David Wiley has a new post critiquing the idea that some kinds of permissive licensing (such as Creative Commons) might be more effective for learning than others. From the post:
Unfortunately, I’m hearing more and more people talk about a new generation of media comparison studies – “License Comparison Studies.” These absolutely pointless studies would ask questions like “do CC BY-NC-SA licensed materials teach more effectively than traditionally copyrighted and licensed materials?” or “do CC BY-SA licensed materials teach more effectively than CC By-NC-SA materials?”
I think David Wiley is right: licensing does not affect the effectiveness of teaching … in a direct manner.
But CC-By licensing can influence the construction and repurposing of learning materials. And thereby CC-By licensing can positively influence the quality of learning materials. It’s probably (as always) a matter of posing the right research question.
The final question in this discussion would probably be how to measure the quality of learning materials and whether licensing does influence this quality in a significant way.