Cost of developing 1 hour of elearning

I wanted just to continue and add to this discussion, I been discussing this  issue for a while that comes with pricing 1 hour of e-Learning.

In some cases 1 hour e-Learning is counted by the amount of screens, but that is not sufficient enough because some screens can be more complicated vs others.

We developed a tool which looks at 3 components:

Multimedia Complexity (how complex is the interactive media/content in your e-Learning course)

Level of Interactivity (interactivity level, how much does the user interact with the content/media)

Multimedia and Interactivity Percentage (if you have an entire course how much of it is plain text and images and how much of it is interactive)

The second set of questions, is how well is the content structured and documented, is it in the SME's head only etc.

Another question we ask is how complex is the subject and if assessments are prepared. Lastly we have to look at things like is this course independent learning is it instructor led, does it need to be compatible with mobile phones, is it rapid, is it blended etc.

When it comes to revisions, I think any developer has to set the amount of revisions allowed or have a revision policy when starting development, anything outside of the revision policy set should cost extra:

Example outside of a revision policy might be: Developer, spends hours to develop and interactive media piece. Client decided to change the storyboard and go with a different concept in which nothing can be re-used from the previous interactive media piece. (should be specified in your revision policy that major changes like this may cost more)

I would invite you to try to the tool and let me know your thoughts, the tool has tool tips that explains lots of things in detail and it tries to give a close approximation for developing online courses.

Tool can be found at:

www.scholarixsolution.com/pricing

I'm going to stick with the ''It depends...' answer but thanks for offering the tool.

There are a lot of answers here from a lot of different viewpoints, and it's fun to see how this can be approached from so many different angles. 

The only thing I want to add, is that "It depends" is probably a good place to START with a client, until you can get a real initial meeting to be able to suss out needs and expectations. Pre-qualification of your client's needs and expectations will probably be the greatest determining factor to being able to answer the question of rates.  You have to find out not just what they need, but also what they are imagining in their head to get any kind of good idea of where pricing should be. this is why a qualifying  meetings should take longer but, will probably save you headache later on from expectations not being realistic. 

The only other point I would bring up, which I saw once on here but I felt needed reiteration is this: Pre-qualify their budget. Dont be afraid to ask what they are budgeting for a project. This line of questioning can be the best determining factor for you to be able to price according to their expectations. If you can find this information out early, then you can save yourself a lot of time even in the pre-qualification stage, and lead your client down the path that will get them to a realistic goal. 

Agree with Rob about asking the budget.  saves a lot of wasted time.

This has been a helpful thread. I started freelancing as an instructional and graphic designer after 15 years in the corporate world... but I started as a copyeditor, so over the years it's been expected of me that I'll "do it all," from project management to instructional design to storyboarding to editing to programming to deployment to you-name-it... good in some ways, not so good in others. There are reasons why we have more than one head on any given project! So as I struggle to price my jobs as a freelancer, it's been challenging for me to separate one role to the next, and price for what I'm actually doing without shorting myself when I think, "Oh, I can find or create the images on top of ID, it's no big deal." Well it IS a big deal!

Part of me wishes this thread was open to the people who hire us...  they're often the people who need to know what this kind of work entails, why we charge what we do, and how we decide what should cost what.

Enough ranting. Thanks to all who've posted above with the pricing calculators and info... it sure helps validate the thought process I go through when pricing new projects.

Chuck DuSablon

@Bruce,

I'll agree that understanding business (finance and accounting) helps.

This helped allot guys. Thanks for the estimator post.

I'm I S.A, what would you say the average hourly rate L1 would charge

I've looked at design, content, assessment as my main criteria.

Waiting for a reply

This was created in excel 2010. I just saved it in .xls format to work with prior versions and attached it here. Hopefully this resolves the issue for you.

This is a really great posting.  I need to tweak it and would love some help.  I am the content expert who will write the content, any dialogue for video & audio and will design any interactive activities.  I looked at the costing and pulled out Graphic, Video & Audio production.  Is it reasonable to leave the other categories?  THANKS

Hi all,

I have read over the conversations regarding what to charge for developing a 1 hour session and wanted to know if there is a current rate per hour for a standard session?

I'm from Australia developing under a contract and need to quote.

Thanks.