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How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Distance

Learning Course? It All Depends....
By Judith V. Boettcher
When faculty talk about distance learning, more and
more questions seem to be converging on issues of
budgeting and costing. It is significant to note that the
questions are not whether or not one ought to get into
distance learningthis was the hot topic a year or so
agoquestions now are focusing on how much getting
into distance learning will cost. Here, Judith Boettcher
examines some of the main components of the cost of
developing distance learning programs.
Not surprisingly, there is no simple answer to the
question of how much it will cost in time and money to
develop a distance learning program. Lately, some online
service companies have been suggesting that an entire
virtual campus can go online in 90 days, orif you are
really in a hurryin 60 days. Depending on who you are
as an institution, what you want to offer, and how much
a campus leader wants to change (or perhaps, shock) a
campus, one must acknowledge that this is indeed
possible. If one has enough money, or enough time,
there is little that is truly not possible. And with some of
the new Web applications that are now available, an
outsourced approach to getting started may indeed be
advantageous. But the bottom line is, an institution must
carefully define goals, research options, and arrive at
realistic cost expectations.

Defining a Virtual Campus

Just as we have defined the different types of Web
courses in previous articles, it is useful to think about
the different kinds of virtual campuses that are possible.
For every vision of distance learning, there is a different
design, and each design has different costs. So the
question to be answered becomes, If this is the kind of
distance learning program I want to design and build,
how much will it cost?
One highly recommended strategy for budgeting for
distance learning is to build different budgets for each
phase of a program. One budget is for the initial design
and development of a program; the second budget is for
the marketing and delivery of a program; the third
budget is for the ongoing maintenance of a program.
This type of phase budgeting is difficult to do within the
context of our current academic structures. When a
faculty member is tasked with the responsibility of
teaching a course, that faculty member is responsible for
all of the phases of the course: for the design of the
course, for the development of that course, for getting
the word out via the course catalog listings and
occasional flyers on campus, and also for the delivery of
the courseincluding testing, assessment, and student
interaction.
With distance learning programs, these tasks and phases
become unbundled. Distance learning programsat
least, most of those offered before the Internet became
widely availableoften were able to lower costs by
taking the highly paid, highly expert research faculty out
of the delivery phase of the program. The Open
University model is a well-recognized model that assigns
faculty experts the responsibility for preparing the
course content and packaging it. This is the design and
development phase. Then when a student registers for a
course, the full package of materials is sent out to
students. The cost of the course materials is usually
included in the tuition fees. The student then completes
the course experience by virtue of interacting with the

materials and with a tutorsomeone who specializes in

the delivery of a course. While the course is being
delivered by a tutor, the faculty expert is often working
on a new course or on maintaining another course.
Distance in a New Context
The Internet, the Web and the personal computer are
creating a new context for the virtual campusa context
that makes it possible to use the on-campus bundled
design, development, and delivery approach for distance
learning courses on the Internet.
A number of campuses across the country have
facilitated the creation of a new context in higher
education by declaring that all students will be required
to have access to their personal information age learning
and research and communication tool: the personal
computer. By extension, then, our campuses will also
change dramatically, as all faculty must also have this
tool, and all administrators as well.

The Need for a Business Plan

Lets return to the point of planning and budgeting for a
distance learning program. Planning a distance learning
degree program often requires a business plan that
anticipates the budgets and personnel needed for the
design and development phase as well as for the
multiple delivery phases. Many distance learning courses
are offered over a number of semesters, for example.
Such a plan also needs to address basic infrastructure
questions such as the recruiting, marketing, and
admissions processes and the support processes of
counseling, assessment, and library resources as well as
support for the use of the software and hardware. This
planning process requires us to answer a number of
fundamental questions about the goals and expectations
of the program. It helps in structured decision making as
well as planning and budgeting.

A key planning point is to answer questions about who

we expect our students to be. Lets make some
assumptions for purposes of this example. Lets assume
that you know who your target audience isthat they
are students for whom getting to your particular campus
is difficult, but not impossible; and that they are working
professionals who want to add a specific degree to their
resume. And lets assume a context in which all students
have access to the computer. Lets also assume that
students are more sensitive to efficiency issues than to
cost issues. These assumptions mean that we can design
use of the Web and the computer as one of the primary
delivery media, and that we can require access to the
Web and a reasonable budget for materials and
resources.
Studying the characteristics of the target audience for a
distance learning program often can make deciding on
ones choice of media fairly straightforward. If the
students are going to be traveling by car for many hours
a day, as salespeople often do, the audiotape as a media
might be an excellent media choice. If your students are
not very techno-literate, or if access for more than
limited time periods is problematic, the use of the Web
might be restricted to e-mail and simple administrative
processes. In real estate, the three most important
things are location, location, and location. In planning
the media for distance learning programs, the three
most important things are lifestyle, lifestyle, and
lifestyle.
Our current on-campus courses are often designed
around two primary media: classrooms with
synchronous lectures and interactions, and books plus
other print resources. Most of the emerging Web courses
are being designed around two primary media as well:
the Web environment and digital resources, and print
books and materials. With the Web as a media choice,
the Web also provides a panoply of choices for
asynchronous mini lectures, libraries and databases of
course and reference resources, subscription online
resources associated with the print book, and other
social and intellectual virtual spaces. Both on-campus

and Web courses also use secondary media for personal

communication and interaction, such as meetings,
phone, and fax.
Keeping Goals in Sight
Before we take the next step of budgeting for a distance
learning course, we need to clarify our goals. Is the goal
of the distance learning program to deliver a program
one time or multiple times? Is the goal to build materials
that will be delivered many times within your own
institution? Is the goal to build materials that you will
license to other institutions for their courses? Is the plan
to remove the primary faculty expert from the delivery
process and to have the faculty member focus on the
design and development, hiring others for the course
delivery and student interaction?
Time and Cost Estimates
Lets first look at two specific questions: (1) How much
instructional time makes up a 3-credit course? and (2)
How much time does it take to build an hour of learning
materials? If we can estimate the number of hours, costs
can be figured from that using salary figures of the
designers and developers.
Lets see if we can come up with an estimate for the first
question. Lets assume that the usual on-campus class is
45 hours of lecture (15 weeks at 3 hours a week) and
that a good rule of thumb for effective learning is that a
student should study about two hours outside of class
for every hour in class. This means that the total of all
lecture, study experiences, interaction, and assessment
of 135 hours (45 times 3) equals a 3-credit course
experience. A faculty member generally makes
assignments for readings, experiences, and projects for
the 90 hours (45 times 2) of outside class time. So, we
want to look at the remaining 45 hours of "lecture" or
"in-class" time. Assuming everything else remains
constant for the 90 hours, then we need to figure how

many hours it might take to redesign the 45 hours of

classroom time to the online/Web context.
Based on much anecdotal evidence plus real experience
over the last 10-15 years of building computer-based
material, we can say with some level of certainty that it
can take an average of about 18 hours - of faculty time to create an hour of instruction that is on the Web. This
means that the instruction is pretty much able to be
delivered independent of an expert faculty member.
This number can quickly produce an oh, no or thats
impossible on the part of deans, department chairs, and
other administrators. ( Faculty who have done this kind
of work either nod sagely, having known this all along,
or nod vigorously as if someone finally understands.)
This mixed reaction should be no surprise. The cost
consequences are problematic. If we multiply 18 hours
times the current 45 hours of class time, that could
mean that it would take an investment of 810 hours to
move a course to the Web. If we assume some time for
startup with learning technology and instruction in
teaching and learning in this new environment (and also
arranging for any copyright and other issues), we can
rapidly approach the 1,000-hour mark for moving a
course to the Webgiven our current models.
What about the faculty member who is given a semester
release time to do this? Is this enough time? The
average amount of time in a semester release time is
only about 180 hours. (Note: This can vary a lot from
institution to institution. This particular figure assumes a
15-week teaching semester with a week before and two
weeks after for a total of 18 weeks, and averaging about
11 hours per week working on this one course. This
results in about 198 hours of a faculty members time for
a three-credit course. This means that a one-semester
release time only provides 25 percent or less of the time
that it probably will take to move a course to the Web.
Now you might ask, how are some of the faculty doing
this if they have not had any significant time or support.

There are probably two answers, if not more. One

answer is that they are working many more hours in a
week. Faculty have self-reported regularly working 6080 hours a week while in a transition time for classroom
to Web materials. This is usually done out of interest and
enthusiasm for what is now possible. The other answer
is that the materials that are being produced generally
are not being used by other faculty. In other words, the
designing/developing faculty member is still in the
process. This suggests that the "bundled" strategy is
moving from the campus classroom environment to the
Web environment. This is okay if that is the goal. We
may be evolving to a new form of distance learning in
which the percentage of pre-packaged materials is less.
At the same time, we may be moving to a new form of
campus Web courses in which the Web becomes the
classroom. This is probably also good, because this
makes the process more affordable.
Since this number of 18 hours for every hour of
instruction seems so unbelievable, it is good to know
that this number is not unreasonable, given previous
studies on the time for development of course materials.
Rumble, in The Costs and Economics of Open and
Distance Learning (Kogan Page, London, Stirling-USA,
1997), shows the following estimates from J.J. Sparkes
in 1984 for the hours of academic effort required to
produce one hour of student learning in different media
forms (p. 79).

Academic work to produce one hour of

student learning
Media Hours of Academic Effort
Lecturing 2-10
Small group teaching 1-10
Videotaped lectures 3-10
Teaching Text ( Book) 50-100*
Broadcast Television 100*
Computer - aided learning 200*

Interactive Video 300*

*Requires support staff as well.

The figure of an average of 18 hours for Web

development seems to be just about right with this
supporting data. Perhaps we could be even more
accurate by providing a range of 5-23 hours. This is a
broad range, just as with the range of 2-10 used for
lecturing. Certainly, as faculty become more experienced
and comfortable with the new Web environment, the
number of hours required may go downas long as the
bundled strategy is in place.
Best Use of Technology
On the other hand, if we want to maximize the power of
the technology, we may want to design and develop
short segments of more complex media. This can often
require the skills of expert support staff in addition to
significant hours by a faculty member. A very important
point not to be overlooked in this data is that these
figures reflect the amount of academic work required.
For complex media such as television, computer
simulations, and animation and digital video, additional
work is required by support staff.
We can be fairly confident that if the goal is to build
materials that can be delivered multiple times and
independent of the designing/developing faculty
member, then costs will be dramatically higher than for
building materials to be delivered in a bundled
context.
Course templates:
Even for delivering in a bundled context, there are ways
to reduce this tremendous time investment on the front
end. One strategy is to adopt one or more of the many
course templates that are currently available. The

University of Iowa has a great Web site providing a quick

look at many of these templates. Go to the following site
( http://adpsrv1.adp.uiowa.edu/ITS/ISDG.nsf/ ) and
follow the links to Papers, and then Web Templates. The
top Web templates are listed and reviewed, including a
feature list, and often, costs for each.
Adopting materials for the Web: Another way to reduce
time and effort is to adopt digital materials at the
same time that you are adopting a course textbook.
Publishers are now making many book/Web/cd
adoptions routine. By making more use of these
packaged materials, one can move a course to the Web
more quickly.
Collaborations and partnerships: Another strategy being
used by some institutions is to encourage their faculty to
partner with each other or with a faculty member at
another institution. While building for a Web course, one
often starts developing a database of content that is
much more than can be used in one course. By
partnering with a faculty or multiple faculty working in
the same content area, a larger, richer database of
content can be developed more efficiently and with
broader use.
So, how much does it cost to develop a distance learning
course? It all depends! A special thanks to Carrie
Regenstein of Cornell and to Martha Meacham of St.
Edwards University for their well-framed questions and
conversations on this issue. And to other readers, let me
know if you want more on this topic.

Recommended Books of the Month

Goss, Tracy. The Last Word on Power. A Currency book
by Doubleday, NY, 1996.
Rumble, Greville. The Costs and Economics of Open and
Distance Learning. Kogan Page, London, Stirling (USA),
1997.

I have two strong recommendations this month. The first

is the book by Rumble mentioned above. If you want to
know more about budgeting and costing for distance
learning, this book is excellent. It is basic, yet
comprehensive; it is also very well written.
I would also like to recommend a book by Tracy Goss. At
first glance, it is much less practical than the Rumble
book, but for those of us who feel as if the paradigms
are shifting too quickly, it is not to be missed. I actually
discovered this book over a year ago, in February of
1997. I was drawn to it not so much by its title, but by
its subtitle, which is "Executive Re-Invention for Leaders
Who Must Make the Impossible Happen." I have found
that many folks working in the area of distance learning
- and by extension, in the larger campus wide change
arena - can identify immediately with this. Ms Goss
focuses her efforts towards self-enlightenment of leaders
who must change and reinvent themselves as they are
simultaneously changing and reinventing their
organizations in the face of the new contexts.

judith@designingforlearning.org
Revised January 15, 2006
Copyright Judith V. Boettcher, 1997-2010

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