LoveLearning,
I appreciate your perspective and experience, but I have found differently in my exprience. I believe it depends on the subject and the individuals.

When we look at user-level training (e.g. how to use MS Word), the trainer has to be competent as a Word user. Maybe true expert status is not required, but then many SMEs are not true experts,. it depends on how one looks at the word "expert".

For a technical course (e.g. how to develop Windows programs using .NET), the trainer needs to be very close to expert status. She or he at least needs to be very experienced in order to answer participant questions and guide them through exercises using best practices including good software design.

For HR topics (e.g. selection of company insurance forms) a true insurance expert is not needed. Instead someone who is well-versed in the coverages of the policies available and their ins and outs is sufficient. Likewise, when teaching, say, communication skills, it is clearly not necessary to have a PhD in the topic. However, the facilitator must be knowledgable in the topic.

I think one issue it the term "Subject Matter Expert". Some folks use content-knowledgable people as SMEs for development of training, but really these folks are not true SMEs. When some of us who design/deliver courseware hear "SME" we might hear "true expert" or "someone who knows and is experienced in the subject".

Personally, I have never attended a successful training event where the presenter/facilitator was not at a minimum experienced or very knowledgable in the content area of the course. I have seen SMEs teach who were very expert at training and I have seen SMEs teach who were, at best, poor.

I think very few, if any, people can jump on a stage or in front of a training room with no experience or education in training and do well.

--john

Formative reviews- let folks who aren't SMEs attempt the learning- they will certainly tell you where they stumble: where SMEs might jump from A to Z where less experienced users must go each step.

Summative reviews- even post deployment, continue to measure.

I find, asking users, you get the info needed.

quote:

I think very few, if any, people can jump on a stage or in front of a training room with no experience or education in training and do well.

Yes -- I thought that was my point.

David,
I agree. I tried to say the same in my first post on this topic...

quote:

Originally posted by travelerjjm:
I have been involved in a process where the material is developed by two SMEs each with training design experience: one is the actual author, the other checks and verifies the information, activities, etc. for accuracy and completeness. The course is then subjected to two walkthroughs, with time after each for refinement. After that it is presented to a real group of participaints who offer feedback and then the materials are tweeked before final release.

I disagree with this approach. By the time you run the course by the "real group", it is WAY too late to get the proper kind of input from them. They (two or three non-SMEs) have to be involved up front - side-by-side with the SMEs AS THEY CONSTRUCT THE CONTENT. By the time you ask for their input, the type feedback you get is qualitatively different - it is simply not the type feedback that will tell you where true mistakes are, where gaps are, and steps that are inefficient - especially in technical training subjects. It is far more critical with technical than soft skills training to have these people involved up front. I have seen engineers totally flabbergasted at how incorrect their procedures are - when questioned by new engineers (or non SME engineers) as they are going through their procedures and writing training content. And these are the procedures that have been refined by several engineers over the course of years. SMEs do not tend to catch their own mistakes. They make too many assumptions - especially about the way procedures should be carried out. They do not stop and think about the trainee, nor do they take time ordinarily to think through the "best" way to do the procedure, or the "best" way to teach someone else.

If technical training is constructed by SMEs and non-SMEs together, there is no need for instructional designers, course developers, etc. Sometimes the solution to technical training is so simple, that we just can't see it - just like the SMEs themselves can't see where the pitfalls are.

Having a second SME look at what another SME wrote might yield some changes or corrections - but will not catch nearly all of them. Why not have them work togather from the beginning? At least doing that would improve the process a little. But it still isn't enough - you really do need the non SMEs involved at that time too.

And to make one more point, when the content, for technical training, is constructed with SMEs and non SMEs together, you do not necessarily need a SME to actually deliver the training. Any competent non SME is perfectly capable of delivering the training - provided they have some personal skills to go with it. Technical trainers, with the properly constructed content, do not need to be SMEs.

The bottle line of course is that companies waste tons of money by thinking that training has to be delivered by "trainers" who are expert in the subject. And by thinking that SMEs are the ones who should provide the content, and that an instructional designer needs to be involved in all this. It simply isn't true. In most cases the employees themselves can and shouldl be totally in charge of their own training - especially in technical training.

I think a lot of companies are finally starting to realize this. More and more companies, especiallly high-tech manufacturing companies are turning the technical training over to people in the trenches - not HR. What is happening is that companies are giving lip service to HR and training, even allowing them to do their "classes," but the real training is done, often secretly, by engineering.