Forum Discussion
Estimating timings on a course
Hi all,
I've been using Articulate 360 and Storyline for a while now. I have a query I have not managed to resolve. It is very helpful when sharing a course, if the trainee knows how long the course or sections of the course will take. Is there a quick way of establishing the duration of courses before publishing?
Anne
I estimate with Word count. Typically narrated text is 125 - 150 words per minute.
Reading speed is around 200.
25 Replies
I determine the duration of my e-learning courses by going through the course myself and timing it. I try to put myself in the perspective of an average user. Additionally, I ask colleagues or other individuals with varying levels of prior knowledge to test the course and record their time to provide the most realistic estimate possible.
Hi LolaHommen ,
the old-school way is probably the most realistic in the end, but also the most time-consuming overall. We sometimes have apprentices in the department who are always looking for things to do. I sometimes let them check the modules for typos, broken links, etc. Letting them time it could also work...
I completely agree! Going through the course is already part of the quality assurance process, and timing the e-learning module can be seamlessly integrated into the final check. This way, you kill two birds with one stone: you review the course for any last errors and get a realistic estimate of the learning duration – whether by yourself or with colleagues.
I have thought of another solution, at least to calculate how long the added audio threads in a storyline course are:
Open the .story file in a ZIP program to reveal the structure and follow the biggest folders (..\story\media). Here, you have all images, audios and videos (casically, the content of the medi libryary).
Extract the audios and videos into a separate temporary folder and add it to a playlist of a media player (I use VLC).
Bingo: The playlist adds up all times of every little snippet! I then add 50% of time for "faffing around" and use that time on my course page. I will see how well that works.
Careful: This does not work if you embed videos or audios from external locations! This should be considered for any way of time estimation...
I agree with you MarkNolker
I am actually not a supporter of specifying the length of a course because I believe it interferes with the learning experience. There are learners who get too stressed about not finishing everything on time and instead of focusing on the course, they focus on watching the time.
Scenarios, in particular, make it difficult to specify the length of a course, especially if they are branching. But unfortunately for tracking purposes in the LMS, the length is usually required.
When I am required to specify the time, I usually include a quick instruction/blurb to the learner that the times are approximate, and every person takes a different amount of time to complete the course.Hi TeddyParvanova- I agree - in parts.
On one hand, it can put pressure on the learner ("It said this takes 10 minutes, I am already on 20...").
On the other hand, it gives learners a way of estimating if the learning course / module fits into their planned / availble time slot. We have courses ranging from 5 minutes to several hours. I think it is important for learners to have an idea what they are taking on.
Also, in a corporate environment, I have been asked to run a report for a company section about how much time employees have spent in training (certain certifications require this kind of number, be it sensible or not).
The "real" time spent in training is difficult to get and also not very helpful since I have found that some people seem to leave the learning course open while doing other things (in a sales office, interruptions are the norm). This distorts that number massively. It still gives a good idea about how long people spend on a course, so after a while, it can be helpful to look at that figure and reset it to a more realistic value.
Really appreciate you adding to this conversation not just with the technical approach, but with some practical upsides/risks to consider. Thank you FelixFranke !
At Social Security, our content is all scenario based and thus the estimated time in Storyline is rather inaccurate. We use something called the Mergener Formula to estimate completion time. The formula uses word count, number of questions and difficulty (level 1 to 5) to calculate estimated completion time. We run it at 1 and 5 and give a window for our learners.
Wow MarkNolker this is an EXCELLENT addition.
Yeah. It's not great. One of my coworkers lets the training run while using a stopwatch. :)
Go to the publish settings and use the three dots at the end of the title field:
So the above link shares:
- Open your course in Articulate Storyline.
- In the Articulate Storyline ribbon, click on the Publish
- {not listed - Pick "Web" / "Publish to Web"}
- In the dialog box that appears, click on the ellipsis button to the right of your course title.
- Next to Duration you’ll see a drop-down menu with the default selection Calculate Automatically. To the right of this, you can see Articulate Storyline’s estimated duration of the course.
I think this only yields a pretty broad time. "About 4 minutes" is what I see on my current training.
Thank you NaomiCM but similar to doing the same with "publish for LMS" (as suggested before), it tells me "over 30 minutes".
How much longer? 31 minutes? 2 days?
Hi HVfb0f498d-053b,
thank you, but for my current course, that only tells me "more than 15 minutes".
But how much more? It seems to work for shorter courses but not for this one...
If it is a narrated Storyline course, I know someone who has developed a small software program that will give you a timed outline of the entire course based on each slide using the timeline and the layers. But if is just text, the reading estimate works.
That's super cool! Do you have a link?
I don't want to market anything here but here is a video of the tool. See if you find it useful. It has a number of features, one of which is creating a table of contents with timings. I have used it for a lot. Pretty handy tool and he keeps updating it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAxAvh1r2g4
Thank you Lara, this is very helpful.
I estimate with Word count. Typically narrated text is 125 - 150 words per minute.
Reading speed is around 200.
Love this suggestion!
Love this post as we struggle with this at my organization as well. LaraMcK - is there an easy way to get word count from the Articulate products? We use Rise for all of our eLearning and do the majority of development (except for scripted demonstrations) in Rise. Coming up with a word count seems to be cumbersome, but maybe I'm missing something?
