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Paul Bacsich January 2012
The cost- and time-effectiveness of online learning: providing aperspective on Microlearning and the differences betweenacademic and corporate views
Paul Bacsich Abstract 
Time “is strangely under
-examined in the literature of e-
learning” (Goodyear
2006). This paper aimsto build on this observation to provide a researched starting point for a new synthesis of timeaspects of e-learning in general, and microlearning in particular
 Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the Microlearning organisation and specifically to Professor Peter Bruck forfacilitating the later phases of this work via an invitation to speak at the Microlearning 5.0conference in Innsbruck, Austria in July 2011. My researcher Sara Frank Bristow was responsible forthe first draft of th
e bibliography on “time”.
Time has been a key factor in this paper, and surrounding its writing. From time to time, work on thistopic has been supported by JISC via its support of my work on costs of e-learning. I am grateful tomy wife and colleagues for their support and flexibility in allowing me to eventually finish this paper.Even Time
3
did not help (read on...)
Microlearning
As is common with concepts in learning, there is a range of meanings of the word
“
microlearning
”
.Wikipedia (2011) in its informative article starts off its treatment with the crisp statement
“
Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities
”
. Theeducational technologist Schneider (2010) in his EduTech wiki article places this definition alongsidetwo others derived from the Microlearning project:[a] term used in the e-learning context for a learner
’
s short interaction with a learningmatter broken down to very small bits of content. At present this term is not clearlydefined. Learning processes that have been called
“
microlearning
”
can cover a spanfrom some seconds (e.g. in mobile learning) to 15 minutes (learning objects sent as e-mails).in a wider sense [microlearning] is a term that can be used to describe the way moreand more people are actually doing informal learning and gaining knowledge...especially those that become increasingly based on Web 2.0 and Wireless Webtechnologies.The literature references from these sources all point to the work of Hug and in particular to hisanalysis of the dimensions of microlearning (Hug 2006). Of these dimensions, time is the onementioned first. It is also implicit (rather than explicit) in the concepts of informal learning and Web2.0 that time is a key factor.
 
The cost- and time-effectiveness of online learning
Paul Bacsich
2
January 2012
 For the links to communities of practice (informal learning among experts) see in particularKahnwald and Köhler (2006) and for the links to my favourite Web 2.0 technology, the wiki, seeLangreiter and Bolka (2006). Both these papers also reflect on appropriate definitions of microlearning.What is clear from all these papers is that
time is a key dimension of microlearning
.
Time
–
and its cost 
I have been interested in the costs of e-learning since the early 1990s and carried out a series of studies on this for JISC in the late 1990s and early 2000s
 –
the CNL studies (Bacsich 1999; Bacsich andAsh 1999, 2000; Bacsich, Ash and Heginbotham 2001). It rapidly became clear in discussion in thelate 1990s between myself and other costing experts, in particular Stephen Ehrmann, that the costof student time (spent studying) tended to dominate the other costs in the calculations, providedthat one regarded student time as an eligible cost! (For an overview of Stephen
’
s work seeChickering and Ehrmann 2008.) However, in those days, in higher education and in schools, the timespent by students was not taken into account in any planning-oriented way
 –
completely at variancewith the approach in the training world. Thus the time issues for students were elided away, in a waywhich some said was similar to the renormalization of infinities in quantum theory.
1
 However, a few experts kept worrying away at the issue, while devoting the majority of theirresearch in costing to more tractable issues of costs of equipment, support, training, contentdevelopment and so on. An interesting recent development is the modelling work of Laurillard
(2007) on “benefits
-
oriented costs” which includes
some aspects of time.I used to give presentations on the time issue every year or two, in particular at my inauguralprofessorial lecture, but in the
“
days of abundance
”
before the recent recession, governments werenot much interested in costs of education and even less in any time aspects. But the world haschanged now
 –
and students
’
attitudes also.
What learners want 
Actually, even in the 1990s, the avoidance by university planning staff of time issues did not meanthat students were unaware of such issues. And since that time students (and their parents) havebecome (a) concerned (in many countries though not all across Europe) about the cost (to them) of higher education and (b) alleviated these concerns by working while in theory studying full-time (inevery country in Europe and most of the rest of the world).From our own work (Bacsich passim) over many years on learners (mostly at university): students
believe
that e-learning
increases
costs to them
 –
but they
behave
as though it
saves
costs
and savestime
(or at least expensive time).
1
As noted in Wikipedia, as Lewis Ryder has put it,
“
In the Quantum Theory, these [classical] divergences do not disappear;on the contrary, they appear to get worse. And despite the comparative success of renormalisation theory the feelingremains that there ought to be a more satisfactory way of doing things.
”
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization 
 
The cost- and time-effectiveness of online learning
Paul Bacsich
3
January 2012
 From other work (including from the USA and UK OU) it is clear that students want flexibility (but nottoo much). In some countries like the US, some students want
“
overclocking
”
(i.e. faster progressthrough their degree, in particular to complete a 4-year degree in 3 years). However, in othercountries like the UK there is little interest in this aspect. On the other hand, most so-called full-timestudents work while they are studying. Thus the concept of a
“
full-time
”
course lasting a fixednumber of years is increasingly invalid.As noted, students seem to have a good informal understanding of cost and time issues inasmuch asit affects them. (This is well documented in the literature as we shall show later.) It is thus all themore surprising, in an era when universities are supposed to be listening to students, that this is
not 
 the case among institutions
 –
and this appears to be true worldwide.
 Summary of research on costs of e-learning
In the 1990s a number of research teams in a number of countries took up the challenge of establishing the cost-benefits of e-learning (online learning on- or off-campus). My team was one of these and had the benefit of coming along a little later in the cycle since the UK was rather late inrealising that this was an important topic. The main research activities world-wide on
“
costs of e-learning
”
of that era are summarised in the CNL Phase 1 Report (Bacsich et al 1999), which has anextensive and comprehensive bibliography of all prior work on costs of e-learning and comparativeanalyses of all the main methodologies of the time used in education and in training.An ultra-summary of 
all 
our research in the 1999-2005 period is that it was not possible to trulyunderstand the issue of costs of e-learning without introducing aspects of Activity-Based Costing(Bacsich and Heginbotham 2005)
 –
ABC for short. The key reason was that one had to understandhow the pattern of use of time by teachers was different when they engaged in developing contentand teaching via e-learning as opposed to conventional face to face teachingHowever, research and pilot trials by our team and others showed that to subject the teachers in aninstitution to the full rigours of Activity-Based Costing and software was intractable, unpopular withlecturers and did not garner support from senior management. Thus various more or lessunsatisfactory compromise approaches were proposed
 –
which might be called ABC-lite
 –
in order togain the benefits of Activity-Based Costing without the pain of a fully-fledged ABC approach (withspecialist software support). In the UK my team
’
s CNL approach and the INSIGHT approach whichemerged a little later from the University of Strathclyde (Nicol et al 2002) became popular
 –
forsome time, but not for long.Amazingly the matter largely rested there, until the next recession
 –
deemed by some to havestarted in late 2007. A study in 2008 by myself for JISC (Bacsich 2008) indicated that progress sincethe earlier work had been
negative
! In particular, all of the earlier schemes had lapsed intoirrelevance
 –
and several were not known even to all the (few) remaining active researchers in thearea.This was particularly strange, even in Europe, for three reasons:1.
 
A global recession was starting (even if in Europe we were very slow to realise this
 –
unlike inthe Gulf States and US)
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