A case study examining the cost measurements in production and delivery of a small private online course (SPOC) for teaching administrative staff to engage with young patients

Background: eLearning (defined as asynchronous/synchronous) online learning delivered via the internet, either used on a stand-alone basis or using blended learning design) presents a significant opportunity to provide a scalable and cost-effective means of delivering of health education in contrast to one-time delivery of face to face instruction. Economic evaluation makes use of implementation costs for the basis of comparative analysis of cost value determination between different intervention types. Although there exist models for the calculation of costs in standard education programmes, eLearning is a different implementation design than face to face instruction because the initial effort is concentrated on the construction of intervention before implementation and the factors which influence their production require iteration and refinement. Understanding these iterations and their impact on cost is vital in order to develop a strong evidence base on the total cost of implementation of eLearning. Objective: To identify the ingredients for the production and delivery of a small private online course, complete variance calculations of the ingredients for the cost of production and delivery of a small private online course and explore the factors impacting the planning of costs for eLearning delivery. Methods: This study uses a mixed-methods study design was implemented, with a single-use case study design structured for study observation and cost analysis used to analyse financial data. Results: The implementation costs of the course were significantly underestimated at commencement making the total effort to deliver the cost untenable when baselined against the budget with a 41% negative variance from the project budget. The course was delivered despite this budget overrun because there was an obligation to deliver the course for the anticipated budget; had they failed to do this they would not have received compensation from the funder for the course activity. The two principal factors for the cost overruns were the deficiency of the use of the project budget and the under-reporting of personnel costs. Conclusions: Although there has been the development of costing capture models for the capture of the components or ingredients of educational interventions, the driver for these models has been the development of frameworks to allow for further economic evaluation of learning types. Further work is required to the foundational aspects of cost capture in the production of eLearning, as to ensure that total costs are recorded to capture the real costs of delivery.