Tuesday, April 21, 2009

What Will the Service Cost the User?

Here is the final revision of my part in narrative form:

What Will the Service Cost the User?

Although users of the Learning Center stand to gain much from this new and improved service, in order for students to benefit from the services offered by the Learning Center, they will incur certain costs. Monetary loss, time consumption, effort and a learning curve are several of the costs users of the Learning Center will be faced with. To what degree each user will incur these costs, however, is contingent upon the circumstances surrounding each student. For most of these costs, the preexisting skill set each user comes to the Learning Center with along with how quickly one is able to learn new concepts and skills will determine how much the use of this service will cost each user.

As mentioned above, there is a financial cost that students will incur as a result of utilizing the services offered by the Learning Center. However, this will be the case for every student at Buffalo State regardless of whether or not they use these services. Since the Learning Center will be funded by a portion of the tuition fees paid by each student at Buffalo State, every student will be paying for this service. Nevertheless, if a student chooses to use the Learning Center, they could potentially face additional monetary costs. For instance, those who choose to get extra help at the Learning Center might be forced to take time off of work, thus causing them to lose income. Users of this service will also have to deal with the expenses associated with getting themselves to the Learning Center, such as paying for gasoline for their car. In the end, it is clear that users of this service will incur an additional monetary cost relative to those who choose not to use the Learning Center.

Besides a financial cost, using the services offered by the Learning Center will cost students time and effort. First of all, there will be a general time and effort cost associated with simply making the time and getting one’s self to the Learning Center to use its services. Additional time and effort costs will be incurred by students who seek to benefit from the Learning Center’s one-on-one services. The degree to which each student is willing to commit time and effort both inside and outside of the Learning Center toward learning the skills and concepts they are getting assistance with will impact how much of this time and effort cost they will incur.

Along with the time and effort costs associated with getting one-on-one assistance with particular concepts and skills, students who choose to use the computer in the Learning Center to get assistance with their grammar will have to put forth time and effort toward learning and using this service. How computer savvy a student is will definitely impact how much of a time and effort cost they will incur in this regard. For those who receive tutoring help in a group setting, an additional time and effort cost is likely. Tutoring assistance in a group setting will generally be more time consuming for each student. Moreover, working in a group tends to require more of an effort in order succeed relative to just simply working with tutor on a one-on-one basis. Once again, a student’s preexisting skill set and the pace in which one can learn unfamiliar concepts and skills will impact these time and effort costs.

Another cost that users of the Learning Center will have to contend with is a learning curve. Like time and effort costs, how much of a learning curve cost each student is faced with when getting help is contingent upon how quickly one can learn unfamiliar concepts and skills. The skill set each user brings with them to the Learning Center will also affect their learning curve cost. Furthermore, one’s learning curve cost will be impacted by the student’s ability to adapt to working with a tutor either on a one-on-one basis or in a small group. A learning curve cost can also be anticipated for those who utilize the Learning Center computer for grammar help.

4 comments:

  1. Hi John, This looks great! One idea under the 'money' section is to say that this center is included in college tuition fees so there is no additional charge to students.

    --Amy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Amy...that's a good idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice job, John... It's your call whether you want to use the bullets or write a narrative instead...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Eugene, I went with a narrative. I just used bullets to outline some of my thoughts to make it easier for others to comment on them.

    ReplyDelete