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A Case Study on H2O OpenCasebook : Uncovering Digital Reading in Law School

Published: 19 April 2023 Publication History

Abstract

This study investigates the digital reading experiences of law students and conducts a usability test on H2O, a digital open-casebook platform developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. 9 in-depth user interviews and 16 user surveys on digital reading experiences of law students were conducted. The results of this study provide insights into the reading preferences and habits of law students that can be used to inform the design of digital learning tools in law school. Despite anecdotal reports that earlier users of the platform preferred physical casebooks, we found that many law students now prefer using digital casebooks. More than half of the participants (53.3%) in our study reported that they preferred digital casebooks or that the format did not matter. Even for those preferring print books, cost or weight reduction was often more important than format preference, and print-preferring users expressed an interest in using digital annotation tools, collaboration and additional search features. This study suggests that student preferences for learning materials are rapidly changing — a change that may have been accelerated by the pandemic — and that assumptions about student preference may need to be reevaluated. It also demonstrates the importance of comparing old vs. new offerings, such as print vs. digital, to evaluate the strength of the preference relative to other preferences such as cost, and to teach participants what new features are enabled by the new format.

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References

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Matthew Bodie. 2005. The Future of the Casebook: An Argument for an Open-Source Approach. Journal of Legal Education 57 (03 2005). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.691985
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Kate Cain, Jane Oakhill, and Peter Bryant. 2000. Investigating the causes of reading comprehension failure: The comprehension-age match design. Reading and Writing 12, 1/2 (2000), 31–40. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1008058319399
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Paul Caron and Rafael Gely. 2004. Taking Back the Law School Classroom: Using Technology to Foster Active Student Learning. HeinOnline 54 (05 2004).
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Harvard Berkman Klein Center. 2021. Nymity. (2021). http://www.jstor.org/stable/42898029
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Yvonne Dutton and Margaret Ryznar. 2019. Assessing online learning in law schools: Students say online classes deliver. (2019). https://doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/bm8s5
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Jessica Gilgor. 2018. Technology for Studying: How to Use It to Your Advantage. HeinOnline 47 (05 2018).
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Andres Gonzalez. 2018. Law School a Journey like No Other. Student Lawyer 47(2018).
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Helen Hargreaves, Sarah Robin, and Elizabeth Caldwell. 2022. Student perceptions of reading digital texts for university study. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education24 (Sep 2022). https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi24.817
[9]
Emma Jones, Francine Ryan, Hugh McFaul, David Vince, Lawrence Kizilkaya, and Jamie Daniels. 2022. Using virtual reality to enhance the law school curriculum. Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age(2022), 26–35. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429351082-3
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Douglas L. Leslie. 2000. How Not to Teach Contracts, and Any Other Course Powerpoint, Laptops, and the Casefile Method Approaches to Teaching Contracts. Saint Louis University 44 (2000).
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Michele Pistone. 2015. Law Schools and Technology: Where We Are and Where We Are Heading. Journal of Legal Education 64, 4 (2015), 586–604. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24716714

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2023
3914 pages
ISBN:9781450394222
DOI:10.1145/3544549
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Published: 19 April 2023

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  1. digital reading
  2. digital reading interaction
  3. law school
  4. learning technology

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  • Extended-abstract
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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