ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the evaluation of costs, with some examples, and discusses evaluation of benefits, again with examples. Perryman and Freshwater provide a brief discussion of training costs at Austin Rover and Lucas, both of which use computer based training (CBT) within open learning schemes. The greatest difference between conventional training costs and CBT costs lies in the cost of 'front-end' design. In any form of training, benefits are usually thought of in terms of whether or not trainees have achieved the objectives of that training. Over a fairly short period, Eastman Kodak gained positive results from CBT and interactive videodiscs for its field engineers. The benefits included savings obtained by eliminating the need for district-level training personnel, and substantially reducing the number of visits employees have to make to a central office for training. It would be useful to have models for determining CBT's cost-effectiveness, but all such models so far derived suffer from defects.
