How long does it take to produce one hour of online content. Bryan Chapman has come up with some ratios which make interesting reading and Clark Aldrich takes this one step further. For everyone who thinks uploading their 50 minute lecture notes creates an online learning resource this may be a shock. As a general guideline it will always take longer than you anticipated and generally cost more than you budgeted for. But there’s no direct trade off between the amount of time/cost and the value of the result. In terms of teaching and learning sometimes it is the simplest idea which is the most effective. Those which cost the most in both time and expense may lay unvisited or unclicked.
Online learning is less about content and more about what students do. Reading text online rarely stimulates. The key to online learning is interaction. One answer is the deveopment of reusable learning objects; especialy those you can customise with a minimum of technical skills. I’m currently involved in a project to produce templates for customisable inter-activities. Watch this space…