Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources
For a novice instructional designer, preparing budget analysis and timelines for projects may be overwhelming tasks. Where do you begin, how do know how long or how much it will cost?
The good news is, there is help available. I have am highlighting two websites that have helpful resources for planning and budgeting instructional design projects. I hope you find them as helpful as I did.
1) The E-Learning Coach: Five Resources for Estimating Development Time
This site has a collection of resources that will help you estimate time and budgets. It covers estimating time for one hour of training, estimating time for developing e-learning, etc. This site also has a link to another site that I found that addresses budget planning.
2) Templates for Instructional Design
This site has the following templates: -note: the training estimator will allow you to estimate the cost of developing a learning experience.
- Analysis Templates
- Course Evaluation
- Training Estimator
- Lesson Plan Template
- Presentation Template
- Using PowerPoint
- ISD Sandwich
- ISD Guidelines
- Learning Objectives
- Using the Templates
ENJOY!!!
Posted on July 27, 2016, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Instructional Wall 
Natasha,
Great post! You included some great links that will be useful throughout our educational journey. They include a plethora of resources that will be powerful in our research and projects, as well.
Thanks for sharing! Marla
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Nice job with your post, Natasha. The E-Learning Coach gives an excellent little list of resources and I saw the value of learning to estimate time based on an hour long training project so that you have a concrete example which you can then modify based on whether your project is larger or smaller than the 1 hour example. This is could be use to assist in top-down style budgeting because in situations where there are many unknown variables making it difficult to provide an accurate top-up estimate the bottom down approach can give a good ball-park-figure kind of answers based on similar situations from the past.
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Natasha,
Great resources. They are particularly useful for someone like me, who is limited in PM experience. E-learning Coach gives a nice overview of the components to consider when creating a project schedule and allocation resources. I also like that there are various links to other resources, such as multimedia tools. Templates for Instruction is also a great time saving resource. It is nice to have a starting template that can be adjusted to suit specific project needs!
Thanks for sharing!
~Chiaki
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Hello,
I REALLY like the training estimator (I actually sent that one to my work email). Great resources!
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Natasha-
I love your second resource! Mainly for the cost estimator. To me, that is still one of the most challenging parts of project management. How do you know how much everything will cost? I always feel like I am missing something, which could hurt a budget. Like Dr. Stolovitch stated, I attempt to under promise and over deliver (Laureate Education, n.d.). I will be using the templates to help with future projects.
Reference
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (n.d.). Creating a resource allocation plan [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
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