Who are these SMEs anyway?
Bob Price FLPI FITOL
Learning and Development Business Partner at United Welsh Housing. Member of the LPI membership advisory board. Passionate learning expert
Whenever I have had training on a new authoring tool or a LMS there was always the idea that we could train up a range of staff who, as subject matter experts, would create their own content to fill up our LMS. They would be churning out e-learning module, after e-learning module, about their own specialist areas, and we would have no need to buy any content from specialist providers.
In all the years I have been developing e-learning and looking after LMS’s I have yet to see this happen. I once trained up the rest of a team of trainers that I worked in, on how to author using the tool that I was using. I provided them with a template which I knew fitted our screens, and had our branding with all the correct colours and fonts. One member of the team decided they didn't want to use this and went with one of the default templates which was bright pink.?In their words they “liked the colour.” The result was a mish mash of goodness knows what, and none of the content that they produced ever made it to the LMS.?
Whilst the idea was sound the reality was they simply didn't have the time to do this, and therein lies the issue.?In theory subject matter expert should be able to produce content using all the easy systems. Some authoring tools are very simple to use and create content in, but the result is a mass of text and graphics with no interactivity, no checking, no quizzes and none of the fun bits that can actually make E-Learning work.
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In so many cases you end up with one person doing it which, in my case, has always been the situation.?
So I would be interested to know, has this worked for you??Has anybody ever?had a team of subject matter experts who created content which is then used by the organisation? If that's you I'd love to hear from you, so please comment below.
Apprentice electrician with @whiteswanelecal
2 年I’ve never thought of SMEs as being there to actually create content, unless they’re E-learning SMEs. The role of SME (imho) is to help me (or someone else) create the learning material that contains all their knowledge and experience and fits what they want. That’s the reason they’re there, surely?
Expert in Conflict Management, Lone Worker Safety & Safeguarding | Trainer & Keynote Speaker | Empowering Individuals & Organisations to Protect Themselves, Colleagues & Assets | Tailored Solutions & Strategies
3 年In my former policing role, with many changes and amendments to legislation, e-learning law packages were introduced to help educate staff. Training was cost effective and could be accessed by staff at any time. The overwhelming experience and view of police colleagues to e-learning modules however, was one of frustration. E learning was a real chore, soleless, an inability to engage in debate, share experiences etc. staff considered it simply a tick boxing exercise. Staff found innovative ways to expedite the system, using screen shots for example to answer later questions to get the training done.