Thinking Outside the Book: Legal Research Instruction

Legal research and other skills instructors who adopt online textbooks can not only write their own text, they can also incorporate various mediums such as images, videos, and quizzes.  In addition to being a more interactive type of learning, when students read about legal research strategies and resources and watch demos of databases before class, it frees up valuable class time to practice their research skills.  In this session, we will discuss why an online textbook that you create can better serve the needs of your students; describe our implementation process and the various features that we incorporated into our online textbooks; and, share some of our pitfalls that you will want to avoid in implementing your own online textbook.  Attendees will leave with an understanding of the commitment and benefits of adopting an online textbook in their law school skills courses, as well as ideas for using these same tools to create training and instructional materials beyond the traditional classroom.

Slides: 

BEYOND THE BOUND BOOKhandout.docx