How Long Does

eLearning Take
to Develop?
Graeme Youngs
Head of Learning
Omniplex

How long does eLearning take to develop?

is a question we are frequently asked. With heavy
workloads, people who create eLearning want to
have a simple method of predicting the time it will
take to create a course. But is there a simple
method we can use to answer the question?

Contents

How Long Does it Take?

Actual Versus Elapsed Time

Actual Time

Elapsed Time

Title of the book

How Long Does it Take?

In one of our recent Omniplex eLearning Community events, we

grouped the audience into small teams, who consisted of relative
novices through to a range of experienced learning practitioners.
The exercise was to answer the question How long would it take to
write the following course? The scenario was as follows: The teams had
been given a 20 slide PowerPoint with the request to produce an audioled course with a medium level of interactivity, finishing with a 5
question knowledge check. We asked the teams to summarize how long it
would take to develop this.
When the teams presented back their estimates, the highest was three
months while the lowest estimate was thirty minutes! But why was there
such a large range of estimates and what factors underpinned them?

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Actual Versus Elapsed Time

The first point lay within the deliberate ambiguity of the question. We
werent explicit in the question about whether the estimate we sought was
the total duration of the project or the actual development hours (the
actual number of hours that you would spend designing, building and
refining the course).

The less experienced members of the audience tended to automatically

think of the actual time they would take creating the course, whilst the more
experienced heads tended to consider the wider project.

That gave us some initial answers to the question of How long does
eLearning take to develop. The answer depends on what you mean actual
time or project time (which we call elapsed time). But what are the factors
driving each of these measurements?

By denition, elapsed
time is always going to
be a superset of the
actual time. So as a rst
question, what drives
the actual time you
spend on a project?

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Actual Time
Intuitively, when you think of the actual
time spent creating eLearning, your mind
automatically fixates on the hours in front of
the authoring tool, crafting each screen.
However, there are so many other components,
which include meeting with stakeholders,
drawing up specifications and storyboards,
testing, fixing, revising, meetings and even
more meetings .
So, there are a lot of factors that are going
to impact the actual time the course will take to
complete. Here are just a few:
Length of the course obviously an hour
of eLearning takes longer to develop than
twenty minutes.
Material readiness if the course is based
on, say, an existing two hour workshop with
instructor notes, student workbook and a
PowerPoint, the material is likely to be in much
better state than a brand new initiative and will
take less time to develop. If you are handed a
single line to improve the appraisal skills of
the organization then it will take a lot of time
researching and scoping.
Number of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
if you have to work with a cast of thousands,
its going to require more time than just
huddling up with a single person.

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Complexity of eLearning a simple text

and graphics course is going to use much less
resources to develop than a course with lots of
interactions, branches, gamification and
quizzing (but it will be a lot less interesting!).

Authoring tool modern authoring tools

like Storyline are going to be an awful lot
quicker than say, dedicated Flash development.

How can we make a realistic estimate given these complex variables?

At Cursim, Omniplexs content development division, when we estimate the
effort for creating a course for a client, we have a rather snazzy sizing tool
that produces estimates based on the parameters above. If you dont have an
expert system, you can find some clues in a useful survey provided by the
Chapman Alliance. They undertook a survey that featured nearly 250
organizations containing nearly 4000 learning professionals who create
content for nearly 20 million learners.
Dependant on some of the factors we described above, the Chapman
Alliance found that eLearning took between 50 to over 700 hours for every
hour of learning produced. The lower figures were for simple, minimally
interactive courses created with a rapid authoring system. The higher figures
were for more complex eLearning which might include advanced
simulations and games. Within the course, they categorized eLearning into
three main levels.

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Source Citation: Chapman, B. (2010). How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? [Research Study].
Published by Chapman Alliance LLC. www.chapmanalliance.com

Remember our earlier example that we gave to our community teams?

The 20 slide medium interactivity course with a 5 question quiz would equate
to potentially 20 minutes of eLearning. The research gives a mid-point for
medium interactivity courses of approximately 180 hours development for
every 1 hour of eLearning. Therefore, by their estimates, a 20 minute course
would take 60 hours of development. If you work a 40 hour week, thats about
a solid week and a half of your hard labor.
But how does that week and a half equate to elapsed time? Most
eLearning development is a collaborative process between varieties of
stakeholders. So chances are, you are unlikely to have the luxury of being able
to develop your course in one long uninterrupted stretch.

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Elapsed time
As weve said, our elapsed time is dependent
on actual time, but is going to be greater.
For us, the main additional factors that
contribute to elapsed time relate to people and
the organization. Stakeholders come in a
number of shapes and guises but the main ones
are SMEs (subject matter experts), Approvers
(the people who need to sign off each project
stage) and Testers (the people who test the
actual course). In our experience, the main
factors that impact the elapsed time are:
Actual time factors aspects like
readiness of material and complexity of the
material will impact the duration and number
of stakeholder engagements that you need.
The number of stakeholders the more
stakeholders there are, the slower it gets.
The location of stakeholders if you can
sidle up to someones desk to ask a question,
rather than having to schedule a conference
call, that makes progress quicker.
The availability of stakeholders most
stakeholders have day jobs, particularly
SMEs who may be in high demand. Their
availability to meet, schedule reviews and
provide input will play a large part in
determining your project cycle.

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Given all of this, how long will it take? Again, it is an it depends

answer. If you have stakeholders that are busy and take a week to turn
material around, then that is going to multiply out through each cycle of
refinement of the project. You also have to factor in the time it will take to
turn around their input say, 24 hours. If you have six cycles then you have
nearly seven weeks of review plus the actual development time.
Lets take our earlier simple course example. Well assume that we
have fully committed stakeholders who have agreed to turn around all
reviews in 48 hours and you can turn around their reviews in 24 hours
(this is probably a best case figure and in practice would extend). Lets
assume that we have:

Two review cycles

to produce the first

Three review cycles

to produce the

Two testing cycles

for the course

stage specification.

storyboard.

(alpha, beta then gold).

So with seven reviews of 3 days, each equaling 21 days for review

cycles, equals just over four working weeks. Plus our estimated actual
development time of a week and a half lets round it up and say the
course will take six weeks minimum elapsed time.

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

Therefore, we can proudly say that the answer to the original question
we posed to the community group is six weeks. Right?
Errr, probably not. In the real world, stakeholders are away on business
trips, on vacation and have other priorities. That target of 48 hour
turnaround will be tough to achieve unless you can nail them to a chair. The
real elapsed time will push out towards the ten to twelve week mark. Oh, and
dont forget to allow time to get it loaded and tested on your LMS.
To sum up, is there a 100% correct answer to How long does
eLearning take to develop? Probably not. All we can do is work out your
best estimate. However, if you consider all the different factors involved and
make some realistic assumptions, it will give you a fighting chance of
producing a sensible prediction.
And when you are asked, Can you create this 20 minute eLearning
course by the end of next week? youll know what to say

Graeme Youngs
Graeme is the Head of Learning with Omniplex

10

How Long Does eLearning Take to Develop?

For more information on Omniplex products

and services, visit our website:
www.omniplex.co

London

Boston

China

Fountain Court

The Abbey Building

1201A, Financial Street

2 Victoria Square

575 Boylston Street

Excel Centre 6

Victoria Street
St Albans

Second Floor West

Boston, MA 02116

Wudinghou Street
Xicheng District

Hertfordshire, AL1 3TF

(857) 413-5339

Beijing, 100032

08444 120 550

help@omniplex.co

(86) 138 1082 3535

help@omniplex.co

help@omniplex.co