Costs of e-learning in HE - and the benefits

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• Costs of e-learning in HE - and the benefits

Professor Paul Bacsich Sheffield Hallam
University, UK
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Methodological foundation

• Suitably interpreted and broadened, and
  leavened with pedagogy,the rather dry methods of
  business costing and planning can provide a
  sound basis for analysing e-learning
  developments and their impact.

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Summary

• CNL Phase 1 JISC JCALT
• CNL Phase 2 JISC JCALT
• Effectiveness impact of other work including
  analysis of the training sector EU Telelearn
  etc and the NLN Evaluation work FEDA
• Some impact from related work including RCIT (CNL
  methods applied to admin IT systems) JCALT and
  soon perhaps from Managing Change (formerly
  TLTR) on change management in HEIs JCIEL

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Main issues

• What learners want - must be first!
• Costs
• Effectiveness

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What learners want...

• From our own work on learners (CNL)
• students believe that e-learning increases costs
  to them
• but they behave as though it saves costs
• and saves time!

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What learners want

• From our own work on learners (CNL)
• students believe that e-learning increases costs
  to them
• but they behave as though it saves costs
• and saves time!
• From other work (including USA)
• they want flexibility (but not too much)
• some want overclocking (ie faster throughput)

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Hidden Costs - examples

• Increased home telephone call bills for students
  due to Internet usage
• Entertainment expenses incurred by lecturers but
  not reimbursed by the HEI
• The usage of teaching or research budgets to
  bolster IT budgets - or vice versa

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CNL1
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Conclusions - CNL1

• In order to accurately record the Costs of
  Networked Learning you must have a universally
  accepted method of what costs to record and how.
• Much of the literature formed interesting
  background reading but failed to travel far
  enough towards operational conclusions to be
  taken (individually) as a basis.
• The method must include a lifecycle model,
  stakeholders, activity based costing and a
  cost-aware approach to planning.

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Course Lifecycle Model
Three-phase model of course development

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Breakdown of three-phase model
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The main Stakeholders

• The HEI
• and the staff of that HEI
• The learners

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Stakeholders - two more special cases

• The HEI
• and the staff of that HEI
• The learners
• and their organisationand in some cases their
  parents/partners

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The Financial Schema- cf Transparency Review

• The traditional financial model underpinning work
  in most HEIs is defective in four ways

No Stakeholders
No agreed set of activities
Crude Overhead Allocation
No time recording
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Planning Document and Financial Schema

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Activity-Based Costing
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Activity-based costing (ABC)

• ABC was developed as an alternative costing
  methodology by Robin Cooper and Robert Kaplan of
  the Harvard Business School (1988) in their
  research into product costing in the
  manufacturing industry.

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Cooper and Kaplan (1988)

• They argued that traditional costing distorted
  product costs (peanut butter spread approach)
• There is a cost to all activities carried out
  within an organisation
• Activity costs should be distributed to products
  in relation to their use

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ACTIVITY DRIVERS
Activities
method
Hold Tutorials
Staff time
Resources
Cost for each Customer/product/channel group
Business Intelligence
FT
Cost driver
I.T. Management
FT
No. Students
I.T. Management
DL
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Definitions
A series of activities required to achieve an
outcome
Process
Invoicing Process
A series of related tasks carried out repeatedly
Chase a student for late payment
Activity
Telephone student
One action by one person at one point in time
Task
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Advantages of ABC

• Gives more than just financial information
• Fairer system of overhead allocation
• Accountability of central services
• Highlights cross-subsidisation
• Recognises the changing cost behaviour of
  different activities as they grow and mature
• Can provide data for other initiatives

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Disadvantages of ABC

• Data collection is costly and time consuming
• Initially it can be difficult to collect the data
  you want
• Determining appropriate cost drivers
• More complex system

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Implementing ABC takes time

• Its important in a service organisation to get
  started with ABM and not worry about total
  accuracy from the start. Accuracy will improve
  with time
• Antos (1992)

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CNL2

• This was a trial of ABC in one faculty of
  Sheffield Hallam University, using
  industrial-strength ABC software and consultancy
  (Armstrong-Laing)
• The trial was funded by JISC JCALT
• The report of the trial (plus workbook) will be
  available in August 2001
• The full set of costs are not reported!

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Tiptoeing into effectiveness issues
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History

• Relatively early in the history of CNL1,
  effectiveness issues were looked at (Ash,
  November 1999)
• Main conclusion was that a uniformly accepted
  methodology was needed there also and some
  suggestions were given, based to a certain extent
  on the US Flashlight work.
• This work led into the NLN evaluation studies
  (English FE sector)

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Effectiveness a big border between E T

• The NSD effect in academia(No Significant
  Difference)
• versus learning gains and large Return on
  Investment in training world
• 700 ROI at Royal Bank of Scotland (Shepherd)
• routine 10-25-40 learning gains
• and situations with 60 learning gains

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NSD in academia...

• It is commonly believed, and apparently validated
  by the seminal work of Thomas L Russell in 1999,
  that the mode of delivery makes no significant
  difference to the grades or other performance
  indicators of students
• The Web site teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdiff
  erence/ rounds out and updates this earlier work.

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NSD in academia

• It is commonly believed, and apparently validated
  by the seminal work of Thomas L Russell in 1999,
  that the mode of delivery makes no significant
  difference to the grades or other performance
  indicators of students.
• The Web site teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdiff
  erence/ rounds out and updates this earlier work.
• But we contend that the NSD work has several
  major flaws - in particular many key variables
  were not controlled.

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Self-incrimination?

• There were no significant pre- and post-course
  differences on the items related to students
  expectations and perceived benefits...
• There were no significant differences between
  students in the online compared to students in
  the face to face courses for course retention
  or course grade...
• but there were increases in the amount of time
  and the purposes for which students used
  computers." (Green et al 2001)

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So is a key difference to do with time?

• And what is time?

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What is time?

• Time is the new distance(Mason, inaugural
  lecture 2001)

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Can e-learning save time?

• travel time

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Can e-learning save time?

• travel time
• reduce time on task
• by better training (25-40)
• by individualised training...

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Can e-learning save time?

• travel time
• reduce time on task
• by better training (25-40)
• by individualised training...
• by using time of the 3rd kind
• by consolidating time fragments

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Time of the 3rd kind

• Time1 on duty - used to be called at work
• Time2 off duty (not at work)

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Time of the 3rd kind

• Time1 on duty - used to be called at work
• Time2 off duty (not at work)
• Time3 in-between
• on duty but less productive
• eg travelling
• eg slots in between other tasks
• off-duty but somewhat productive
• eg in bar with colleagues
• at dinner with customers

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One key conclusion

• To understand effectiveness issues we need a much
  better understanding of time
• and its monetary and other value to students
• Only when one understands time should one move on
  to other measures of effectiveness

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Details about our work at

• http//www.shu.ac.uk/cnl/

Paul BacsichProfessor of TelematicsSchool of
Computing and Management SciencesSheffield
Hallam University