Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources For Instructional Design Projects

Today’s blog assignment is to search for resources that would be useful in estimating the cost of instructional design projects. I began my search using Google Scholar with keywords like “Costing Instruction.” I found a number of useful resources that discussed the convergence of project management principles with instruction design principles, but nothing that directly discussed cost estimates. I broadened my search to include all web sites, but that search did not provide any useful resources either. Finally I searched specifically for the title of my blog assignment, “Estimating costs and allocating resources.” I got a couple of useful hits:

Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources In Instructional Design
December 2nd, 2010
http://www.ablsc.com/distance-education/estimating-costs-and-allocating-resources-in-instructional-design/

This link could easily be another student’s post from a previous session of the same class I am taking. The author discusses two links providing useful information about costing instructional design projects. The first link is a paper describing a step-by-step process to cost development of an instructional web site. The second is a report describing a similar process to cost a software development project.

How to Estimate Training Time and Costs
Posted on May 18, 2010 by Jenise
http://ridgeviewmedia.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-estimate-trainingtime-and-costs/

This link is also a review of other websites that discuss costing of instructional design projects. Its resources include a paper published by the ASTD on the cost of developing one hour of instruction. The next resource is a forum discussion on the time required to develop a course. The last article discusses how to track project hours. 

Then I tried searching the title of the last blog I found, “How to estimate training time and costs.” I found additional useful hits:

Simple Process To Estimate Times and Costs In A Web Project
by Antonio Lupetti
http://woork.blogspot.com/2009/02/simple-process-to-estimate-time-and.html

This link is a nicely illustrated guide to estimating the cost of a web project (not necessarily an instructional design project).

Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

The last resource may be the most comprehensive resource I found, and it is geared specifically to instructional design projects. It discusses budgets, development costs, and development hours, with a focus on the resources required to develop one hour of training.