6 Responses

1. How long’s a piece of string…
   In order to give an idea of costs we’d need to know a bit more about what you’re trying to do.

   i.e. What skills are you trying to deliver? To how many staff? Over how many sites? What % of the course would you expect to the e-learning aspect to cover and so on…

   Otherwise any number would be no more than a guess…

2. You need to give more information
   Tracey,

   Nik is correct, there is no way we could give you an accurate budget. You need to ask yourself the following questions:

   1. What do I want to achieve?
   2. Is this achieveable via generic content? (i.e. is this content already available).
   3. What content needs to be created especially for my situation – and who is going to do that?
   4. Do I need to track what learning has taken place?

   By starting with these questions you can then formulate a plan, and hence start putting budgets to each element. If you can involve a consultant up-front, this will almost certainly save you time, effort or money (and possibly all three) in the long term.

   Contact me if you want more help.

3. cost of e-learning
   As well as what’s been mentioned, you need to consider the style and purpose of the e-learning element. It can be used for consolidation and revision, at one end of the continuum, content based with quizzes, questions, assessment; or at the other end of the continuum it can be an opportunity for group learning and discussion, and for self-management and personal planning.

   It boils down, I suppose, to what kind of learning you are looking for and what you consider to be the most appropriate style and input for the whole programme, waht is best done face to face, and what is best done online.
   Email me if you’d like to talk further.

4. Another unhelpful answer!
   Hi Tracey

   The previous points are sensible and should form part of any planing you do. Another area to consider is whether you want the various elements of your blened solution to be created in isolation, or whether it would be possible/desireable to have one organisation work with you on all elements, ensuring that you really do get a blend rather than a lumpy mix!

   If you partition out what will be ‘e’, what will be classroom, what will be action learning, what will be workbook etc, before deciding the messages and assessment criteria you could be on an uphill struggle. Different providers will always compete to convince you that their element should dominate.

   There are far to many variables to give a straight number to your question as it stands, but if you’d like to talk it through, please get in touch.

   Claudine McClean

5. achieving cost control
   Although it’s important to get the high level issues right, in terms of where eLearning fits into your training solution it’s of equal necessity to become familiar with the drivers of eLearning development cost. These are not always proportional to the learning benefit accrued to the end user. Basically, i’ve seen a lot of expensive eLearning that’s superfically slick, expensive, and visually appealing that misses the target because it fails to address the needs of the organisation. To get ideas of cost, you need firstly to think what it is that you need eLearning to achieve, where it fits into the recipe, set a budget, and use that as a parameter for any solutions you pursue.

   By doing this, you’ll be able to exert control over costs and not be swayed by promises and gimmickry.

   Email me to discuss further if you like.

   Gorodn Hamilton

6. E-learning – getting it right
   Might be able to help. We have been through the same challenge as yourself quite recently. We wanted a bespoke development focusing on sales/lead generation/customer excellence. Due to the daft pricing proposals, uncertainty as to whether the external developers really understood what we were trying to achieve in the blend- we developed it ourselves in-house utilising the skills of a contracted freelance developer working in synergy as part of our team. We did it faster, much cheaper, and i believe, better, and have now been successfully selling it as part of our blended package.
   E-mail me if you want to discuss further. Regards, Tom