South Valley University Factors Influencing Factors Influencing the the Cost Cost s s of of On-line Courses On-line Courses Alaa Sadik, Alaa Sadik, Ph.D. Ph.D. Lecturer in Educational Technology South Valley University, Egypt E-mail: [email protected]Web: 1/ 28
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SouthValleyUniversity
Factors Influencing the Factors Influencing the CostCostss of of On-line CoursesOn-line Courses
Alaa Sadik, Ph.D.Alaa Sadik, Ph.D.Lecturer in Educational Technology
• Easily quantifiable.• Helps in decision making.• Helps to evaluate different alternatives.• Can be optimised according to the technology.• Can be expressed in a variety of ways.
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The cost structure of on-line coursesTypes of costs
1. Course-related costs (production and delivery costs)Costs of development and distribution of course materials
2. Student-related costs (access costs)Costs of purchasing computers, Internet connection and phone calls
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The cost structure of on-line coursesTypes of costs
1. Infrastructure costs 2. Course development costs
3. Delivery and support costs9/28
Development and delivery costs Types of costs
1. Fixed costs (capital costs + recurrent costs )Purchasing/renting the Web server, developing course materials, constructing the components of the learning environment, maintenance, etc.
2. Variable costs (student related)Tuition, administration, technical support, etc.
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Development and delivery costsExamples
• Server hardware, software and connection
• Development packages
• Transforming the course content into the on-line format
• Tuition and administration
• Technical support 11/28
The proportion of variable costs to fixed costs
The variable costs are higher than the fixed costs and the potential for obtaining economies of scale is minimal
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The semi-fixed costs of the Web server
Up to the delivery capacity of the Web server, the costs of the Web server and Internet connection behave as fixed costs
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The relationship between the variable, fixed and total costs
The fixed cost is constant throughout the course and the variable cost slopes directly with the number of students
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Development and delivery costs
Unit cost
The unit cost is the cost of the course for each student
per study hour
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Development and delivery costs
Marginal cost
The marginal cost is the cost of adding one or more
units of output to the system
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The unit cost with increasing the number of students
The economies of scale curve shows that as the number of students rises the unit cost per student falls
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The unit cost with increasing the number of courses
Increasing the number of courses reduces the unit cost per course
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The unit cost, number of students and number of courses
The unit cost can be minimised by increasing enrolment per year, adding more courses to the learning environment
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The unit cost, number of students and number of courses
By increasing the number of enrolments per course, the
course lifetime and the number of courses in the learning
environment, the fixed costs of course development can
be distributed over a larger number of students, allowing
the cost per student to be fallen significantly
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Development and delivery costs
The quality of on-line materials
Multimedia attributes (e.g., motion, sound, three
dimensional images, simulation, etc.)
Interactive components (e.g., Java applets,
interactive forms, etc.).
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Development and delivery costs
The quality of on-line materials
High quality materials need more planning and
programming time than simple textual materials,
and require sophisticated production tools and
skilful Web developers.
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Development and delivery costs
The quality of on-line materials
Unless the use of multimedia attributes to present