Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

Week 5 Blog Assignment

Instructional Design: Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

by James Landon

The three websites below are good resources for estimating and allocating resources for instructional design projects. They provide detailed information on the best ways to estimate time and cost for designing and developing these projects.

Designing Training Activities – How Long Does it Take to Design and Develop a Training Activity

By Robin Henry

http://thetrainingworld.com/faq/deshowlong.htm

Many ID’s estimate costs based on the time it takes for project team members to complete various tasks for the ID project. This article describes the challenges and solutions ID’s can count on to navigate through this process. Henry (2005) describes the need to consider structural variables as well as variables related to the ID or design team. Some other basics Henry suggests is to consider other projects that are similar and create estimates from that.

Time to Develop One Hour of Training

By Kapp & Defelice

http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training

Along the same lines, this resource provides specific suggested hours required for various types of training. The data is based on surveys collected in 2003 and then again in 2009 and gives some good estimates.

Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

By Clark, D.R.

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

This site seems to be the most recommended in almost every blog or ID message board I came across. This page has a huge amount of specific and detailed information related to estimating training costs, development hours, eLearning development time, and development times to create one hour of e-learning in various e-learning styles.

- James Landon

References

Clark, D. R. (2004). Estimating costs and time in instructional design. Retrieved from the Big Dog & Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition website: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

Henry, R. (2005, May). Designing training activities: How long does it take to design and develop a training activity. Retrieved from the Training and Development World website:

http://thetrainingworld.com/faq/deshowlong.htm

Kapp, K.M. & Defelice, R. A. (2009, August 31). Time to develop one hour of training. Retrieved from the ASTD website: http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training