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
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Revised July 11, 1999

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