flick it, we actually get to see it. Here, for example, is a MCQ question. In a physics system described by the Principle of Least Action, which statement best describes how the equation of emotion, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t know which one the right answer is. Let’s go with this one. I got it wrong. But we get the explanation. So this is actually what the quiz will look like if someone was to take it.

Text on screen:
They land on a page titled “Generate Questions” with an option to choose between 4 pedagogical approaches listed as: “Support Learning”, “Assess Learning”, “Gamify Learning” and “Custom Formula”.

Each option opens a modal dialog with the component question types, and an option to increase or decrease the number of questions of each type.
The user can adjust these changes.
The user can also generate a certain number of questions per learning objective.
Once the speaker clicks on “Generate Questions,” the page shows a progress bar titled “Generation Process Progress” and the number of questions that have been generated thus far.

Once generated, the questions show up as text boxes with options to edit, regenerate, or delete the question.
The user can navigate to a button titled “Interact” and see how the questions would look as H5P elements.
In this view, the questions generated by the speaker show up as flash cards and multiple- choice questions that the speaker then interacts with.

To demonstrate how one can edit the questions, the user switches back to the text box format by clicking on a button labeled “Edit.”
The user scrolls down to the bottom of the page to a section titled “Export Quiz” and clicks on the button titled “Export to H5P.”
The screen shows a downloaded file.

Rich:
And now we’re happy with it. We can actually, if we wanted to, we can edit these questions. Should we wish, we can change the content of them. We can get a new question. We can edit the question or we can delete the question.

But let’s say I’m happy with these. I can export to H5P and you will see I just got the H5P document downloaded and I can go ahead and import this into Canvas.

If your Canvas has H5P integration or if you have a separate H5P instance, you can import that and you will get these questions into wherever you have your H5P.
Or you can also export to PDF and download them and then print them out and give them to your students directly.
That’s CREATE!

[Note: transcription is still in progress]

The Journey

2007-2017 – Carl Wieman revolutionizes pedagogy.

Carl Wieman, physicist and educationist, joins UBC to conduct extensive inquiry into pedagogical practices in university-level science courses. Through his leadership, the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative systemizes teaching. They place a special emphasis on

Providing learning objectives for course content, and
Consistent evaluations to promote active learning.

Following this initiative, participating UBC Science faculty members adopt these evidence-based, interactive teaching methods, thus dramatically improving undergraduate science education.

The Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative drives the conception of UBC’s Centre of Teaching, Learning and Technology – a department dedicated to innovating pedagogy at UBC by thoughtfully implementing the latest technology available to us.

June 2022 – Redesigning a course sparks an idea.

Dr. Roger Beckie of UBC’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences prepares to teach Advanced Groundwater Hydroglogy in the Fall session. This course is to be offered online for the first time, thus requiring redesign and restructuring. Manuel Dias, an Educational Consultant of Learning Design at UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology collaborates with Dr. Beckie in transforming this course.

Together, they face the challenge of making an online graduate course as engaging and effective as an in-person course. They ask themselves- how do we know something? Turns out, we ask ourselves a question and work towards an answer. Guided by this principle of Socratic questioning, they incorporate more assessment material into the course content itself- not to evaluate, but to promote active learning.

Manuel continues the project of making other courses more interactive using H5P, a web-application that allows users to create, share, and reuse interactive HTML5 content.

February 2024 – The idea of CREATE is born.

Manuel attends the H5P symposium held at UBC. During the presentation, one of the founding members introduces the Smart Import feature offered by H5P, a paid, gated feature that allows users to generate interactive materials based on declarative content. Manuel is inspired by the concept of combining Generative AI and Carl Weiman’s principles of defined learning objectives and assessment.

Roger and Manuel combine their expertise in science education and learning design to conceive of a Generative AI tool that UBC instructors can use to create and export interactive assessment elements based on clearly defined learning objectives. Since students in the sciences require a large amount of practice questions geared towards a particular learning objective, the team dedicates itself to the creation of a GenAI tool that instructors can safely, freely, and ethically harness to actively CREATE active learning and UBC.

(Milestone) February 2025 – The CREATE team meets with the Tech Incubator.

The team has their first meeting with the LT Incubator Team to discuss the development support needs for the CREATE project. Together, they determine a minimum viable product – a version of the CREATE app with the required features to be usable by UBC faculty. This version must be able to sustain a three-step process as follows:

Step 1: Faculty can upload files or paste text on which the generated interactive elements are based
Step 2: The tool generates various H5P interactive elements- Multiple-choice questions, True/False, summary, flashcards, etc.
Step 3: Faculty can export and share these elements.

May 2025 – Haocheng and Deepak build CREATE.

Haocheng Fan and Deepakjot Singh develop the CREATE app. They extend the role of learning objectives in the tool by enabling it to suggest learning objectives based on the prompt data provided. They also add the ability to edit the generated tools in real-time, ensuring close instructor supervision throughout the generation process. The team is currently working on finalizing the question-regeneration logic and working towards a CWL integration to safely provide the tool’s services to UBC faculty.

Listen: Haocheng describes his summer activities

Transcript – “Haocheng describes his summer activities”

“During the summer, under guidance from Richard Tape, which is our supervisor, me and Deepak, we work[ed] on this project together.

“During the summer, we start[ed] from reading [a] project proposal first, and then we draft[ed] a PRD and a PSD, which [are] project requirement documents and project specification documents. These 2 documents explained what [these projects are and] the main functionalities. And it helped us understand how this project works and also help[ed] Roger know that our project aligns with his goal.

“And then after that, after we created the PRD, we start[ed] building up the wireframes, which is the simple UI, but [we did] not focus on UI, we mainly focus[ed] on the functionality created by Figma. Then we started coding. We start[ed] from front-end first, and then start[ed] back-end. That’s the summer activities.”

(Milestone) October 2025 – First Pilot.

The CREATE app is released for the first pilot, to test the tool architecture and review the element generation process.

The Big Questions

CREATE is a Generative AI tool that instructors can use to create interactive H5P elements to enable active learning through self-assessment. By providing course content, instructors can quickly generate multiple choice questions, true/false questions, and more that can be edited in real time and exported into a Canvas course.

You might have some big questions surrounding this project. Click on the “Answer” buttons below to find out our big answers!

“Why would instructors use this tool?”

Answer to “Why would instructors use this tool?”

Most university-level instructors are primarily researchers. They are experts in their field – conducting research, writing grant applications, presenting at conferences – all while teaching young scholars and bringing them into their world. But these researchers often do not have extensive training in pedagogical practices.

CREATE enables instructors to better communicate their vast wealth of knowledge to students by leveraging the testing effect and increased interactivity. The tool offers 4 pedagogical approaches to generating interactive content:

1. Support Learning

When this option is selected, the tool generates flashcards and interactive summaries of the prompt-content. These flashcards and summaries are constructed in adherence to the learning objectives provided by the instructor.

2. Assess Learning

Instructors can select this approach to generate multiple-choice, true-false, fill in the blank, open-ended questions, etc. based on learning objectives.

3. Gamify Learning

Instructors can use the tool to provide a more gamified learning experience – by requiring students to order/group content based on criteria, match corresponding details, etc.

4. Custom Formula

Instructors can also create their own combination of question types from 8 options available to them. This approach allows flexibility and granular control over the kind of questions that the tool generates.

No matter the approach, the generated elements are strictly based on learning objectives. These objectives can be provided by the instructors, but the tool also provides the option to extract learning goals from the content provided.

By centering learning objectives and facilitating interactive self-evaluation, CREATE helps students retain information longer, retrieve it during exams more effectively, and think critically about the concepts. Thus, individuals in the classroom will have more time and energy to be researchers, rather than just teachers and students.

“What are some ethical considerations that factored into the development of CREATE?”

Answer to “What are some ethical considerations that factored into the development of CREATE?”

The CREATE team is very cognizant of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of Generative AI. By requiring a CWL authentication to access CREATE, the team ensures that only faculty and staff are able to use this tool. This ensures judicial and purposeful use of CREATE. Students will only be able to interact with the end-product of this tool – practice questions and study aids – which sharpens understanding and critical thinking. Thus, CREATE will work in the direction opposite to over-reliance and misuse of GenAI by students.

What about the integrity of the questions and interactive elements generated by CREATE? Are they susceptible to the shortcomings of AI Generated content? The CREATE team assures users that the tool can only generate content based on the prompt text provided. It cannot pull from the Cloud, thus minimizing confabulation and intellectual property infringements. But of course, nothing replaces human supervision. Keeping this in mind, the TEAM has added the ability to edit the generated content, regenerate content with stricter criteria, or add text to the generated elements.

What about resource-use concerns? Once the CREATE team has finalized the tool architecture and ironed out any snags in its function, they aspire to create a version of the tool that can run solely on the user’s device. Without a reliance on the Cloud, the app is enroute to being sustainable and compact – all you would need to run it is your laptop, tablet or smartphone.

“How will this app evolve and improve with time?”

Answer to “How will this app evolve and improve with time?”

The CREATE team aspires to accomplish these goals in Year 2 of project development:

Add more question types: By adding more than 8 question types, CREATE will be able to accommodate more pedagogical approaches and provide greater flexibility to instructors. The final version of CREATE will be able to support AR/VR content, ensuring pedagogical practices keep up with the latest technology.
Expand user base: In later stages of development, CREATE will be able to support more than 1000 users.
Develop a CREATE app: The CREATE app will be able to run on the user’s device. Without a reliance on the cloud, the app will be compact, sustainable, and accessible from any phone or PC.

Dive Deeper: Impact, academic benefits, and scalability

Thoughts from the team

Interview with Dr. Roger Beckie

Transcript – “Interview with Dr. Roger Beckie”

"The motivation for our project is to encourage active learning. And we know one of the best ways for students to learn actively is to ask them questions. The Socratic method is, you know, the ancient approach.

"But what we find is for instructors to create new and interesting questions can be a challenge. So, we thought, well, if we know what our learning goals are and we know, sort of, we have all this subject matter material, can we use an AI tool to help us create interesting questions (either quantitative questions or qualitative questions or even discussion questions that encourage active learning by the students)?

"And so learning happens, you know, between the students’ ears, and getting them to be actively engaged with the material (is the idea), and taking the burden off the instructors or helping the instructors create those materials was the motivation for this CREATE project."

Manuel Dias discusses some ethical considerations about AI use

Transcript – “Manuel Dias discusses some ethical considerations about AI use”

"So, another important consideration when using CREATE is the aspect of ethics and intellectual property.

"So, the tool is supposed to allow you to upload your course notes and anything you will provide to the tool will be hosted at UBC. So, that will also give you some reassurance in terms of ‘where my content is going to be’ and who is going to be able to access the content.

"That system will available to CWL users, which is a key thing.

"Another piece is that any material that the system will generate – in [this] case, H5P elements – will be based on your course notes and course material you provide. So there’s a chance to reduce the risk of hallucinations, misinterpretation, or misinformation."

Haocheng discusses the technical hurdles in making CREATE

Transcript – “Haocheng discusses the technical hurdles in making CREATE”

"During the development of the [CREATE project], I think one of the most challenging problem[s] [was] ‘how can I export a quiz into H5P forma[t]?’ And the process of tackl[ing] this question [was] that I found [an] example online, and I analyzed it backwards.

"First, I turned the H5P file into a ZIP file, then unzipped [the] file. And in that folder, I [could] see the full structure of the H5P format. It includes many libraries. And I just cop[ied] all these libraries into a single folder. So, every time that [I] export[ed] a quiz, I [would] include all of these libraries, and I also analyze[d] the syntax H5P used. The structure is basically a JSON format, and it has some fixed parameters, so I need[ed] to learn how it works together. And that’s one of the problem[s] I faced.

"And for ‘Learning Objective[s]’ – this functionality, it comes from the process of my personal learning (for example, in my previous class, CPSC 310 – [which] is teaching software engineer[ing]). And when I was learning this course, I would literally download the materials (like, the slides we have). And, in the slides, you have some summaries. Basically, they are learning objectives. And what I did is that I copy-paste[d] all these learning objectives and copy-paste[d] into ChatGPT. And also the slides. And I asked ChatGPT to generate questions based on these learning objectives. And that’s the inspiration [for the] ‘Learning Objective[s]’ functionality in [the] project."

The transformation that follows

Interpersonal impact

A prerequisite for effective learning is wanting to learn. One can foster motivation to learn through interactive engagement with content and self-evaluation. We have the technology to facilitate this in online learning environments, but is this technology accessible to university-level instructors?

Currently, it takes a 30–60-minute training session to get familiarized with building just one single H5P element type. CREATE bridges this technical gap such that all instructors can provide an interactive, gamified learning experience regardless of their level of proficiency in learning design. The time thus saved by creating this interactive experience for students can then be dedicated to enhancing the interpersonal nature of learning – office hours, hands-on research, etc.

CREATE swiftly and easily constructs a scaffolding for effective learning. With this tool in their kit, instructors can more freely dedicate themselves to their primary craft – kindling scientific and creative thought in emergent scholars.

Academic benefits

Retrieval practice greatly enhances academic performance; this is one of the most well-replicated findings in cognitive psychology. Self-evaluation and increased engagement with study materials are crucial predictors of academic performance. What’s more – these strategies significantly condense the time needed to memorize or understand a concept.

CREATE is built for today’s academic environment – where students not only need to study a vast body of knowledge that precedes them, but also contribute to it in the form of projects, research, and job skills.

Cost efficiency, scalability

Being a free tool that needs no special software or device specifications to run, CREATE presents itself as a cost-efficient learning design tool for instructors. In its final form, it will be adaptable and scalable to different courses, learning goals and pedagogical objectives. The developers project that the tool’s future evolution will mirror instructor needs and technological advancements – from incorporating AR/VR elements to building a CREATE app that students can use anywhere, anytime.

Meet the CREATE Team

Roger Beckie, Professor, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science
Manuel Dias, Educational Consultant, Learning Design, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology
Erik Eberhardt, Professor / Head, Geological Engineering, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science
Bern Klein, Associate Professor, Mining Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science
Tonia Welsh, Assistant Professor of Teaching, NBK Mining Institute, Mining Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science
Silvia Bartolic, Associate Professor of Teaching, Sociology, Faculty of Arts
Noureddine Elouazizi, Sr. Strategist Artificial Intelligence and Innovation in Learning Technology, Skylight, Faculty of Science

Meet the Incubator Team at the Learning Technology Innovation Centre

Rich Tape, LT Incubator Lead
Haocheng Fan, Student Developer
Deepakjot Singh, Student Developer

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Learn more about the LT Incubator