Assumptions

We had to make a few assumptions for this model:

- Development effort expressed as a ratio = number of days development per day of training produced. In both cases we took the worst situation, e.g the assumption that the courses are delivered once. Usually, it is not the case, they can be reused. Make sure you include here all development efforts. If you use subcontractors, express their costs in terms of "instructor days" to simplify.

- One comment about the development ratio for the e-Learning column. A rule of thumb is around 20 days per day for a simple but high quality course (including pedagogic concepts, design, production, tests). The more you add interactivity, sophisticated navigation, rich multimedia content, data bases,... the more this ratio will grow. So you could reach as much as 200 to one for a highly sophisticated piece of work.

- The model shows a "make" situation. There are other situations, where you buy existing titles.

- We identified key resources usage, such as the classroom renting, accomodation and travel in the case of traditional training, and share of computer/network/platform usage in the case of E-Learning, although very often the students use the e-mail network and computers.

- If in your particular case, you feel that a mixed situation should happen (such as traditional classes during an e-Learning curriculum), just substract the equivalent to the left column, to balance correctly.

- As far as the course days number is concerned, there is now ample evidence that one needs less e-Learning hours than hours in a class. Assume at least 20 % savings. This measures the effectiveness of the e-Learning approach: less time, better retention ratio, more practice.

- We added admin costs in both cases. It should cover enrollment, student admin, etc... (feel free to add here any overhead you may think of).