Creation

Catalysing Climate Conscious Legal Education Through Open Education Resources

La Trobe University

Dr Julia Dehm; Zoe Nay; Dr Nicole Graham; and Steven Chang

Overview

This case study outlines an integrated project called Climate Conscious Lawyers that aims to transform legal education. It uses Open Education Resources (OER) to address climate change challenges in the legal profession. The project’s vision is to ensure the next generation of legal professionals are equipped with the expertise to deliver legal services and promote justice in a world transformed by climate change.

The main project outputs are:

In this case study, we seek to demonstrate the power of using OER to create “living” resources and build communities of practice around those resources. This case study also illustrates the benefits of a staged system of progressively publishing chapters in three “tranches” from mid-2024 to mid-2025.

We conclude by making recommendations to other open practitioners and educators on planning OER projects in a holistic way that are highly integrated with:

  • curriculum change initiatives
  • professional practice
  • community-building.

How to use this case study

Academic teaching staff can learn how to:

  • use OER as a deliberate catalyst for changing education in your discipline
  • formulate diverse strategies for OER implementation
  • create a ‘living open textbook’ that responds to practise
  • grow an OER team by attracting authors
  • manage larger edited volumes
  • establish the foundations of a community of practice linked to an OER
  • plan OER promotion in a targeted way.

Open education staff/librarians/learning designers can learn how to:

  • embed OER development within broader academic projects & practices
  • use staged OER development models to minimise workload challenges
  • identify grant applications and funding opportunities that align with OER projects.

Image descriptions

Figure 1: Front cover of the core content open textbook Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate Change and the Australian Legal System

Cover art of the open textbook ‘Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate Change and the Australian Legal System’. The cover is brown and features artwork of the Australian outback.

[Return to Figure 1]

 

Figure 2: Three pathways to mainstreaming climate change in legal education: top-down institutional approach (centering); decentralised, individual bottom-up approach (supplementing) and a combination of these (embedding)

The graphic features three boxes, each with arrows pointing toward a circle. The boxes are labelled “Centring”, “Embedding” and “Supplementing”. Text on the circle reads “Mainstreaming climate change in legal education”.

[Return to Figure 2]

 

Figure 3: Three interrelated project objectives to achieve the broader goal of transforming Australian legal education through the mainstreaming of climate change considerations

The picture depicts a circle divided into three equal parts. Arrows point around the circle, depicting a relationship. The three parts of the circle are labelled “Mapping curricular and pedagogical change”, “Developing educational resources” and “Building a community of practice”

[Return to Figure 3]

Figure 4: Legal academics (as editors, authors, reviewers), legal professionals (as authors and reviewers) and OER professionals consistently interacting with and learning from each other

This graphic features three connected cogs, two small and one large. The large cog is labelled “Legal Professionals”, while the smaller cogs are labelled “OER professionals” and “Legal Academics”.

[Return to Figure 4]

Figure 5:The staged publication model and the process of developing and publishing each tranche of chapters

The image depicts a workflow diagram for publishing a book in three tranches: Tranche 1 involves recruiting authors, introductory workshops, drafting chapters, peer review and revisions, and copy editing, design and production. Tranche 2 and 3 follow the same steps as Tranche 1, but with new sets of authors. The arrow between each tranche suggests a sequential workflow, where each tranche builds upon the previous one.

[Return to Figure 5]

 

Figure 6: An iterative cycle of OER promotion and publication leading to expansion into new project phases

The image depicts a timeline beginning with “Promote Project”. There are an additional four stages in the timeline, each represented by a coloured box. The boxes are in the following order and are labelled: Tranche 1 (green), Tranche 2, (red), Tranche 3 (yellow), Educators’ Companion (orange).

Tranches 1, 2 and 3 each have a circular arrow, depicting a cyclical process within the stage. Each Tranche’s cycle details that the project is disseminated at conferences / workshops, feedback received and new authors recruited before moving to the next stage of the timeline. There is a pink arrow at the end of the Educators’ Companion box, suggesting a potential continuation of the timeline.

[Return to Figure 6]


Acknowledgement of peer reviewers

The authors gratefully acknowledge the following people who kindly lent their time and expertise to provide peer review of this chapter:

  • Keith Heggart, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney

How to cite and attribute this chapter

How to cite this chapter (referencing)

Dehm, J., Nay, Z., Graham, N., & Chang, S. (2024). Catalysing climate conscious legal education through open education resources. In Open Education Down UndOER: Australasian Case Studies. Council of Australian University Librarians. https://oercollective.caul.edu.au/openedaustralasia/chapter/catalysing-climate-conscious-legal-education-through-open-education-resources

 

How to attribute this chapter (reusing or adapting)

Catalysing Climate Conscious Legal Education through Open Education Resources by Julia Dehm, Zoe Nay, Nicole Graham and Steven Chang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

If you plan on adapting this chapter, please use the following attribution statement: <*Title of your adaptation* is adapted from Catalysing Climate Conscious Legal Education through Open Education Resources by Julia Dehm, Zoe Nay, Nicole Graham and Steven Chang, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.


About the authors

Julia Dehm is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Law, La Trobe University. She is leading a project to mainstreaming climate change in Australian legal education and co-editor of Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate Change and the Australian Legal System (with Nicole Graham and Zoe Nay). Her other books include Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy and Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (edited with Usha Natarajan) and Power, Participation and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights under Supply Chain Capitalism (edited with Karen Engle, Dan Brinks and Kate Taylor).

Zoe’s research examines the role of law in addressing environmental challenges, with a focus on climate change. Her doctoral research examined the legal issues related to state responsibility for loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change in Pacific small island developing states. Zoe is also part of World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ)’s Academic Taskforce.

Dr Nicole Graham is a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. Nicole is renowned for her innovative scholarship concerning the relationships between property rights, anthropogenic environmental change, place attachment, and cultural discourses and practices of land ownership. Her interdisciplinary analysis of property law tackles its material effects, and the regulatory possibilities and limitations of law in the face of dynamic geophysical phenomena including climate change. Nicole’s secondary field of research is legal education and the agency of education in addressing the social, professional, and institutional barriers to sustainable climate futures. She is Co-Chair of Legal Education Associate Deans (LEAD), and has served as the Associate Dean of Education at Sydney Law School since 2021. Nicole has a long-established history of large-cohort core curriculum design and coordination and has won awards for her teaching excellence in property law and first-year law subjects.

Steven Chang coordinates open education programs at the La Trobe eBureau. His focus is on empowering teaching academics and professional staff as emerging open practitioners through collaborative ‘Third Space’ projects. Steven is a Co-Convenor of the Open Educational Practices ASCILITE special interest group. His current role is Coordinator, Open Education & Scholarship at La Trobe University.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Open Education Down UndOER: Australasian Case Studies Copyright © 2024 by Dr Julia Dehm; Zoe Nay; Dr Nicole Graham; and Steven Chang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.