Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

I cannot tell you how long I have been wanting to write this post – years. I’m sure a musical will follow shortly…After reading an insightful article by fellow Instructional Designer, Nicole Mellas, entitled 3 Steps to Get MORE out of Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews, I was prompted to share my tips and experiences.

Dealing with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can be tricky. Often times, they have trouble placing themselves in the shoes of their audience and/or Instructional Designer, and on particularly frustrating days where communication has come to a standstill, I call this relationship “My SME and Me.” In the darkest moments (re: sobbing over my keyboard), it renews my faith in humanity.

As Instructional Designers it is our job to figure out how to communicate effectively with our SMEs. Effectively in the sense that you get clear (or somewhat clear) answers to the questions you have in order to ensure the most accurate content, and you do this in an efficient manner. The phrase ‘time is money’ is a very accurate one in this respect. There are often many other tasks that you could devote your time and effort to in the instructional development process, so it is critical to be able to streamline the approach you take when it comes to communicating with your SME. Another phrase I’ve come to appreciate in recent weeks – “Everything is figureoutable” – Marie Forleo – allows me to recognize that each SME is their own person and as such, they are entitled to their own manner of communicating and disseminating information and the Instructional Designer will eventually figure out how best to communicate with that particular person.

When I reflect on my annual performance, I often cite communicating with SMEs as one of my greatest challenges. While I still consider this task challenging, I walk into my SME interactions with a different attitude – one that appreciates where the SME is coming from and their area of expertise – they’re a SME for a reason, after all. This is step one.

Go into your SME interactions prepared. Pinpoint the specific content areas you want to discuss in an agenda, that you submit to the SME ahead of time, and bring relevant reference material to the meeting (or include it in the agenda email) – this will help streamline your meeting by giving the SME an opportunity to prepare themselves ahead of time.

Always keep your eye on the prize. The prize is engaging, accurate content or copy, and you need to steer the ship of conversation! If your SME begins to go off on a tangent, diplomatically get them in check, and proceed with your agenda (e.g. “That’s an incredible story about how you built the rocket, but could you tell me more about how to launch the rocket?”). Accurate content is essential for many training programs. I would say all, but something like soft skills training may be more subjective than something more specific like air traffic control training. It is imperative that you keep your SME on point.

Finally, respect your SME. When you are especially frustrated and feel like you’ve talked circles around yourself, always be polite and ensure you are respectful to your SME. In many industries, you will likely have to interact with this individual again, and not burning bridges will go a long way in your next interaction.

To summarize, my tips for successful SME interactions are:

1. Get your attitude in check
2. Come prepared
3. Keep the content in mind
4. Direct your SME and keep them on point
5. Respect your SME and build rapport

What have your SME experiences been like? Have you experienced cases of My SME and Me?

When developing courses, I tend to take the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) approach. There’s no point overcomplicating things that some may already find complicated.

Tip #1 – Put yourself in your learner’s shoes. While you might be the Subject Matter Expert (SME), try to present information in a meaningful way, avoiding industry jargon at all costs. When a course isn’t successful, often times the issue is in the structure and presentation of the course, not the ability of the learners.

Tip #2 – Engage the learners my providing concrete examples that may allow learners to activate their prior knowledge as a foundation for new learning opportunities.

Tip #3 – CHUNK CONTENT. The last thing a learner needs is to spend hours scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling through content.

Tip #5 – Be concise. I don’t think I can emphasize this point enough – maybe I could make a marquee banner? Learners likely spend a lot of their time scrolling through PDFs and reading textbooks or other course materials. Value your learner’s time by concisely structuring your content. Doing this will also allow you to easily chunk your content.

Tip #6 – Provide assessment opportunities coupled with meaningful feedback. Learners want to know they’re on the right track. If you allow them to apply their knowledge through assessment opportunities, you open up a door to provide them with meaningful feedback, which will likely contribute to higher academic achievement and learner satisfaction.

Tip # 7 – Add appropriate media. This is tricky because everyone has a different idea about what might be considered ‘appropriate media’. What I mean by this is engaging the learner with multimedia, when appropriate. For example, you’re teaching an individual about car doors and how they can open and close. For this example, a side-by-side static graphic of the car door open and then the car door closed would be sufficient. Creating an animation to illustrate this may enhance engagement, but is not necessary to meet the learning objective.

Tip #8 – Be smart about your use of audio. I’d like to think that most folks can use their heads here and make good judgement calls, but I’ve worked on projects where the client requested, and truly believed it was necessary, to have 1.5 minutes of audio narration for an animation lasting 45 seconds (cut to a classroom of sobbing learners). Use audio when it makes sense. You might explain a procedure in detail in the onscreen text, but in the audio you should paraphrase the procedural steps to line up with what’s happening in the onscreen media.