Working With SMEs

Hi Peggy,

I've worked with a large variety of SMEs over a period of many years on course development projects.

The short answer is that your experience is fairly typical.

Regardless of extensive SME orientation at the start of a project, detailed processes, clear examples, SOPs, regular meetings and reviews, there has never been a project of mine that has gone off smoothly. This is not a complaint, simply stating the nature and complexities associated with working with SMEs. 

We all have different skill sets, and while a SME knows their field extremely well, they do not know ID, eLearning technology, understand scenarios, how to write questions and assessments, etc. We can't expect them to have or develop this skillset.  I've worked with very few SMEs that were able to design effective eLearning interactions, primarily because they don't understand the technology, and are not aware of what the technology is capable of. 

For these same reasons, most SME's struggle with visualizing the end result while working with "paper" design documents. Showing some completed online resources that are similar to what they will be creating can be very useful to help bridge that gap. 

Revising, rewriting, and fixing work done by a SME is to be expected and not uncommon. You will find that the output of SMEs improve over the duration of a project, but most likely will not progress to the point where you would like them to be. SMEs are not good course designers.

I have found that your typical SME is great with providing knowledge dumps, but even with a lot of direction struggles with quiz/exam questions and with assessments in general. As an experienced ID I still struggle with these same things. You need to provide a lot of guidance and coaching.

SMEs have the answers you need; they don't always how to give that information to you. Over time you will learn better ways to draw that information from them.