Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities (from Creative Commons website on 5/27/2020):
Open Educational Resources (OER) will allow students access to teaching materials no matter what budget they are working with. As we know, textbooks can be very costly which makes it difficult for some students to purchase the materials needed to be successful in law school. These are also resources that are electronic and accessible from anywhere. Given our current COVID-19 situation, and not knowing when we will be returning to on-campus classes, all students would have access to those materials no matter what.
OER Starter Kit: From the Iowa State University Digital Press, this starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. [Version 1.1. Revised September 5th, 2019.]
Open Textbooks: The Legal Education Experience: Professor Brian R. Huffman, Electronic Resources Librarian at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i presented on the use of Open Textbooks in a law context.
Textbook Affordability: From William & Mary Libraries a guide discussing the issue of textbook affordability and OER.
H2O is a project of the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School. It allows faculty to use open textbooks already created by peers, or if you prefer, it walks you through the process of creating your own!