Having constraints like this really does require you to be more creative and thoughtful.

Best.

Here’s a couple of things you might add to the authoring side of things:

Xerte - from Nottm uni - free Flash based system with built in accessibility functions:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/

eXe - free, but limited system - useful for cheap and cheerful stuff:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/exe/wiki

GLO Maker - from RLO CETL - creates reusable learning objects with Flash output:
http://www.glomaker.org/

Nancy
Architela
http://www.architela.com

With reference to your post and hopefully coming from an informed client viewpoint I believe that is better to measure a game in terms of objects, tasks, interactions that have to be created. The more of these variables that are included, the game play time naturally increases, however, this is highly dependent on the learner. This is not only in terms of intellectual / learning ability but as I have seen can be as simple as familiarity with standard keyboard controls let alone other interface methods.

An experienced developer should be able to give the client an idea of how long their ‘wish list’ should take to play out in a game environment or 2D e-learning for that matter.

Have a look at the famous PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address at http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

interesting discussion on a serious games forum about how they are struggling to get across to clients and developers that its not always possible to measure a game in terms of hours.

For clients, I’d imagine that the one hour means how long the e-learning ‘runs’ for if the learner reads, listens, watches, interacts with the all of the content, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that learners will remember anything.

For producers, I guess it’s some kind of formula like: number of screens/2D v. 3D/ stock photo based v. original photo based v. illustration based/page turner v. branching scenario/ hi-end game/developed in-house v. developed offshore/original graphics v. clip art and so on.

Given today’s economic climate, I think that clients have a budget in mind and won’t budge on price no matter what metrics producers apply to the costing. Personally, I’ve never really got the price per hour debate and very few clients/prospects seem to ask the question these days.

As producers we would, of course, be crazy if we didn’t undertake some kind of needs/scoping exercise - paid or unpaid before we offered up a costing.

This can be a big problem for educators in any environment. It’s often easy for students to see the external skills required for a specific task, (ie follow the pacer around the track, stay with it, then sprint to the finish), but not so easy to appreciate those more subtle skills (pacing yourself, reacting to the increasing speed of the pacer at the correct moment in each race).

But it is those subtle skills which can win the race, and for students, make all the difference in their performance after the test itself. I have spent a lot of time explaining explicitly, why I have set a specific task which may not directly relate to external skills, but help develop more relevant subtle skills, usually analysis and problem solving skills. Most students eventually understand once they have been through the process once and realised what an impact those subtle skills could have had, but there are always a few who get fixated on those external skills. It’s a difficult barrier.

In this example, perhaps if the participants were made to understand the purpose of the content, the test itself would become important?