Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

This week we are learning about putting together budgets and allocating resources. Here are some sources that I found that may be helpful in this task:
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1. Big Dog's & Little Dog's Performance Juxtaposition 

• This website has many different Instructional Design resources available. What is great about it in terms of budgeting is that they outline cost estimates for instructional designers. They go through instructional design costs by hours and how different projects can be broken down into hours--which will help with cost estimates to the new instructional designer. They also offer analysis templates. 

• The most helpful thing about this website would be the breakdown of hours needed to complete different designs such as asynchronous and synchronous courses (simple, average, and complex). I would definitely look at these in the future to help budget my time and give estimates to prospective clients who hire me as an instructional designer for their project. Below is the breakdown of hours: 

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2. eLearning Industry 

•   This website takes one through the 5 important factors for estimating to consider when designing an eLearning course. Pappas (the author) goes through and tells the readers different information without any exacts; however, the links provided in the article are quite helpful. 
• I will be going back to check out the different resources on this blog. One reason I will be back to this website time and again is due the following resources provided:  

6 Resources for Estimating eLearning Course Development Time

• Five Resources for Estimating Development Time

• Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design (this is the same resource discussed above!)

• Estimating course development times

• Time to develop one hour of training

• E-learning Development Time

• Evaluation of the Time Needed for e-Learning Course Developing (PDF)

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There are many sources on the web that can help potential Instructional Designers when it comes time to estimate costs and time used on projects. These are only two such examples, but just do a google search and one can find many different sources. Do not believe you are above the help instead embrace the help and look at all the resources available. That's my plan at least.