The purpose of this guide is to introduce users to the concept of Open Education Resources (OER) for law schools and provide resources for finding, evaluating, and implementing Legal OER at Oklahoma City University School of Law. For support or a consultation on OER, please contact Syd Stephenson.
Open Education Resources refer to “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by the use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allow anyone to freely use, adapt, and share the resource—anytime, anywhere” (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
As the open education movement has grown, so has the number of high-quality open textbooks and casebooks for law courses and legal research.
In legal academia, OER can include:
The cost of textbooks for students in higher education has risen dramatically for decades, far outpacing the rate of inflation. As such, the costs of course materials like textbooks and casebooks are a barrier to receiving a legal education.
Additionally, students learn more when they have better access to quality course materials. Studies have shown that 93% of students at the college level who use OER do as well or better than those who must purchase materials for courses, since they have access to the content starting day one of a course.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This guide was adapted from SPARC: Open Education and the Michigan State University Libraries OER Program Guide.
