As 2019 kicks into gear, many components have fallen into place that make 2019 look to be H2O’s best year yet. From the redesign and CAP case law database integration to improved (and new! See next post on Collaborators) functionality and usability, H2O is poised to make a splash in the world of OER and legal education. Below we field some of the big questions that get thrown our way. Take a look, then check out H2O open casebook yourself!

Now that the Caselaw Access Project has gone public, it’s worth pointing out that the OER materials/free casebook creator H2O is fully integrated with the CAP database: the text of any of CAP’s 6.4 million cases can be used in H2O.

According to a newly released study by Achieving the Dream, implementation of Open Education Resources (OER) found “significant benefits to instruction and student learning experiences” in addition to the cost savings passed on to the students. Over 60% of students reported that their overall quality of their learning experience was higher in comparison to a typical, non-OER course.

Several instructors have utilized H2O’s export feature to export their casebooks out of H2O and after some clean-up, load them into a print-on-demand service (such as Amazon CreateSpace) and offer the text as a print book at a fraction of the cost of a traditional casebook. Here, a selection of casebooks created on H2O, now offered as a print text through Amazon:

H2O has a new home! Check out the new and improved H2O here: https://opencasebook.org, create an account and start building your own casebook!