Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) And Instructional Designers

TeamOJT Tip of the Month for October, 2007

I am continually intrigued by the vast number of articles, newsletters, and blogs that routinely pose questions from instructional designers about how to work with SMEs to get good content for courses. Basically, they want to know how to motivate SMEs to cooperate and how to avoid conflict with them. There never seem to be real good answers-or at least answers that work. Hence, the same questions over and over.

SMEs are not the problem as is so often suggested--rather, they are the solution when given an opportunity and treated with respect. SMEs are the only ones who really know the content. If possible, and time permitting, hey should be given control over that part of the project. They generally love nothing more than to share their knowledge.

But beware! Quite often SMEs do not know everything that we, or they, assume they do. Sometimes the information is flat wrong--something an instructional designer would never discover by conducting interviews with the SMEs. Therefore, SMEs acting alone should not develop content. As explained in the April, 2005 Tip of the Month, "Subject Matter xperts and Content Development," SMEs need to work together with other employees who do the job, including trainees or new employees-people who are not experts. These people provide the key role of questioning anything and everything SMEs say or write that is not crystal clear. You would be surprised at the number of mistakes that are caught.

So what should instructional designers do? They should provide SMEs with a process and tools to work with. The process simply consists of showing the SME teams how to do a job task analysis and write the content-in their own language, not necessarily the language an instructional designer might use. See the September, 2003 Tip of the Month, "10 Simple Steps for Determining Training Needs"; and the October, 2003 Tip of the Month, "How to Write Training Modules-8 Easy Steps." Once instructional designers have the content, they can then decide on media, evaluations, formats, and all the other things they do best.

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