The document summarizes the costs associated with developing and delivering an online wired class. It breaks costs down into capital costs, development costs, tuition/maintenance costs, and server costs. Fixed costs make up 48% of total costs and variable costs 52%. While initial per-course costs are high, the unit cost per course decreases as more courses are added due to sharing of fixed infrastructure costs.

1. Design, development and delivery costs of Wired Class
Fixed and Activity Unit Number of Unit cost Total costs
variable costs units (£) (£)
Capital costs Web server (hardware & software) £ 1 3000 3000 a
£ 1 100 100 b
Programming language package £ 1 395 395
Photo editor £ 1 70 70
CGI scripts package £ 1 80 80
Domain name registration £ 1 18 18
HTML editor £ 1 99 99
Maths grapher £ 1 45 45
Total 3,707 a
807 b
Module Rewriting course content for the Web Screen 252 C1 (2525C1)/
dependent (lesson, examples, self-tests, pages Screen
elements exercises, send to the teachers tasks, pages/hour
on-line discussion topics and Web
links)
Writing HTML pages, including HTML 252 C2 (2525C2)/
writing HTML pages and layout and pages HTML
hyperlinks design pages/hour
Designing and developing graphics Graphics 126 C3 (1265C3)/
Graphics/hour
Designing interactive graphs and Graphs 13 C4 (135C4)/
scripts graphs/hour
Adapting & programming Java and Code lines 330 C5 (235C5)/ code
Java Scripts lines/hour
Programming CGI scripts Script code 4420 C5 (2215C5)/
line script code
line/hour
Designing and developing on-line HTML 9 C2 (95C2)/
tests, including writing HTML pages pages pages/hour
and layout and hyperlinks design
Graphics 9 C3 (95C3)/
graphics/hour
CGI script 60 C4 (95C4)/ script
code line code line/hour
Revising course materials by content Pages 252 C5 (2525C5)/
experts revised
page/hour
Module- Designing interaction tools (e.g., chat Pages 29 C2 (295C2)/
independent and discussion boards), including pages/hour
elements writing HTML pages and layout and
hyperlinks design
Graphic 5 C3 (55C3)/
graphics/hour
Script line 130 C4 (1305C4)/
script code
line/hour
Developing administration tools Pages 14 C2 (145C2)/
(logging-in and logging-out, grading, pages/hour
etc.), including writing HTML pages
and layout and hyperlinks design.
Graphic 7 C3 (75C3)/
graphics/hour

2. Fixed and Activity Unit Number of Unit cost Total costs
variable costs units (£) (£)
Script line 190 C4 (1905C4)/
script code
line/hour
Developing support tools(on-line Pages 169 C2 (1695C2)/
board, teacher today page, on-line pages/hour
help, etc.), including writing HTML
pages, layout and hyperlinks design.
Graphic 112 C3 (1125C3)/
graphics/hour
Script line 80 C4 (805C4)/
script code
line/hour
Testing by experts Pages 212 C5 (2125C5)/
pages/hour
Total Fixed £ (2525C1+
costs 4725C2+
2595C3+
5225C4+
7085C5)
Variable costs Tuition, support and assessment Hour/day 2 C6 25C6
Recurrent Site maintenance Hour/week 2 C7 25C7
costs Running the Web server
Maintenance a Hour/week 2 C7 25C7 a
Connection a £/month 500 5005C7 a
Virtual Web server (rent) b £/month 50 50 b
Total variable £/week (45C6)+
and recurrent (1295C7) a
(45C6)+
(25C7)+12.5b
Total costs
a Purchasing a Web server model
b Renting a virtual Web server model

3. Rules-based estimates for design and development costs
Cost contributor Measure Productivity Requirement Cost/hour
rule per the
course
Rewriting course content for the Web Pages/hour 3 252 10
Writing HTML pages HTML 5 464 10
page/hour
Designing and developing graphics Graph/hour 3 252 15
Designing interactive graphs and Interactive 2 13 20
scripts graph/hour
Adapting & programming Java, Java Script code 10 5210 20
Scripts and CGI scripts line/hour
Revising course materials and design Page/hour 9 464 20
by content and design experts
Hour/day 2* 40 10
Tuition and support
Hour/day 2 16 10
Site maintenance
Hour/week 2 16 10
Web server maintenance a
Web server connection a £/week 125 £1000 -
£/week 12.5 £100 -
Virtual Web server (rent) b
*
This time estimation is based on 32 students, studying one course, two times a week and for 8 weeks.
a
Purchasing a Web server model
b
Renting a virtual Web server model

4. Costs of Wired Class
Type of costs Costs (£) %
Capital costs 3,707 a 18.20 a
807 b 4.88 b
12,347 -
Course-dependent development costs
2,315 -
Course-independent development costs
Total development costs 14,662 74.32 a
92.28 b
Total fixed costs 18,369 a 93.11 a
15,469 b 97.36 b
Tuition, support and Web site maintenance costs 960 -
1,040 5.11
Server maintenance and connection re-current
costs a
Virtual web server re-current costs b 100 .60
a
Total costs 20,369
b
Total costs 16,529
a Model a: Purchasing a Web server
b Model b: Renting a virtual Web server

5. The elements of student-related costs
Type of cost Using school LAN Cost
(£)
Capital costs LAN with shared modem 16,000
(infrastructure and computers for
6 students)
Network printer 400
Web clients 0
Textbooks 10
Recurrent costs Network operation and 10% of the LAN cost
maintenance per year
Connection charge per minute .02

6. The variable and fixed costs over the course life-cycle
s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10 Total
Costs (£)
Capital costs 3,707 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3,707
Materials 14,662 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14,662
development
Tuition & Web site 960 960 960 960 960 960 960 960 960 960 9,600
maintenance
Server 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 1,040 10,400
maintenance &
connection
Variable costs 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 20,000
Fixed costs 18,369 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18,369
Total costs 20,369 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 38,369

7. The proportion of variable costs to fixed costs
Fixed costs
48% Variable costs
52%

8. The cumulative fixed, variable and total costs over the course lifetime
Cumulative s1 s2 s2 s4 s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10
Costs (£)
Fixed costs 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369 18,369
Variable costs 2,000. 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 20,000
Total costs 20,369 22,369 24,369 26,369 28,369 30,369 32,369 34,369 36,369 38,369

9. The unit cost per course with increasing the number of courses
Number of courses Course 1 Course 2 Course 3 Course 4 Course 5 Course 6 Total
Fixed and capital costs 3,707 0 0 0 0 0 3,707
Course-dependent elements 12,347 12,347 12,347 12,347 12,347 12,347 74,082
Course-independent elements 2,315 0 0 0 0 0 2,315
Tuition and support 960 960 960 960 960 960 5,760
Server costs 1,040 0 0 0 0 0 1,040
Total costs 20,369 13,307 13,307 13,307 13,307 13,307 86,904
Cumulative total costs 20,369 33,676 46,983 60,290 73,597 86,904 -
Cost per course 20,369 16,838 15,661 15,072 14,719 14,484 -
Increasing the number of courses reduces the unit cost per course
25,000
Cost
20,000 Unit cost per course
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Number of courses