How to Use Interactive Video in Moodle

Moodle is the world's most widely used open-source learning management system. With over 400 million users across 240 countries, it powers courses at universities, schools, corporate training programs, and government agencies. If you teach or train with Moodle, it is almost certainly the center of your course delivery.

Video is already a staple of Moodle courses. Instructors embed lecture recordings, link to YouTube, and upload screencasts. But the vast majority of that video is passive. A student clicks play, the video runs, and Moodle has no way to know whether they paid attention, understood the material, or even kept the tab open. The gradebook shows nothing because there was nothing to grade.

Interactive video changes that. By embedding questions, polls, hotspots, and other interactions directly into the video timeline, you transform passive viewing into active participation. Students must engage with the material to progress, and you get per-student, per-question analytics showing exactly who understood what. This guide covers two concrete methods for adding interactive video to Moodle, with step-by-step instructions for each.

Why interactive video in Moodle

Moodle has excellent infrastructure for managing courses: activities, grading, completion tracking, conditional access, and a plugin ecosystem with thousands of extensions. What it lacks is a way to make video content accountable. You can embed a video in a Page resource or a Label, but Moodle treats it as static content. There is no mechanism to verify that a student watched, no way to assess comprehension inline, and no data to act on.

Interactive video addresses this gap in three specific ways:

• Verified engagement. When the video pauses and presents a question, the student must be watching and thinking. You receive a timestamped response for every interaction — not just a completion checkbox.
• Immediate feedback. Students learn whether they understood a concept right away. If they answer incorrectly, they can rewatch the relevant section before continuing. This self-correction loop is far more effective than discovering gaps on a final exam.
• Actionable data. Per-question analytics show you which concepts students grasped and which ones they struggled with. You can review this data before class and spend your face-to-face time on the topics that actually need reteaching, rather than re-covering material most students already understand.

For Moodle specifically, interactive video fills a hole that Moodle's native activity types don't cover well. Quizzes exist as standalone activities, and videos exist as embedded resources, but there is no native way to combine the two into a single, unified experience where comprehension checks are woven into the video itself.

Moodle's interactive video options

There are three main approaches to interactive video in Moodle. Each has different trade-offs in terms of setup complexity, features, and integration depth.

There is also a third option: H5P Interactive Video, which is built into Moodle 3.9 and later. H5P is free and native, but it has a narrower feature set compared to a dedicated interactive video platform. We compare H5P and Interakly in detail later in this guide.

If you want the fastest path to an interactive video in front of students today, use the iframe method. If you want grades to flow into the Moodle gradebook and students to be authenticated automatically, use LTI. Many instructors start with an iframe embed to test the concept, then move to LTI once they see the value.

Method 1: Embed in page or label

The iframe method is the simplest way to add an interactive video to a Moodle course. It requires no admin involvement and works in any Moodle activity that supports HTML editing. The trade-off is that scores remain inside Interakly and do not sync to the Moodle gradebook.

Creating the interactive video

Before embedding anything in Moodle, you need an interactive video. In Interakly, paste a YouTube URL or upload a video file, then add your interactions — questions, polls, hotspots, or any of the 25 supported types. When you're ready, grab the share link from the editor. It will look something like:

https://interakly.com/v/abc123

Embedding in a Moodle Page or Label

The iframe code follows this pattern:

<iframe
  src="https://interakly.com/embed/YOUR_SHARE_CODE"
  width="100%"
  height="600"
  frameborder="0"
  allow="autoplay; fullscreen"
  allowfullscreen
></iframe>

Method 2: LTI External Tool

LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) is the standard protocol that lets external applications integrate with an LMS. Moodle has supported LTI since version 2.2, and LTI 1.3 (the current standard) is available from Moodle 3.10 onward. When you add an "External Tool" activity in Moodle, you're using LTI.

The LTI approach provides three capabilities that the iframe method cannot:

• Single sign-on. Students launch the video from Moodle and are automatically authenticated. No separate accounts, no extra passwords.
• Grade passback. When a student completes an interactive video, the score is sent back to the Moodle gradebook automatically via the Assignment and Grade Services (AGS) specification.
• Deep linking. Instructors can browse and select specific interactive videos from within the Moodle activity setup, without needing to copy URLs manually.

The requirement is that a Moodle administrator must register Interakly as an external tool once. After that initial setup, every instructor on the Moodle instance can use it freely.

Configuring LTI in Moodle

This section is for Moodle site administrators. The goal is to register Interakly as a preconfigured external tool so that instructors can add it as an activity in their courses.

Getting your LTI credentials from Interakly

In the Interakly editor, open any video's settings and go to the Access tab. Under LTI Integration, click Add Platform and select Moodle as the platform type. Interakly generates the values you need:

• Tool URL — the launch endpoint
• Login initiation URL — the OIDC initiation endpoint
• Public Keyset URL (JWKS) — for JWT signature verification
• Redirection URI(s) — the callback URL after authentication

Keep this page open. You will need these values in the steps below.

Registering the tool in Moodle

Once registration is complete, Interakly appears as a preconfigured external tool available to all instructors across the Moodle instance. Individual instructors can now add it to their courses without any further admin involvement.

Creating graded activities

With LTI configured, instructors can create interactive video activities that grade automatically. Students see them as standard Moodle activities in their course — the fact that they launch an external tool is transparent.

Grade passback configuration

Grade passback is what makes the LTI integration worth the setup effort. Here is how it works step by step:

1. Student completes the video. After answering all graded interactions (or reaching the end of the video, depending on your completion trigger setting), the session is marked complete and a score is calculated.
2. Score calculation. Interakly computes the score based on graded interactions only. Non-graded interactions like polls, info cards, and navigation elements are excluded. The score is expressed as a decimal from 0.0 to 1.0.
3. Automatic grade delivery. Interakly sends the score to Moodle via the LTI Assignment and Grade Services (AGS) protocol. This happens immediately upon session completion — there is no manual step involved.
4. Moodle gradebook update. The score appears in the Moodle gradebook under the External Tool activity. If the maximum grade is 10 and the student scored 80%, they receive 8 out of 10.

Students who retake the video (if retakes are enabled in your Interakly settings) will have their grade updated to the new score. By default, Moodle records the most recent grade from an LTI tool.

Moodle-specific grade settings to check

A few Moodle gradebook settings can affect how LTI grades appear:

• Grade type. The External Tool activity should use "Point" grade type, not "Scale." LTI grade passback sends numeric decimals that map to point values.
• Maximum grade. Set this to the total points available in your interactive video. A mismatch means students see unexpected numbers in their gradebook.
• Grade category. You can place the External Tool activity in any grade category. The LTI score passes through to whichever category contains the activity, and Moodle's aggregation methods (weighted mean, simple mean, etc.) apply as normal.
• Grade to pass. If you set a passing grade on the activity, Moodle will show a visual pass/fail indicator in the gradebook and can use it for conditional access rules.

Student workflow

From the student's perspective, the experience is straightforward. There is no new tool to learn, no account to create, and no additional tabs to manage.

1. Student opens the activity in Moodle. They see it in their course section, on the dashboard, or in the calendar — exactly like any other Moodle activity.
2. The interactive video loads. Clicking the activity launches the video directly within the Moodle interface. The student does not navigate to a separate website.
3. Student watches and responds. The video plays. At key timestamps, it pauses and presents a question, poll, or other interaction. The student responds, receives immediate feedback, and continues.
4. Score is shown and recorded. When the video is complete, the student sees their score. With LTI, the grade is automatically recorded in the Moodle gradebook. The student can verify it on their grades page immediately.

This seamless experience matters for completion rates. Every additional step — creating an account, navigating to a different site, copying a link — reduces the number of students who finish the assignment. By keeping everything inside Moodle, you eliminate those friction points entirely.

Best practices for Moodle

Moodle has powerful features for course organization and conditional access that pair well with interactive video. These practices consistently lead to better engagement and outcomes.

Use activity completion for sequencing

Moodle's activity completion system lets you track whether students have finished each activity. For interactive video External Tool activities, set the completion condition to "Require grade." This means the activity is only marked complete when Interakly sends a score back — ensuring the student actually finished the video, not just clicked into it. You can then use this completion status as a prerequisite for subsequent activities via the "Restrict access" settings.

Set expected completion dates

Under the activity's "Activity completion" settings, you can set an "Expect completed by" date. This date appears in students' calendars and timeline, serving as a soft deadline that keeps them on track without the rigidity of a hard due date. For pre-class preparation videos, set the expected date to the morning of the relevant class session.

Organize videos in topic or weekly sections

Don't create a standalone "Videos" section in your course. Place each interactive video in the topic section where it contextually belongs — after the relevant reading, before the associated discussion forum, or as preparation for an in-person lab. Students engage more with content that appears in a logical learning sequence.

Use Restrict Access for progressive disclosure

Moodle's "Restrict access" feature lets you hide or grey out activities until students meet certain conditions. You can require a student to complete one interactive video before unlocking the next. This prevents students from skipping foundational content and creates a structured learning path. Combine this with Interakly's "prevent skipping" setting to ensure students actually watch the video rather than scrubbing to the questions.

Keep question density moderate

Aim for one graded interaction every two to four minutes of video. Fewer than that, and students disengage between questions. More than that, and the experience feels like a quiz with occasional video clips. For a 15-minute video, four to six graded questions is a good target. Mix in ungraded polls and reflection prompts between the graded questions to maintain engagement without assessment pressure.

Review analytics after each cohort

After your first group of students completes a video, review the per-question analytics in Interakly. If more than 40% of students miss a particular question, either the question needs rewording or the video segment needs improvement. Small adjustments after each delivery cycle compound into significantly better content over time.

Moodle vs H5P interactive video

Moodle has built-in support for H5P content types, including H5P Interactive Video. Since H5P is native to Moodle and free, it is the natural first comparison. Both tools let you add interactions to video. The differences are in scope, depth, and workflow.

What H5P does well

H5P Interactive Video is a solid, well-established content type. It supports multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, drag-and-drop, true/false, and a few other interaction types — roughly 10 in total. It is completely free, open source, and runs natively in Moodle without any external service. Content is stored in Moodle itself, and grades integrate through Moodle's built-in xAPI tracking. For straightforward knowledge-check videos with basic question types, H5P is a perfectly good option.

Where a dedicated platform differs

Interakly is purpose-built for interactive video and extends beyond what H5P offers in several areas:

Choosing between them

Use H5P Interactive Video if your needs are straightforward: basic question types, no need for detailed analytics beyond Moodle's gradebook, and you prefer everything to stay within Moodle's ecosystem. H5P is also the right choice if your institution has strict policies against external services or if your students have limited internet connectivity (since H5P content is served directly from Moodle).

Use Interakly if you need advanced interaction types (code workspaces, hotspots, ordering, matching), detailed per-question analytics, live streaming with real-time interactions, or if you use multiple LMS platforms and want one tool that works everywhere. The LTI integration means grades still flow into Moodle's gradebook, so you don't lose that integration by choosing an external tool.

The tools are not mutually exclusive. Some instructors use H5P for simple review videos and Interakly for more complex, high-stakes interactive assignments. Use the tool that fits the specific learning activity.

FAQ

What version of Moodle do I need for LTI 1.3?

Moodle 3.10 and later support LTI 1.3 natively. Earlier versions (back to 2.2) support LTI 1.1, which provides basic external tool launching but lacks the security improvements and grade service capabilities of LTI 1.3. For the best experience with automatic grade passback and OIDC-based authentication, we recommend Moodle 4.0 or later. If you are on an older version, you can still use the iframe embed method, which works on any Moodle version that supports HTML editing.

How does Interakly compare to H5P in Moodle?

H5P Interactive Video is built into Moodle and supports approximately 10 interaction types. It is free, open source, and requires no external service. Interakly offers 25 interaction types, a dedicated analytics dashboard with per-question statistics and response exports, code execution workspaces for programming courses, live streaming with real-time interactions, and cross-LMS compatibility via LTI. H5P is the better choice for simple, self-contained knowledge checks. Interakly is the better choice when you need deeper analytics, advanced interaction types, or features like code workspaces and live video.

Does my Moodle admin need to configure anything?

It depends on which method you use. For the iframe embed method, no admin configuration is required — any instructor can paste an embed code into a Moodle Page or Label. For the LTI External Tool method with grade passback, a site administrator needs to register Interakly as an external tool in Site administration → Plugins → Activity modules → External tool. This is a one-time setup that takes about ten minutes and makes Interakly available to all instructors on the Moodle instance.

Do students need Interakly accounts?

No. When students access an interactive video through Moodle via LTI, they are authenticated automatically through their Moodle login. No separate Interakly account is needed. For iframe embeds, students participate anonymously by default. If you want to identify students in iframe mode, you can enable Interakly's email gate feature, which prompts students to enter their name and email before starting the video.

Does grade passback work with Moodle's gradebook?

Yes. When configured via LTI 1.3 with Assignment and Grade Services enabled, Interakly sends scores to the Moodle gradebook automatically upon session completion. Scores appear as grades for the External Tool activity and are treated the same as any other graded Moodle activity. They participate in grade aggregation, can be included in grade categories, and can trigger activity completion. The score is sent as a decimal (0.0 to 1.0) and Moodle converts it to the activity's maximum grade scale.

Can I use Interakly on a self-hosted Moodle instance?

Yes. Interakly connects to Moodle via standard LTI protocols, which work identically whether Moodle is self-hosted on your own servers, hosted by a provider, or running on MoodleCloud. The only requirement is that the Moodle instance has internet access so it can communicate with Interakly's LTI endpoints. If your Moodle instance is behind a firewall, ensure outbound HTTPS connections to Interakly's domain are permitted.