Forum Discussion
Determining the Length of a course
I am currently storyboarding a course for a client. The contract states that they will receive up to 30 minutes of instruction. Based on what I have so far, it seems like it will be much longer. How does everyone estimate the duration of a given course based on the SB alone? Are their tools you use? Or word count tables that offer this info?
Sindy,
Here is an article you might find helpful here:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/how-to-calculate-the-seat-time-for-your-e-learning-course
Some people use word counts from the storyboard and calculate the time based on the average narration speed (e.g., ~150 words per minute). Others use slide counts.
From my experience, those are somewhat arbitrary. Nicole Legault has an excellent article here that explains why things are not always what they seem:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/how-to-calculate-the-seat-time-for-your-e-learning-course
My best estimates come from reviewing courses I've created in the past and comparing the final draft storyboards. In some situations, I've found the need to move content to "additional resources" when seat time was getting close to the 30-minute mark.
I hope this helps!
Hi Sindy,
Estimating course time is a real challenge since, as Richard mentioned, estimates can still be a bit arbitrary. Here are a few techniques I find helpful for getting at least a rough number.
If you already have the content written, you can estimate how long it would take to read it out loud with this website. Many people can read faster in their head than they can read out loud, so you might want to use the fast reading speed if the content will be in text form instead of narration. And if you have any interactions, you'll then need to add time to complete those to your total.
If you don't have the content entirely written, I often list out the main topics/takeaways I need to cover. Then I break down what sub-topics I need to cover and rough out an approximate time for each one. I find these smaller components a lot easier to come up with a rough time estimate for!
If you don't have a time limit, estimate how long it would take to cover each sub-topic well. If there's a time limit (like your project has), you can take your allotted time and decide how to spread it across all your subtopics effectively. When I have a time limitation, I find this helps me figure out fast if I've got more content than I have time for. Plus, you can always use that time breakdown to guide hard conversations with clients/SMEs about what might need to be cut.
