Hi John. In our OER Guidance for Schools, we identify the following benefits (in G1: Open Education and the Schools Sector): http://schools.leicester.gov.uk/ls/open-education/Why use OER in schools? Open Educational Resources enjoy a range of social, educational and financial benefits. OER can support schools and school staff in increasing access, fostering collaboration and ensuring value for money. By openly licensing learning materials, schools can provide additional value — making publicly funded works available for public benefit, through open and free exchange. Education benefits from good resources, and reusing existing OER frees up time that can be spent on other aspects of teaching and learning. At the school level, use of OER (instead of paid-for resources) can help reduce costs, and get the most out of existing budgets. Schools can benefit by increasing their capacity through connecting to OER networks of educators and expertise. OER (and Creative Commons licences) provide a framework on the basis of which schools can collaborate and share flexible learning materials (such as worksheets, course or textbooks) alongside innovative and effective practice. Use of OER enables schools to work together. Releasing resources under open licences promotes the often outstanding work that staff and schools are doing.

From an educator’s perspective, OER use and creation can bring educators together and support

school staff in achieving shared goals. Through sharing resources in common areas of interest, working with OER can help develop school communities. Being able to draw on multiple sources, new approaches and expertise invigorates teaching and can increase quality. OER increases the pool of resources available for activities in the classroom. This can support differentiation more easily, and increase the variety of classroom activities, as well as help provide extension tasks. OER also provide a range of benefits from a student perspective. They can increase the availability of free-to-access resources and supplementary materials available to learners. They can support independent and informal learning, providing educationally focused materials in areas young people are interested in learning more about, which might not be covered by the school curriculum, or might be taught on courses they aren’t able to take. OER also make resources available to learners globally who may not be as well supported as UK learners.

And we also provide policy benefits information in G4: Openly Licensing and Sharing Your Resources (particularly under 'OER school policies and processes'). You can download all of our guidance, policy and resources docs here: http://schools.leicester.gov.uk/ls/open-education/ (including a walk through for using Wikipedia's Book Creator tool)

The guidance has been produced for schools, but has also already been 'translated' for the further and higher education sectors: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/oer-schools-guidance-resources-from-leicester-city-co... more quantitative terms, you'll want to check out the OER Hub's OER Impact maps: http://oerresearchhub.org/evidence/oer-impact/ Best wishes, Josie

From: john cummings mrjohncummings@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Education education@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 7 September 2015, 12:42 Subject: [Wikimedia Education] [wikimedia-education] What benefits can educational organisations get from adopting open licenses?

Hi all

Can people tell me are there any good online resources on what benefits educational organisations can get from adopting open licenses? Please feel free to braindump as many as you like, I've helped make a tool for collating Wikimedia related resources including ones for advocacy and this seems to be an area that I can't find much on. They do not have to be Wikimedia related, just generally about the effects of open licensing content. Thanks John _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education