Instructional Design Contracting 101

This week I received an inquiry from a teacher who had been asked to take a successful instructional program he had designed and delivered and turn it into a curriculum that could be used by others in his school. He wrote to me asking for tips on estimating his time for this instructional design project as he was preparing a proposal for a contract with his school.


After writing back to him, with probably more than he bargained for because I couldn't resist making some suggestions for contracting in general, I decided other teachers-turned-instructional-designers might find this interesting, and with any luck it might serve as a springboard for discussion around how others do this, if anyone is so inclined to exercise the comments section after this post to share their thoughts!

Following, are excerpts from my response to the inquiring teacher.

In terms of figuring time, I generally plan 6-8 hrs. of development for every hour of finished curriculum, depending upon how much independent research I will need to conduct and how available the client is to provide me with subject matter expertise. There are lots of variables in this estimate however. Part of instructional design is interviewing and shadowing SMEs (subject matter experts) and my time to conduct that research needs to be paid for. If this involves travel, I also ask for those expenses to be covered (air and ground transportation, hotels, meals).

I have an initial affinity process I use for gathering and synthesizing information from SMEs into a Training Outcome Guide, and then I build in some ongoing check in points via phone and email. As an aside, I also ask if the SME knows I'll be contacting them and is getting paid for time spent talking to me, has time to talk to me, and has bought in to (or is resistant to) the curriculum design project in general. Resistance means a lot more care and a lot more time will be needed to develop rapport, and time, as you all know, is money.

Whenever I develop curriculum for others to use, I ask them to review my work throughout the design process and I build in time on my proposal for getting their feedback around the transferrability/usability of what I am creating.

If you are adapting your original curriculum from working one-on-one with students to working with groups of students, you may want to build in time (if you aren't already familiar with active and cooperative teaching strategies) to research cooperative learning for instructional strategies for teaching groups of students. You might also want to do some research on some activity books and build in the cost of buying a few of those to broaden your strategy base.

I'd also write something into the contract that when you are within 10 hours (or some mutually agreeable figure) of your limit, you will let them know if an adjustment is going to be needed. I try never to be in this position. I want to negotiate money just once and I work very hard to finish by the deadline and within, or just under budget (all the more reason to be diligent about building in all of your costs up front). I will not agree to a contract with an unspecified number of hours for a task. I once received a draft contract that said, "and reasonable edits after piloting." I asked them to remove "reasonable edits" as that was not quantifiable (and left me vulnerable) and suggested, "Up to, but not exceeding 20 hrs. of edits after piloting." This was accepted by my client.

You'll also want to think through whether others will be teaching your curriculum and if you need any supplemental materials for other teachers, whether they will need any kind of training from you, or if you'll be doing any speaking/presenting on behalf of the school to promote the new curriculum. Build in time for these things or clear statements that these services are not included, or would require a separate contract.

Though the teacher did not ask me specifically, I felt compelled to address a couple of issues either mentioned briefly in his inquiry or that I could see as potentially problematic about the situation. He noted that they had promised him royalties for the use of the new curriculum. I strongly urged him to get a specific arrangement with specified amounts, in writing. I also suggested he might want to decide if he wanted to be able to use what he developed (now or in the future in his own teaching not associated with the school) and if he did, to negotiate that and get the agreement in writing. Finally, I offered that if he wanted to be listed as author (instead of the school listing themselves as author) that he should get that in writing on his contract as well.

My final bit of advice was to write in turn around time/dates into the contract, along with names or position titles for who would be responsible for reviewing and providing him with feedback, noting that this would help prevent the project from going on forever or causing him to miss his deadline because he didn't get what he needed from his client.