Development Time, Costs and Instructional Design of a Web Course

Developed by Judith V. Boettcher, Ph.D.

Development Time for Faculty for Distance Learning Courses (or Web Courses)

  Lecture Hours to be redesigned Synchronous Location-based Hours Hours already designed for Independent Work Total "Hours" in Course Dev Hrs for each lecture hour by Faculty** Total Dev Hours (Lecture hrs multiplied by 18 hours) No. of Faculty days Average Salary Rate /day Cost
Web Course:100% available on the Web 45 0 90 135 18 810 101 $250 $25,313
Web Centric Course (50% on web) 23 22 90 135 18 414 52 $250 $12,938
Web-Enhanced Campus course (25% on web) 11 34 90 135 18 198 25 $250 $6,188
"Standard" campus Course 0 45 90 135 0 0 0 $250  

** This number can vary widely. From 5 to 23 hours of development for every lecture hour. We have used 18 as an average.
Note 1: Release time from one course = 180 hours or 22.5 days. Thus this will provide partial support for "shifting" or moving instruction to a web environment. Some of this work can be done over time as well.
Note 2: Summer equals full time for 6 weeks = 240 hours or 30 days.
Note 3: If a course has been redesigned to be 100% on the web, the assumption is that the someone other than the primary developing faculty member delivers the course.


Development Time in Days for Web-Based Course Development with Teams

  Course Manager Faculty Member Inst Design Graphic Design Tech Sup & Dev Content Researcher Editing Production Total Days Total Hours
Web Course:100% available on the Web 45 101 54 45 68 45 27 18 403 3220
Web Centric Course (50% on web) 18 52 18 23 28 23 0 0 162 1297
Web-Enhanced Campus course (25% on web) 0 25 6 0 9 6 0 0 45 358

Note 1: These models assume heavy reliance on WWW and minimal new multimedia development.
Note 2: One-half time graduate student for one semester = 320 hours or 40 days
Note 3: One-half time graduate student for one year = 640 hours or 80 days. Half time summer is 240 hours or 30 days.


Instructional Design Models for Web-based Instruction

  Web Course: 100% on the Web Web Centric Course (67% on web) Web-Supported Campus Course (33% on web) Web-Enhanced Campus course (15% on web)
World Wide Web "Meetings" 15 13 10 0
Real-Time Group Interaction (Lecture) 0 15 30 45
Real-Time Small Grp Interaction (Projects and Study) 40 35 35 35
One-on-one (Sync or Async) 20 15 10 5
Focused Study of Fixed Content (Adopted material) 35 35 35 40
Study/interaction of Dynamic Content 25 22 15 10
Total Hours 135 135 135 135

Note: 135 hours is derived from 45 hours of lecture plus 90 hours of outside work

Download these tables as a Microsoft Excel Worksheet
Copyright 1998, 1999 Judith V. Boettcher
https://www.cren.net/~jboettch/time.htm
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Designed and coded by Diane Boettcher boettch@csi.com
Revised July 11, 1999

jboettch@cren.net