How to Estimate Instructional Designer Capacity for Online Course Development and (Mostly) Get it Right

Concurrent Session 1

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

If you've ever been asked how long an online course will take to develop or how many course projects an instructional designer can handle and "went with your gut" to answer, this presentation is for you. While our intuition is actually pretty great at guessing capacity for course projects, there is a better way.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Lynn Wahl, UNC Charlotte

Lynn Wahl is an Instructional Designer in the Center for Teaching and Learning. She partners with faculty in the redesign or development of blended and online courses. Lynn is passionate about leveraging technology and QM design standards to create innovative and successful student learning experiences. Lynn received her M.Ed in Instructional Technology from Idaho State University and her M.A. in English Literature from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Extended Abstract

It is scientifically proven that humans are terrible at estimating the time required to complete a task. As a species, we continually disregard how long it's taken us to complete tasks in the past and what complications may arise...and we consistently believe that things will be better next time (Kahneman, 2011). 

In a course development process, it is vital to understand the constraints and details that impact how quickly a course can be developed, how open the subject matter expert (SME) is to change, and what sort of factors require additional staffing such as accessibility and media development. Answers to these questions are vital to ensuring appropriate staffing of course development teams, accurate time estimates to completion for stakeholders, and clear communication with faculty SMEs around expectations. 

One common practice when attempting to answer these questions is to refer to the research on how long an hour of eLearning or online, interactive training takes to develop. However, as instructional designers know, building an online course in a Learning Management System is not the same as building an interactive eLearning activity. 

There is little information available about realistic estimates for online course development that take into account common constraints. The result is that every instructional designer (ID) provides their own best guess at capacity and load for projects, relying on their own competencies, working speed, and intuition. While intuition from experienced IDs is mostly correct, intuition only works as an estimation tool when project situations fall within the realm of an ID's experience. This leads to inaccurate time estimations for course projects with unique elements IDs have not yet encountered.

Some of the questions that are asked about course development projects are: 

  • How much ID time will a course project take? 

  • How much faculty SME time will be required? 

  • Will a course development project be "difficult" or "easy" and what does that mean?

  • How much time will accessibility take? 

 Using the answers to these questions, we can begin to answer: 

  • How to balance course assignments across a team of IDs 

  • How to balance course assignments across cohorts/semesters

  • How to account for IDs' individual working styles 

This presentation will include a walkthrough of a process for answering these questions and findings used within an actual online course development process with a team of 5 instructional designers over 3 cohorts and 50 course projects. The presentation will include an explanation of a rubric for "scoring" courses and how to compare the scores to time-tracking results to calibrate information needed prior to course development in order to answer questions about time, load, and capacity. 

By the end of the presentation, attendees will be able to:

  • Explain the role of an instructional designer's intuition in an online course development project management process

  • Identify biases, blind spots, and surprising findings in regards to questions about capacity and course load

  • Use a rubric to score course development projects for "easiness" or "difficulty"” in regards to time expectations

  • Identify next steps to implement a capacity tracking project at their own institution

This presentation will include numerous interactive games using polling software and collaborative documents to help demonstrate how difficult it is to overcome intuitive thinking, even when we know that intuitive thinking leads to inaccurate decision making. The audience will also be asked to share their own experiences around time management in instructional design course development projects after small group work with question prompts.

Attendees will receive a copy of the presentation, a course scoring rubric, and the step-by-step process to start to answer the questions around estimating course development time at their own institutions.

 

References: 

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.