Designing and developing any learning materials should be regarded as a project, and so should follow a standard project management approach. The first thing to do therefore is to develop a Work Breakdown Structure.
You can then:
- estimate the time needed for each stage and module
- cost the design and development
Work Breakdown Structure for learning design
Exactly what process you should follow will vary from project to project as each one will be different. However, this list below identifies the key stages that you should consider when planning design and development.
| Task | What do you do? |
| Research | Interview high performers and target group representatives to gather detail about the subject. |
| First draft paper design | Task analysis and development of modules and sub-modules. |
| Sign off paper design with expert | Work with a subject-matter expert to check that the task analysis is complete and correct. Make sure you have their approval before continuing. |
| Prototype | Choose one section of the course and develop draft materials (page layouts, screens or trainer's notes) and write the content and develop graphics for it. Test this out with users, high performers and the customer to make sure they are happy with the tone, look, etc. |
| First draft | Write the first draft of the complete module. |
| Sign off the first draft with the expert | The subject-matter expert reviews the module, makes comments and you edit it as necessary. |
| Alpha test the module | Pilot workshop materials, or for distance learning, ask users to work through the module with you observing them. Make changes as necessary. |
| Beta test the module | For distance learning, recruit a group of users and let them review the course over a period of one week. Collect their comments and edit as necessary. |
| Sign off the module with the customer | The customer reviews the module and signs it off. |
Workshops
This varies considerably depending on the subject matter and the activities that will be required. It could take anything from a day to ten days to design one day of a workshop.
Distance learning
Estimate for each module individually, as it is much easier to make estimates about small parts of a project than for the whole thing.
Allow plenty of time for testing. Allocating 15 – 20% of the project time to these tasks is sensible.
If your project involves programming of any sort, remember that it is notoriously difficult to estimate programming time. One rule sometimes quoted is to ask the programmer for an estimate and double it!
One hour of paper-based distance learning can take between 50 and 80 hours to develop. Factors such as the amount of graphics can have a big influence on time taken.
One hour of interactive courseware can take between 50 and 500 hours development time (which includes both design and coding), depending on its complexity and the skill of the development team. The 50 hours is for developing essentially linear material, and the 500 for sophisticated simulations. Assuming between 200 and 250 hours should be safe for moderately complex material.
Many projects experience delays at the sign off stages. A project may be very important to you but it may be just another job for the expert or the customer. Allow at least a five day turnaround.
Experience will help you to produce better and better estimates. Time sheets are a valuable source of information; recording how much time you spend on each stage of a project can be used as a valuable tool in predicting future time-scales.
The US Navy has produced estimates of how long each stage takes in its own courseware development:
| Activity | % of total project time |
| Preparing project plan | 2 |
| Analysing course content | 5 |
| Developing overall specification | 10 |
| Developing prototype | 5 |
| Developing scripts, storyboards and flow charts | 22 |
| Producing assets | 13 |
| Programming course | 28 |
| Testing and editing | 15 |
Based on these figures, and assuming a moderately complex e-learning package, it could take about 50 hours of design to produce 1 hour of e-learning.
An alternative approach when costing 'simple' e-learning is to consider that over the length of a course an average e-learning screen occupies a learner for about 60 secs (including presentation and question screens), so that there are about 60 screens per hour. How long it takes to design a screen depends on many factors, such as:
- how well-defined the source material is
- whether you are using pre-defined templates
- the level of graphical complexity incorporated
- the balance between presentation and question screens
- the overall leanring approach (presentation, simulation, etc.)
A range of learning design times per hour is therefore:
- 40 hours for linear presentations if the content is well-defined
- 60-80 hours if the content needs researching or structure/design is complex
- 150 hours for simulations such as call centre conversations
Some aspects of this are also relevant to designing paper-based materials. For example, detailed desktop publishing is a similar process to programming, and can take considerably more time than does simple writing.
If spending a lot of time planning a project seems daunting, consider these models.
| Poorly planned projects usually end up needing more and more effort as time goes by and as deadlines approach. |  |
| On the other hand, projects where a lot of effort has gone in to planning and estimating generally get easier as the time goes by! |  |
Having estimated time-scales for each stage of the development, it is relatively easy to work out how much the project will cost. For each stage of the development you should know who is going to be involved and what they will need. You can then work out the costs based on the daily or hourly cost of people needed and the hire or purchase costs of equipment or facilities.
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(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005