THE HARDEST QUESTION TO ANSWER ABOUT CBT

''How many hours does it take to develop one hour of CBT?'' Ask 100 mu ltimedia developers that question and 99 will reply, ''It depends.'' P erhaps the only question they hate more is: ''How much does it cost to develop one hour of CBT?'' Still, training professionals want to know -how long it will take them to develop a CBT course internally, or how long they will have to wait for an external supplier to develop a cou rse. And trainers want to compare pare CBT development time with the a mount of rime it takes to create instructor-led training. So. whats th e answer? Oakes says that most multimedia developers don't even keep t rack of the number. of hours it cakes them to develop a course, Most c an tell you how many months it took but not how many ''people hours,'' Oakes explains that the problem is that developing a multimedia cours e requires many phases, and each phase involves different team members . In answering the all-important ''how many hours'' question, most dev elop ers take into account only the fourth phase, media production and author ing, which usually represents less than 50 percent of overall development time. The biggest portion goes to the first three phases a nalysis, design, and course development. The key, Oakes says, is to de termine mine the production value of a course. That will lead you on t he right track. Oakes does answer the, question, however: The best way to estimate how long it takes to develop one hour of CBT is to identi fy a similar course and find out the numbers.