In calculating an ROI, I'm being asked if there's any time saved by having the student train at their convenience at their desktop v. gathering a group (or sometimes all) together for the training. Seems as though I've heard of a rule of thumb for that comparison, e.g. 1 hour of getting together as a group is worth .75 hour of desktop training. Is this ringing a bell with anyone?

Need this quickly. Thx -

Bob
rbritton@as-e.com

Depends. What is being taught? Is it something one can learn on one's own? How much practice is needed? etc. etc....

Two must-have tomes if you need present this type of info to corporate mucky-mucks:

High Impact Learning (Brinkerhoff)
Performance Consulting (Robinson & Robinson)

Just what I need - more tomes! I've got the Brinkerhoff, I'll look at the R&R in my "free" time. What I really need at the moment are a few educated WAGs on how much more efficient (numerically if at all possible) desktop learning is than ILT (for material that lends itself well to such a delivery method, of course).

Generally, I'm focusing in on soft skill (i.e. OD) and compiance (SOX, OSHA, etc.). ILT will be built in where a blended solution makes sense, but for the most part this is self-tuaght type of material. Trying to free up $100K for the startup now so I don't have to wait for next FY to launch this.

Thx.

If you are doing ROI calculation you need to consider lots of factors. Some relate directly to the time factor and some do so only peripherally:

• Is the desk training sync or async? (You say "at their convenience, so I assume the latter). Is there (enough) user interaction with that mode?
  
• How much overhead is there in the ILT? Travel time, greeting time, other non-training time uses need to be counted.
  
• What about delivery resources? Computer use, network bandwidth, meeting room time and refreshments all need to be factored in.
  
• If the event is longer than, say, a few hours, will there be refreshments, breaks and other costs/time losses?
  
• Development time needs to be considered too. Will the event occur more than once if it is live? How polished do the elearning materials need to be?
  

I have seen developments where the elearning version is shorter than, longer than or the same length as the corresponding ILT. It really all depends on the approach.
Combined with LL's thoughts, I find it hard to compare these apples and oranges.

Last nite I thought of a way to figure out a WAG. Video the existing ILT for a similar topic. Remove the asking of questions -- not the answers as that material would need to be incorporated into the delivery. Time the new video. That will give the length of the "desktop lecture" time.

This won't work for activities, though, as asynch elearning ones are generally significantly different from group ILT ones. If your training is, say, 30-50% presentation, this will give a WAG for that. For the remaining 50-70% it will depend a lot on the activities you can come up with.