Time to create course?

[davebarthel]

Hello everyone!

Our company is currently moving all our training processes online using Articulate. Because I was the one who pushed for online training modules and Articulate I have been tasked with creating all the modules (courses) in this process. I am looking to create approximately 20 short courses (30 minutes each) and am being asked to provide a general timeline on how fast this can be done. I am being given basic material and am having to take it from there.

I am wondering how long it takes a general user to create a basic course? What are others experiences with this? I am in a situation I am sure others have/are in - that of the "we need these courses now with little to no budget". What are others experiences and how long does it take you to make a course if provided with basic information?

Thanks for the help - I should note that one of the reasons I pushed my company to adopt Articulate was the community, I have gained so much knowledge and insight from the blogs, posts and community and have been very impressed with what everyone is doing out there!

[DavidAnderson]

Hi DaveBarthel - Good question and I imagine you'll get a range of responses.

ASTD released a study a few months ago on elearning development times: Case Study: Converting an Existing Course to E-Learning - 2009 - ASTD

I would say 1-2 weeks for a 30 minute course is average for a very basic course. Sign off and SME reviews are usually some of the biggest factors in development times.

I typically break course design into 2 main categories: writing and development. Writing includes your analysis, objectives and overall elearning storyboard while development is the assembly of the course.

I'm pretty quick and can assemble 30 slides in a couple days assuming all assets are ready to go. The challenge is in the level of design and the number of animated objects on each slide.

Typical courses slides have 2-3 objects per slides (text and one or two images). That's a basic course. Working on slides with 7-10 objects requires more syncing and can take longer.

David

[davebarthel]

Thanks David,

I appreciate the information, its always good to know how much time should be allocated for these kinds of projects. I don't have a whole lot of experience with the software yet but its good to know the timeframes and processes others have which really helps out new users.

Any tips (and this is for anyone not just David) for people such as myself who are given very little time / very little funds to make a half decent project? I am sure there are other people out there in the same boat as me!

Thanks again!

[DavidAnderson]

Just as an aside, I know a common time factor for elearning vendors contracting out designs is to allow 1-3 hours per slide. Again that depends on complexity but it might be a way to provide a range of time for each project.

[Jenise_RidgeViewMedia.com]

Hi DaveBarthel:

I saw David A's reply and wanted to jump in. From past Forum threads I see that he comes from one type of e-learning development environment whereas I came from years in in-house corporate training, where we also wore many hats. (Currently, I'm a freelance consultant so my new world is more aligned with his now.)

In my "old world", we weren't able to focus 100% on an e-learning project. We also designed, developed, and facilitated ILT sessions, and we coordinated and contracted 3rd-party training vendors for sessions we didn't facilitate. We also helped with LMS administration, including the creation of new learning activities, writing the catalog descriptions, and registering learner audiences.

Oh, and we went to meetings each week, minimum of two one-hour meetings a week. And, there were phone calls and emails to address.

That said, and David knows this... I just crack up in hysterical guffaws when I read that someone can assemble 30 PPT slides in a couple of days. He was in an environment where he could focus 100% on the e-learning project. And, that's wonderful.

The reality in the in-house corporate learning organization is that the staff person will need to put on her or his "Stakeholder Project Manager" hat and hold all team members to a realistic project plan. That said, the learning professional will still need to build "cushion" into the project plan's milestone dates because they will slip. Will. Slip. That always happens when you're in-house corporate.

How Long Will it Take?
A one-hour Articulate e-learning course could take two to three months, if there is one person assigned to be the PM, the ID, and the Articulate developer. You didn't mention if the modules cover technical training or soft skills. Soft skills (leadership, customer service, etc.) courses take longer if you want to be creative and not deploy a "book online" course. Also, we don't know if you'll need to record and import audio narration, use videos, and other multimedia such as Captivate or Flash SWFs created outside of Studio '09 and imported in.

You'll be responsible for scheduling and attending stakeholder and SME meetings with the agendas that you will write. You will be coordinating, assembling, and editing the assets. If you'll be working pretty much alone on each course, you'll need to organize everything carefully. Use templates and reusable objects. Schedule and track your time, every hour and every day. Why? So you can answer the question, "Why is it taking you so long?"

Number of Hours Per Slide
Generally, I am now finding that an Articulate e-learning project, from start to finish, following the ADDIE project model, takes anywhere from 2-4 hours per PPT slide, and per Engage intr and per each QM quiz. I've timed myself and compared these times with a few other Articulate developers, and they agree. Calculate 4 hours per screen and you'll have a realistic estimate.

A simple quiz or interaction.. very simple?, 30 minutes to one hour. But, if you want to do the really cool stuff that Jeanette Brooks and others at Articulate are doing in their Screenr tutorials, you'll need to schedule more than 30 minutes.

But, what adds to that time estimate is the People Factor. The "going back and forth" and making changes after you thought the SMEs or stakeholders had no more changes.

That's why it's good to mind map, outline, or write a written storyboard before you go into "rapid prototyping". If your organization is very structured, traditional, and hierarchical, it's best to get 100% sign off on the storyboard before you even begin to build in Articulate. That way, you'll have the map, outline, or storyboard and can determine/count the number of PPT sldies, Engage intrs, and QM quizzes and estimate the delivery date for the course.

So, let's say your first 30 minute course will be about 42 slides. 42 * 2 hours = 84 hours.

42 * 4 hours (typical) - 168 hours (or, one month if you are 100% dedicated to the project).

Dr. Karl Kapp's Article (ASTD)
This is one of my favorite articles on estimating time to develop one-hour of training:
Time to Develop One Hour of Training - 2009 - ASTD

Your Assignment?
Once you build the first of your twenty 30-minute courses, your development time with subsequent modules should decrease if you use a template layout and reusable graphical elements that you can apply with each course.

The Articulate Community staff also help us with their blog posts and Screenr tutorials where they show us the short cuts and the quick tricks. And, in the Forums, they frequently attach zip files we can download and use in our projects.

I've never seen such a "rich" and effective user community, so I'm glad you pushed for your organization to go with Articulate.

Twenty 30-minute courses = You have "job security" for a year!

Okay, now I'll sit back and wait for others to chime in and go for my jugular. LOL

[DavidAnderson]

One thing that always helped development was for the team to have multiple course models for different types of projects.

Our rapid model looked something like the attached image. Once the storyboard was written and finalized, it was only a matter of copying text from word over to PowerPoint and syncing the animated text with audio. One image per slide and up to 50 words per slide. That was the rapid model. IT was used when projects had short turn arounds.

I've found this to be a decent model for anyone just getting started and looking for a repeatable course model.

The one thing I wish studies like the ASTD would do is not just classify "rapid, complex, simulation" but actually include samples of finished products. I think that is most helpful for putting timelines and products in context.

Here's an example of the typical Level 1 "Quick Turn" we used. Developers could assemble this level course in less than a day from script sign off: http://david.articulate-online.com/0894562848

Try and identify your own levels of complexity. Some departments will only care about fulfilling a checkbox requirement to have courses built. Find something that fits their need while still delivering a consistent, quality product.

Other departments will want more performance based elearning and those take longer.

To Jenise's point about development, yes, assembly is performed by developers dedicated to developing or writing courses.

Anyway, I hope the course samples helps put some of this into perspective!

David

[chat54]

As some who is in the corporate training world and suffers from what could be called the normal work syndrome as described by Jenise_RidgeViewMedia.com, I normally allocate about 4-5 hours per slide and two weeks to content creation, storyboarding and then the signoff both at project start and project finish, does not always work but generally I am never far off my compeltion date.

I run the team and as such this is my other job so as to speak!!

Sorry no jugular attack from me I thought that Jenise_RidgeViewMedia.com was spot on with the descriptioon of the real corporate training world in action?

Always better to under promise and over deliver!!!

Chat54

[davebarthel]

Originally Posted by chat54

Always better to under promise and over deliver!!!

Chat54

Hello everyone,

And this is why I am so impressed with the forum!!!!!!!! I was hoping to get a couple responses to my enquiry like "I take 3 hours per slide" but the answers provided here (especially from Jenise_Ridgeviewmedia) were long, detailed, and provided a lot of great information and helpful tips! So thank you!

Also thanks for noting its better to underpromise and over deliver, I like that and think that it may work.

As for my work environment its true, I will only be able to have approximately 50% of my work week into these projects so I think I am getting the impression that not only am I not alone in this, but I should probably re-look at my expectations for my timeline. Thanks so much for helping me with this! By communicating to my employer a more realistic timeline I think my life is going to be much easier. To be honest the timeline that I had come up with (based on no experience, and was more of a guestimate than anything) was significantly shorter that what has been communicated here. So this is going to make my life easier when my boss isn't asking for the course 4 days into the project!

So thanks everyone for your help!!! Much appreciated!!!

[Joe_Deegan]

I am in a similar situation as you being the lone eLearning developer/Instructional designer in my organization and echo what Jenise say's about all that other stuff that gets in the way.

If I have the luxury of completely focusing on an eLearning project I can get it done in 1-2 weeks. But that's just the development and doesn't take review and revisions into consideration. A nightmare example I am living through now is due to several process changes. I was brought into the project early because Execs wanted to roll out a process change quickly therefore I needed to pump out an eLearning class in a hurry. The problem with that is the process had not been refined and several process issues were exposed after I had already finished the first draft of the eLearning course. Because the process changed I had to make heavy revisions to the eLearning course adding a lot of time to the overall development time. This is where that underestimating and over delivering comes into play.

Another concern to take into consideration is if you will be managing a Learning Management System or some kind of website hosting all of the courses you will be developing. In my case, I am the lone eLearning guy so that includes the administration responsibilities of LMS administration which definitely interferes with content development time.

Long story short, 1-2 weeks if it is the only thing you are working on. Double that if you have to keep up with the corporate rat race. Good luck! It sounds like you have a great opportunity to improve the efficiency of your organization.

[dannymacc]

There are a lot of great answers in this thread. I can't dispute any of them. I can only add my experience, just to help amalgamate development time. I work in-house and have several things happening at once, also. I have tracked my time per project, so I have a pretty good sense of how I work, and how much time to allocate. If the course is very straight forward - get-some-bullet-points-and-take-a-short-quiz-type of course - I run about 20:1 for the course creation time. That's 20 hours of PowerPoint/Engage/Quizmaker time. That doesn't include analysis, or sign-off meetings. That's my development time. This is also a straight "cut'n'paste" approach, where material is provided by someone else. If I have to write anything, it takes longer.

I've also gotten to the point that I don't have to flowchart every project, and created enough templates and pre-built slides to speed up my development. When I estimate delivery for a project, I tell the client what my hours will be, using a 40:1 ratio, and a caveat that I will have to sprinkle this project throughout the rest of my workload. Depending on the rest of my workload, I might be able to get that done in 2-4 weeks. I have had one project where my manager pulled me out of a class and gave away all my obligations, due to huge client pressure, so I could put together a course in 3 days. I worked 12 hours, 16 hours, and 8 hours to get that one done!