I am currently the lone instructional designer/eLearning developer for a mid sized retail organization. I have recently been getting pressure from the executive level to pick up the pace on my analysis so that I can get classes together quicker. How many of you are shreeking right now? My boss suggested taking better advantage of my SMEs by having them storyboard the course so that I can go straight into development. This frightens me because I am sure it will result in page turners.

This leads me to the question of what can I do to collect information from SMEs in a more efficient manner? I was thinking of creating a form for the SME to fill out that would lay out the key information I need to design the class. I'm not going to ask them to create a storyboard, but to give me some key pieces of info that will help me write objectives and get started on the design. Have any of you tried anything like this? My only concern is that I am sure I will have follow up questions but at least it would get me started.

Any suggestions?

I think creating a standard SME interview form would help anyway. I prefer a face-to-face involvement of an SME, but then later resorting to email/phone calls etc...

Getting the SME to see things through the eyes of a learner is also a good start. SMEs often make assumptions that topic xyz should be obvious to the learner/they should know this already.

I also scout for SME ideas about what to test/make quizzes for out of the already explained content.

If it involves a procedure which needs explaining, you can always turn around the questions to arrive at a sequence "What is the one thing you have to do first, which if you don't do, you can't make any more progress"

There are all sorts of ways to speed up the process -- having SMEs storyboard is NOT it, though. (Does your boss actually understand what instructional design is and what a storyboard is supposed to be?)

Try some rapid instructional design methods (Piskurich or Meiers are good places to start.) Also, unless the SMEs are the only people on the planet with the information you need, use them ONLY to ensure that the information you're providing students is accurate. (That is - have them do a quick review of the storyboard for content accuracy ONLY, prior to development.) It is typically MUCH faster to put learning together when you don't have SMEs telling you what they think people should learn. I seek out the information from text books and other available reliable media and build a learning plan from that. Only then do I go to a SME to check in. Subject matter expertise does not mean the person knows how to design learning for someone else. (I feel like a broken record every time I say that and I'm very frustrated that your boss - someone in charge of the learning function - doesn't understand that basic fact.)

Just some ideas. Take what's helpful leave the rest...and please, if you don't want to debate about your boss, let's just leave that whole issue buried in the sand.

Thank you both for your comments.

Larry - I think the form is probably going to work out. That will give me a chance to begin analysis and then follow up with them on any other questions that arise.

Love - No, my boss doesn't know much about instructional design which is frustrating. If you asked him about it he would say that's what he has me for. However, he does have a lot of respect for my opinion and when it comes to instructional design he will back me up on what I believe.
I definitely agree with you on not having the SME storyboard which is what lead me to creating this post. I'm not sure that I agree on beginning a design without conducting an analysis with the SME. I find it helpful to see how it's done by an expert before I develop my own opinion of how it should be done. While they will insert their opinion about what and how the learning should take place I have learned to filter that out to uncover what the objectives should be. I fear that building a design off of documented information alone I take the risk of missing out on important information that would be helpful early in the design process. While it would be faster to skip the SME it may result in more time overall with re work that could have been prevented by interviewing the SME in the beginning.
Thanks again for the comments.

quote:

It is typically MUCH faster to put learning together when you don't have SMEs telling you what they think people should learn. I seek out the information from text books and other available reliable media and build a learning plan from that. Only then do I go to a SME to check in. Subject matter expertise does not mean the person knows how to design learning for someone else.

This seems a little radical to me. I don't know what training topics you're working with, but certainly for technical subjects, you can't ignore the SME right up until the end. It would be literally impossible to put together a meaningful training session by going to some text book, or other "reliable media" (whatever that may be), to find out what you need to teach someone in the workplace. I've never seen a text book that had anything to do with doing a specific job in a particular workplace.

If you're talking about communications skills, team building, or some such courses, then I agree with the text book idea - simply because there are NO SMEs for those subjects.

But for technical things, the SME is the only way to go if you want to accurately capture what the participant needs to know. No text book will tell you that. Actually, you can't even get that from a text book on communication or team building either.
But I'm assuming that the analysis was already done - without text books I hope.