How much does eLearning cost?

With so many options available, the cost of eLearning can vary drastically. Seeing the price of a course range from a few hundred dollars to up to a few thousand dollars can leave clients perplexed and unsure of what exactly they need.

To make sure this doesn’t happen, we’ve developed the 3C Framework – a fully transparent approach to the development of eLearning solutions that gives clients complete creative, process, and financial control during all stages of the development process. Seeing how important financial control is in each and every stage, we’ve built a tool that can help our clients get an accurate price estimate at the very beginning of a project – the eLearning calculator.

How does it work?

To calculate the cost of your project, you’ll be following a simple formula depending on the type of raw material you have. Since the two most common types of raw material are PPT slides and Word/PDF text pages, we’ve developed custom calculators for each one of them. For other kinds of raw materials which are less common, we have a similar calculation method.

If your raw material is in PPT slides form, follow this formula:
Number of Slides + 30% x number of hours required for the development of a screen x agency’s hourly fee = Course price
The first thing you’ll need to do is to put the number of the raw material slides you have into the calculator. An extra 30% will be added to that number to allow the potential of creating screens that are needed to accommodate text-heavy content, branching scenarios, as well as intros and outros. This number will then be multiplied by the number of hours required to develop a screen (this number varies depending on the chosen level of interactivity). And finally, to get a price estimate, we’ll multiply this number by the agency’s hourly fee.
If your raw material is in Word/PDF text pages form, follow this formula:
(Number of Pages* x 3) x number of hours required for the development of a screen x agency’s hourly fee = Course price
The first thing you’ll need to do is to put the number of the raw material pages you have into the calculator. The number of pages is then multiplied by three because we assume that we need to develop 3 screens/scenes/slides in Storyboard & Authoring tool(s) to transfer 1 page written in Word document. This number will then be multiplied by the number of hours required to develop a screen (this number varies depending on the chosen level of interactivity). And finally, to get a price estimate, we’ll multiply this number by the agency’s hourly fee.

Interactivity levels

As it was formerly mentioned, the price of the course will not only depend on the amount of raw material, but also on the level of interactivity and multimedia complexity. Each of the levels offers different features which are suited for different learning needs.
This interactivity level allows our clients to transform their raw materials into digital form, but with almost no interactivity at all. Courses with this level of interactivity are basic click-next courses that require low user engagement. The estimated time for the development of these types of courses is 40 minutes per screen/scene.
Learning architecture isn’t required for this level of interactivity, while 40 minutes will be needed for the instructional design.
By choosing the beginner interactivity level, you will get a basic instructional design that is similar to elementary PPT presentations. This means that no triggers, content, or visuals will appear on screen at the same time. This level of interactivity will require higher user engagement. The development of courses that feature beginner interactivity will be based exclusively on the received raw material which means that the existing visuals and content will be reused for the creation of the course, and no additional custom elements will be developed.
The estimated time for the development of these types of courses is one and a half hours per screen/scene. Thirty minutes will be needed for learning architecture and an hour for instructional design. Additional voice-over can also be added, but the price of it is normally costed out separately.

When an enhanced level of interactivity is chosen, learning architects will transform potentially dry raw material into engaging storyboards using storytelling. Additional elements like avatars, videos, or custom animations can be created to support the storytelling.

Optional branching scenarios that provide learners with two or more learning paths allowing them to learn by choosing their preferred path are also available for this level of interactivity. Courses with an enhanced level of interactivity will look modern and stylish and will include both transition and navigation animation to keep the learners focused.

The estimated time for the development of these types of courses is two and a half hours per screen/scene. One hour will be needed for learning architecture and one and a half hours for instructional design. Additional voice-over can also be added, but the price of it is normally costed out separately.

With the ultimate level of interactivity, your courses can include all the previously mentioned features as well as advanced VO (for example male+female VO together), subtitles, usage of VR 360 technology, gamification elements, and custom calculators.

The estimated time for the development of these types of courses is three and a half hours per screen/scene. One hour will be needed for learning architecture and two hours for instructional design. Additional voice-over can also be added, but the price of it is normally costed out separately.

Advantages of the Enhanced and Ultimate levels

We’ve mentioned several features that you’ll be able to incorporate into your courses if you choose the Enhanced or the Ultimate level of interactivity such as animations, triggers, voice-over, branching, storytelling, and gamification. We’d like to guide you through them and show you what advantages they bring to your courses.