Instructional Designers: Figuring out how many hours it takes to develop training « Dr. Ray Pastore's Instructional Technology Blog. I get this question all the time and I give my students the ‘estimates’.
These numbers are very useful when putting together a proposal and letting a client know just how much it is going to cost them. I have gathered these numbers from several sources which are posted at the end of this post. Now for the stats: 1.According to training magazine, money spent on training increased 13% in 2011 to $59.7 billion. 2. 3.
. - Simple Asynchronous: (static HTML pages with text & graphics): 117 hours - Simple Synchronous: (static HTML pages with text & graphics): 86 hour - Average Asynchronous: (above plus Flash, JavaScript, animated GIF’s. etc): 191 hours - Average Synchronous: (above plus Flash, JavaScript, animated GIF’s. etc): 147 hours - Complex Asynchronous: (above plus audio, video, interactive simulations): 276 hours - Complex Synchronous: (above plus audio, video, interactive simulations): 222 hours 4. Dugan Laird (1985), listed these instructor preparation times (based on U.S. 5. How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design. Note that budgeting is not included in most ISD models, but as more and more Learning/Training Departments are being called upon to justify their expenses, I'm including it here.
Budgeting Learning activities are budgeted in a wide variety of ways, so the degree of estimating the costs will depend upon the organization you are working for. Generally speaking, the closer you are to your customers or clients, the less you have to estimate. For example, a small Training & Development department located within a manufacturing facility might only have to justify its time and capital expenditures, while a training vendor will probably have to give a full development estimate before a training program is approved. Time to Develop One Hour of Training. Designing training is as much of an art as it is a science.
However, that doesn’t mean we should abandon the act of trying to figure out how long it takes to develop an hour of training. Scientific measures and standards can be applied at least as rough guidelines. With some type of standard, it becomes possible to gain a general idea of how much time a training project might take. While many may argue about using “one hour of training” as a measuring stick because of the difficulty of determining exactly what one hour means, it is a common term and has some traction with managers trying to plan resources. It’s not perfect, but it is a way of making comparisons.
Too often when asked about developing training, internal and external clients hear “it depends.” Here are the results from a survey we developed in a rough attempt to align credible numbers for use in estimating work based on delivery method and complexity of interactivity. Demographics Results Factors that effect development time. The Mystery of Determining Instructional Design Time. Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for answers to various mysteries. Folklore has no shortage of quests to find answers to mysteries such as Big Foot, The Loch Ness Monster, and the strange events that have occurred in and around the so-called Bermuda Triangle. A big mystery that seems to baffle and perplex many in corporate and organizational training is determining the exact amount of days or hours required to design training.
While facilitating Langevin courses, I often get asked questions similar to this one: “Jeff I have to design a one-day ethics course. How long should that take?” Why eLearning Development Ratios Can be Hazardous to Your Career. Convert ILT to eLearning - Estimating. I received an inquiry from a reader and I'm hoping that people can chime in on their thoughts.
It relates to my post about eLearning Costs, which bases cost estimates on seat time of the eLearning course. So, the basic question is: We current provide a two day (16 hour) classroom training course for our employees. We are planning to prepare an e-learning course based on this classroom course. How should we estimate the e-learning course duration for this lesson?
Conversion Estimation Some resources on the conversion of Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to eLearning / Web-Based Training (WBT) – found through eLearning Learning using Convert ILT as the starting point: In What Training Costs Part I: Converting Content from ILT to WBT, they discuss compression of ILT when its converted to eLearning: Compression ratio: What would the length of the course be if it were online vs. classroom based? In Costs, Donald Clark talks about seat time during conversion: