Marcia Moves

eLearning vs ILT stats?

I received a call this afternoon from two strangers who found my name and number on the web, who were looking for some fast stats to use in a presentation for their department about the cost of elearning development as compared to instructor led training.

Caller ID said they were Florida based, and they refered to their department as the “Impact Learning Group.” They were asking about corporate education rather than higher ed, votech or govt.

After I asked if they had a twitter account (they did not), I offered to ask my twitter peeps the question and send them a quick reply tonight.

Within 5 minutes I received a slew of replies. Not one to pass up an opportunity to share what I learned, here are the results of my very unscientific poll. I welcome your additions.

@kkapp Try this link for hours difference of elearn vs ILT http://www.astd.org/LC/2009/0809_kapp.htm

@chambo_online $ for upkeep of tech offset by no physical overhead with online. Also the more it’s taught, the cheaper it becomes

@mrch0mp3rs We’re 50/50. I don’t find the 4x number that much at odd if you consider cost of upkeep.

[4x referring to a followup post guessing elearning probably costs 4x more to create]

@PrimaryEdTech if the hardw is in & teachers need 0 traing our costs=75% less than instructor led. That’s different for every context/case…

@fluffy_clouds However, key is that instructor-led is probably half the cost but no re-use, lasting resource so soon gets much more expensive 

@ColoradoFoothil This is the closest I can come to: $400 per course for online; Double a teacher’s salary for what is made in a year.

@DR1665 I think we run about a 4:1 ratio here. eLearning:classroom. Adobe connects running in next office all day, actually.

@ColoradoFoothil At ACC in Colo where I go it is about 65% to 35% - for credited courses. [Clarified with follow up that 65% is elearning, 35% instructor led.]

@JoeWehr 6 -16 X - ILT: 40 hrs for 1 day of content; eLearning: 80 - 160 hrs for 1 hr of content; 3 - 4 hrs of eLearning = 1 day of ILT

I also pointed them to Training Magazine’s annual report. (Summarized here by Karl Kapp. Karl offers some additional stats.) Don Clark also keeps a running list of various stats.