To give you a more universal example... let's say you need a program to identify types of triangles. You know the rules for each type - scalene, isosceles, equilateral. Seems extremely straight-forward, so you plug in the definitions of each triangle into this magic presto-change-o tool that does all of the coding for you. What do you think will happen when someone enters 0, 0, 1 as the measurements? What about 1, 1, 2?

FF,
I appreciate the further explanation of your point.

It seems more and more organizations are depending on SME's to design training solutions and I am wondering if there is any hope for these SME's trying to get their job done because as you pointed out not everybody can afford to turn down work.

Before shooting it down entirely let's see if there is a better hammer and nails. It used to be difficult to complete your taxes but now there are wonderful tools that will help anybody complete their taxes accurately. Why can't it be the same for instructional design? (This statement is for the sake of discussion, can't say that I agree with it)

So what can a SME with no instructional design experience do when charged with this kind of task? I think adding 3 weeks to the front end of the project is absolutely necessary and I would go as far as doubling that amount of time. Maybe some kind of tool like what Cathy Moore described would help. Maybe Larry is looking for some kind LCMS that will take him through the ADDIE model while developing content.

The organization we all want to work for would do the appropriate analysis up front and most likely find that it would be cheaper to outsource to a professional rather than wasting months of time gaining expertise in instructional design.

What can a SME do? He/she can say "I may know the content, but I don't necessarily know the best way for someone else to learn it."

If you knew what kind of data needed to be stored and tracked, and someone came to you and asked you to design and program a database even though you had absolutely no experience designing and programming databases, would you do it anyway? Would you even ask someone with no database design/development experience to design and develop a database?

Just because I have a camera, it doesn't make me Ansel Adams.

In any case -- the fact that this thread died and no word from the OP would be another one of many reasons I don't feel particularly compelled to spoonfeed what to do in a situation that should not be a situation to begin with.

quote:

If you knew what kind of data needed to be stored and tracked, and someone came to you and asked you to design and program a database even though you had absolutely no experience designing and programming databases, would you do it anyway? Would you even ask someone with no database design/development experience to design and develop a database?

If given the resources to help me learn and a lot of extra time, then yes. If I was on a tight time restriction and the stakeholders require somebody with experience then no. This actually hits close to home. I'm currently teaching myself how to use MS Access.

quote:

Due to the lack of importance that many organizations place on Training and Development there are many companies that aren't equipped with somebody who has instructional design experience and lack the budget to outsource this type of work. However, these same organizations still have a need for instructional design services.

I'm not so sure the organization needs any instructional design services or even any training - at least not at this point. The goal is to rapidly "produce content in an optically attractive/consistent manner." What about learning objectives? We don't even know for sure that e-learning is the way to go. The performance gap has not yet been identified - at least according to the limited info we have about it. All we know is that it is needed rapidly. It's way too early to even think about authoring systems and LCMSs.