Congratulations, you’ve received an offer to teach an online course! How many hours does it take to develop an online course? There is no set number per se, but I can share some research and my experience to help you think about how much time to allocate to develop an undergraduate-level online course.
Let’s clarify the difference between “developing” and “teaching” an online course. The development phase encompasses all the activities that instructors complete before the course begins. These activities include, but are not limited to
- drafting the learning objectives,
- devising the course syllabus,
- aligning learning activities with the objectives,
- determining and creating course content and unit plans,
- identifying resources,
- establishing policies, and
- setting up the technology components.
The teaching phase consists of interacting with learners, grading assessments, providing feedback, delivering synchronous content, etc. This post is concerned with the time dedicated to the development phase, where hours can vary drastically depending on the type of support and resources available to you and the differences caused by the nature of various disciplines.
Many university and college teaching centres recommend anywhere between five and twelve months to develop a fully online course. SUNY Broome Community College provides a five-month development timeline guide, and the University of Waterloo recommends devoting seven to ten hours per week for up to ten months (which works out to 300 to 400 hours) for designing and developing an online course. The University of Texas at Dallas suggests allocating two full semesters for development and provides a table (reproduced below) that breaks down the estimated hours (Safai, 2019).
| Activity | Number of materials | Estimated Time for each | Total time |
| Syllabus | 1 | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Development of learning objectives | 30 | 10 min | 5 hours |
| Textbook selection | 1 | 1 hour | 1 hour |
| 20-minute lecture | 18 | 4 hours | 72 hours |
| 20-minute preproduced video | 3 | 1 hour | 3 hours |
| Assignment | 3 | 4 hours | 12 hours |
| Test | 2 | 4 hours | 8 hours |
| Self-quiz | 10 | 30 min | 5 hours |
| Development of discussion board questions | 10 | 5 min | 1 hour |
| Review materials | 68 | – | 13 hours |
| Upload materials | 68 | – | 5 hours |
| Total | 128.5 hours |
(Table from https://utdelearning.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-an-online-course/)
According to the estimated-hours breakdown, the most time-consuming activity is creating lecture videos. Every twenty-minute video can take up to four hours to prepare, record, edit, and caption. Of course, you can try to find open educational resources (OERs) to offset the content creation time, but there may be no suitable ready-made material for your course. When I developed the first-year undergraduate art-history survey online course this summer, my development time was 136 hours, a little higher than the 128.5 hours from the table above. I took more time in content creation because my course did not use a textbook, and I spent considerable time curating a selection of readings and creating supplementary content.
I want to point out that in all of the recommendations above, the institution expects the instructor to work with an instructional designer who will help analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate the online learning experience. The instructional designer can help the instructor connect proven learning and instructional theories to the online course design. I know what some of you may be thinking: I am a sessional instructor. I do not have the luxury of five to twelve months to design an online course, and I do not have access to an instructional designer. I agree. Many of us do not have these support and resources. As a result, we will need to budget time for trial and error, both technologically and pedagogically.
Lee A. Freeman addresses the technological and pedagogical learning curves of online course development in his 2015 survey of 165 instructors representing eight academic disciplines from three universities. (Both Meris Stansbury and Debbie Morrison provide concise summaries of Freeman’s study. See the “Works Cited” list below.) The survey finds that there is a steeper learning curve for implementing pedagogical methods than learning the technology. Effective online pedagogy requires a bit of time and effort to adopt; however, Freeman compares this situation to the initial hurdles that first-time instructors experienced in face-to-face teaching. The survey confirms that online course development takes more time initially, due to content development and pre-semester setup. When the instructor teaches online for a second or third time, the content development time reduces, and the overall development time is comparable to face-to-face course design. Over a quarter of the respondents indicate that they spend over 100 hours developing their first online course. Many of these instructors received support from instructional designers. Remember, instructors are subject experts and not course design experts (Morrison, 2015). In an ideal world, all online courses would be developed collaboratively between instructors and instructional designers.
There is no consensus on how long it takes to develop an online course, from 50 hours to 500 hours. For many of us, the development time is directly related to how much time we have left before the semester begins. The level of interactivity of online courses affects the overall development time. Be realistic with how much time you can allocate to the development phase. Use the backwards design to determine which components and activities must be included in the design (Udermann, 2019). You will not know everything about accessibility, user-centred design, and web design principles, and that’s okay. Talk to your colleagues and explore one another’s design. My colleagues have been most generous with their time in helping me create content and test out activities. Lastly, don’t use too much technology. There are many useful apps and programs, but be mindful that our learners will not all have the same level of access to technology.
Works Cited
Centre for Extended Learning. (n.d.). Creating an online course. University of Waterloo. https://uwaterloo.ca/extended-learning/teach-online/creating-online-course
Freeman, L. A. (2015). Instructor time requirements to develop and teach online courses. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 18(1). https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring181/freeman181.html
Morrison, D. (2015, May 8). Does it take more or less time to facilitate and develop an online course? Finally, some answers. Online Learning Insights. https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/does-it-take-more-or-less-time-to-facilitate-and-develop-an-online-course-finally-some-answers/
Safai, A. (2019, April 8). How long does it take to develop an online course? University of Texas at Dallas eLearning Blog. https://utdelearning.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-an-online-course/
Stansbury, M. (2015, April 20). Does it really take longer to create an online course? eCampus News. https://www.ecampusnews.com/2015/04/20/time-online-course-281/?all
SUNY Broome Community College. (n.d.). How long does it take to develop a fully online course? http://www3.sunybroome.edu/online/faculty-online/how-long-does-it-take-to-develop-an-online-course/
Udermann, B. (2019, January 16). Seven things to consider before developing your online course. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/seven-things-to-consider-before-developing-your-online-course/