I was slightly baffled by this week’s assignment as budget
is usually never discussed in any instructional design model and had never
really come up in any of the previous classes I had taken, so this was
definitely a challenge.
Resource 1
I really like this website as I have used Don Clark’s other
resources before for other instructional design classes and have found his
advice to be very useful. What is particularly good about this website is that
it gives a very clear guideline to estimating development hours. This is a real
help to anyone creating any type of instruction. I was amazed at how many hours
of work it can take to create an hour long simulation. Although I have been
teaching for a long time and I am halfway through my instructional design
course, I have never really understood how to estimate the design/ development
time for an hour’s instruction. Now I
feel that I can give a true estimate.
The other useful information here is the cost of developing
training. I have no real idea about how much instructional designers, technical
writers, technical developers etc. charge so the estimates here actually really
help if I had to provide someone with a quote.
Don Clark’s website then goes on to provide estimates on
eLearning courses; this is where my interest peaked. I’m interested in creating
e-learning courses for the future and this website has a plethora of
information about the different types of e-learning and the development time
for each one.
There are some very cool tools such as the excel cost
estimator available on this website.
Resource 2
The second resource that I really like is this:
I like this one because it is about creating online courses.
It uses a web based program created by West Dominion University to estimate the
cost of the courses. Since more and more institutions are offering online
courses, the demand for instructional designers is increasing. Some
institutions hire full time instructional designers, while others hire
contractors. Either way, it is important to know the time and effort an
instructional designer will spend on creating these courses. It goes through the different phases a
university will go through to create the courses and how they can estimate the
cost and effort. The web based program
is available for download here http://preweb.clt.odu.edu/price/
Resource 3
This is another good source of information for general
instructional design use; it is not specific to any project and so the advice
can be applied to anything. The site shows visually where the instructional
designer will spend the most amount of time in the ADDIE process and typically
that will be in the development stage. It also differentiates between the
novice and the expert instructional designer and takes that into account when
estimating development hours. A novice is more likely to take longer to develop
a course than an expert designer. The
other interesting aspect of this is that it takes into account learner mastery
of skills; the more difficult the content, the more development time. The other resources do not really take into
account these variables and so this is what makes this website so special, important
and definitely worth checking out.
References
Gordon, S.,
He, W., & Abdous, M. (n.d.). Using a Web-based System to Estimate the Cost
of Online Course Production. The
University of West Georgia. Retrieved May 31, 2012, from
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall123/gordon123.html
Clark, D.
(n.d.). Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design. Colocation |
Broadband Wireless | Dedicated Servers | Web Design & Development | DSL |
Web Hosting | Infinity Internet. Retrieved May 31, 2012, from
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html
Munson, D.
(n.d.). Estimating Instructional Design and Development Time | LearnCentrix. LearnCentrix
| a place where e-Learning practitioners share, exchange, and network.
Retrieved May 31, 2012, from http://www.learncentrix.com/estimating-instructional-design