Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Telelearning: A Case Study ...

Methodology
The methodology developed for this study is based on Bates (1995) ACTIONS
model for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of learning technologies:
A Access: how accessible is a particular technology for learners? How
flexible is it for a particular target group?
C Costs: what is the cost structure of each technology? What is the unit
cost per learner?
T Teaching and learning: what kinds of learning are needed? What
instructional approaches will best meet these needs? What are the best
technologies for supporting this teaching and learning?
I Interactivity and user-friendliness: what kind of interaction does this
technology enable? How easy is it to use?
O Organizational issues: what are the organizational requirements, and
the barriers to be removed, before this technology can be used
successfully? What changes in organization need to be made?
N Novelty: how new is this technology?
S Speed: how quickly can courses be mounted with this technology?
How quickly can materials be changed? (Bates, 1995, pp. 1-2,
emphasis added)
As part of this project, Cukier (1997) reviewed existing cost-benefit
methodologies which have been used to assess educational technologies and suggested an
approach to be used for this NCE-Telelearning project. Based on this approach, the
following cost and benefit factors are examined:
Costs. Cost measures assessed in this study include:
• capital and recurrent costs,
• production and delivery costs, and
• fixed and variable costs.
Capital costs are the expenses associated with the purchase of equipment and
materials. Recurrent or operating costs are expenses that occur on a regular basis (e.g.
yearly) in order to run a program. An example would be computer support costs involved
in the delivery of a course. As their names suggest, production and delivery costs are the
costs associated with the development and delivery of a particular course/program. In
traditional, face to face instruction, these costs are usually combined as the instructor
both prepares and delivers lectures. These costs are unlikely to change significantly from
year to year. For distance education courses however, these costs must be analyzed
separately as there can be large differences in these costs from year to year. Generally,
the initial production costs are high but then tend to be quite low in subsequent years
(when revisions are minimal). Delivery costs can, however, stay at the same level each
year (or course offering). Fixed costs are costs that do not change with output (the
number of students taking the course), while variable costs do. This distinction between
fixed and variable costs is important when comparing technologies or in determining the
number of students necessary to justify the use of a particular technology as different
technologies have different proportions of fixed to variable costs (see Bates, 1995 for
further explanation).
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