If you have all of the material you need and you are familiar with Rise, how long do you think it would take you to build a 30-minute course (roughly 30 minutes)?
To some extent we are talking about "How long is a piece of string?", as it all depends on what depth you want to go into for your course. I have attached a copy of a presentation that talks about development time and costs for various levels of E-learning, but have included the most pertinent slide below:
Based on these ratios, you are talking anywhere between 40 hours and 90 hours to produce half an hour's worth of training at Level 1 or Level 2 (more detail of levels is provided in the attached file) and obviously significantly more if you go for a high-end Level 3 course.
It can often take longer than you think, but hopefully this will provide some guidance. I expect you will also get advice from others as well, so have a good read of all the information and if you still have any queries, just get back with another post.
Ned is correct that it is really difficult to provide a blanket time estimate.
Firstly, is the text/content written/approved and have the features of Rise been considered up front or will this be the job of the devloper? If the developer will be structuring the content on the fly this adds time.
The time it will take to develop your course will also depend on the type of content, i.e. is it just text and images, does it have any branching, is there data to be input in to charts/tables etc.
Another consideration is how well the materials have been prepared, e.g. do the graphics need to be tweaked to maximise quality.
Don't forget to add time for review and testing.
Not necessarily the answer you asked for but not all courses are the same. For accuracy, the best thing you can do is show a developer your script and have them estimate the time.
This really depends on the quality of the materials at hand and how much instructional design work is involved.
Build time I would not expect a 30 minute Rise course to take longer that 1-2 days work to build. However graphical work, videos and any bespoke Storyline interactions.
I do find 40-90 hours for Rise to be a lot higher than I would ever quote, I presume this takes into account preparing the materials. I would from a development point pdf view count Rise as Level 1 content and even then this is very high.
It is so hard to gauge. I personally find Rise courses to be really (and refreshingly) quick. Most of our content is 10-15 minutes in length, and I can create those in an hour or two if I have the content lined up and ready to go. However, if the content needs more work, e.g. it needs audio, visuals, or complex interactions, it could take a few work days.
It might be worth your while creating a sample piece with your typical content and seeing how long it takes you, and what your most time-consuming stages are. I find my stakeholders love to see how it could look and are much more confident in it as a solution once they have a sample of your work.
My two cents: There is the logical, hypothetical nirvana reality where "If you have all of the material you need and you are familiar with Rise..." actually means that, and then there's reality where:
Content is never finalized
Reviewers appear after the course is published
Content changes for reasons outside our hands (i.e., changes in law, regulations, the industry, format, etc.)
Content now has to be expanded to include ___________ (insert your favorite here, such as "more diversity", "younger generation", "other departments", "less budget", "levels of literacy", etc.)
Not that I want to be pessimistic, but it's always a good practice to work on projects based on the premise that one or more of those things are going to happen.
Now, thinking purely in design, the first thing that I inquire is "30 minutes of what?" 30 minutes of duration of the timeline? 30 minutes of the average learning experience? 30 minutes of delivery? And counting from when to when? Those affect the design time of the course.
Then, what is the existing format of the content? If all is one 20 minute video with a few quiz questions, that will take a lot less than having to copy and paste from documents, or applying instructional design to content that needs curation. The content format impacts the design time.
The what does "all content" mean? Will you have to search for, and edit additional illustrations to add some visual communication, or has that been done?
Please keep in mind that we are to create learning experiences, we apply design principles, user interface design, visual communication and graphic design. Having content available doesn't necessarily means having content ready for delivery.
7 Replies
Hi Tonya,
To some extent we are talking about "How long is a piece of string?", as it all depends on what depth you want to go into for your course. I have attached a copy of a presentation that talks about development time and costs for various levels of E-learning, but have included the most pertinent slide below:
Based on these ratios, you are talking anywhere between 40 hours and 90 hours to produce half an hour's worth of training at Level 1 or Level 2 (more detail of levels is provided in the attached file) and obviously significantly more if you go for a high-end Level 3 course.
It can often take longer than you think, but hopefully this will provide some guidance. I expect you will also get advice from others as well, so have a good read of all the information and if you still have any queries, just get back with another post.
Ned is correct that it is really difficult to provide a blanket time estimate.
Not necessarily the answer you asked for but not all courses are the same. For accuracy, the best thing you can do is show a developer your script and have them estimate the time.
This really depends on the quality of the materials at hand and how much instructional design work is involved.
Build time I would not expect a 30 minute Rise course to take longer that 1-2 days work to build. However graphical work, videos and any bespoke Storyline interactions.
I do find 40-90 hours for Rise to be a lot higher than I would ever quote, I presume this takes into account preparing the materials. I would from a development point pdf view count Rise as Level 1 content and even then this is very high.
Thank you guys! I'm being asked by a Leader and all of this will help her determine a dev/del ratio.
Thanks again!
It is so hard to gauge. I personally find Rise courses to be really (and refreshingly) quick. Most of our content is 10-15 minutes in length, and I can create those in an hour or two if I have the content lined up and ready to go. However, if the content needs more work, e.g. it needs audio, visuals, or complex interactions, it could take a few work days.
It might be worth your while creating a sample piece with your typical content and seeing how long it takes you, and what your most time-consuming stages are. I find my stakeholders love to see how it could look and are much more confident in it as a solution once they have a sample of your work.
My two cents: There is the logical, hypothetical nirvana reality where "If you have all of the material you need and you are familiar with Rise..." actually means that, and then there's reality where:
Not that I want to be pessimistic, but it's always a good practice to work on projects based on the premise that one or more of those things are going to happen.
Now, thinking purely in design, the first thing that I inquire is "30 minutes of what?" 30 minutes of duration of the timeline? 30 minutes of the average learning experience? 30 minutes of delivery? And counting from when to when? Those affect the design time of the course.
Then, what is the existing format of the content? If all is one 20 minute video with a few quiz questions, that will take a lot less than having to copy and paste from documents, or applying instructional design to content that needs curation. The content format impacts the design time.
The what does "all content" mean? Will you have to search for, and edit additional illustrations to add some visual communication, or has that been done?
Please keep in mind that we are to create learning experiences, we apply design principles, user interface design, visual communication and graphic design. Having content available doesn't necessarily means having content ready for delivery.
Completely agree with everything Ulises has said here, very detailed.
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