Distribution Costs of E-learning Versus Instructor-led Training

Any time you can distribute your learning online you have the potential to reach more learners and reduce your costs dramatically. This is especially true in instructor-led training versus e-learning (self-paced or synchronous).

Building any kind of training comes with fixed and variable costs. Producing training materials and the development of the actual course itself is a fixed, one-time cost. It’s not until you release the training to the learners when you encounter variable costs that change based on need.

Fixed costs are easy to budget for. You know how long you plan to hold the training for and how many learners it will be distributed to.  However, what if you did not know how many learners will be attending training? What if the content is subject to frequent change? It will be difficult to budget for. Those are just a few of many variables you will encounter. Typically, the higher the demand for the training, the higher your variable costs will be.

Take for instance an instructor-led training course held in a classroom. The training program has a workbook that is handed out to learners at the beginning of the class. As more and more people sign up for the class, more and more workbooks need to be produced and there is a cost behind that. This is in addition to the fixed cost of developing, preparing and coordinating the class.

In a worse-case scenario, if the content in the workbook contains an error or if there are changes or updates that need to be made to the content, the workbook is now obsolete and a new printing needs to be produced. Those are additional costs and any workbook unused is now scrapped. It has no value and may as well be trashed (hopefully shredded and recycled).

If the same training could be distributed online, the variable costs would be minimal. Because content is centralized and basically exists as a single copy, it really doesn’t matter how many learners take the training. The content is not distributed on a 1 to 1 basis, it is 1 to many. A variable, such as printing costs of workbooks in relation to the number of learners is not relevant in this scenario based on the distribution method, which is e-learning.

Recently, I was reminded of distribution costs related to training when I read a news story about how the state of Arizona plans to training police officers on their recently passed immigration law. The current plan is to release training on DVDs. They call it “e-learning”, but I disagree. I especially disagree on their rationale for distribution. According to the story, they say this is the quickest way to get the training out there as officers need to be trained on the law by July 29th. There is no mention of the cost behind the training, but I can assure you as I outlined in this post, their variable costs will increase based on the format and distribution method they chose. It is likely the law will change if it is challenged in the courts. If it does change, the content of the training on the DVDs will need to be changed, thus making them obsolete and a whole new run of DVDs will need to be produced and sent out.

My recommendation to reduce costs: post the training in an e-learning module on an LMS. There will be no production cost associated with pressing DVDs and if the law does change, updates can be made to the e-learning module and distributed instantly to everyone who needs to access it.