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Estimating the Effort in the Development of Distance Learning Paths

2014; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-662-44788-8_10

1865-0937

Milena Casagranda, Luigi Colazzo, Andrea Molinari,

Online and Blended Learning

In this paper we present a model for better understanding the ratio between costs, production of didactic material and activity of monitoring and facilitating e-learning tasks. The quantification of the effort required to produce e-learning material has been always subject to the proposal of some "magic numbers" not always supported by a method or analytical data. In this paper we propose a method for calculating the effort required to design and develop e-learning paths. Our model is based on a systematic gathering of data regarding the effort of the different actors involved (teachers, tutors, instructional designers etc.) from a series of e-learning projects carried out at the Laboratory of Maieutics over the last five years. In the first two years we collected ex-post data on design and development times, being careful to include a variety of different teaching methodologies. In the following years we identified critical variables which allowed us to abstract and generalize a possible costing model. The model proposed could be used as a reference point for professionals working on the development of content in their estimation of costs linked to the design and development of learning materials, providing a calculation basis which takes a number of methodological approaches and educational objectives into account.