Creating customised learning for your business can become challenging when you need the assistance of subject matter experts (SME’s). Being experts, they don’t really need to think about the step-by-step processes to get their jobs done, they simply just do it! This is not helpful for learning designers who need to unpick all the details and make the information accessible to novice learners. Getting the relevant information from your SME’s can be a laborious and time-consuming job! One thing that can help this process become more streamlined is asking the right questions of your SME’s. This will help you target effective learning outcomes and elicit content that should be included in your learning design. Here are some examples of questions you might use in a subject matter expert interview:
- Was there ever a moment when you had an “aha” moment around this and suddenly it all made sense? If so, will you share this with me?
- If there were “one thing” that most people don’t get about this area of content, what would that one thing be?
- What does someone need to understand to do this well?
- Of all the information you shared, what is most important?
- If someone were to get “all caught up in the details” around this content, what “big picture” might they miss?
- When you picture how all this information fits together, what image comes to mind?
- If you were assigned to give someone feedback on applying this, what would you look for?
- If you were watching a high performer and a low performer applying this side-by-side, what differences would you see?
- What kind of situations would require someone to get creative in applying this information?
- Where might the “wheels come off of the track”?
- What advice would you give someone to help them prepare for the barriers they might run into when applying this content?
Adding some of these questions to your interview repertoire could go a long way to accessing all of that tacit specialist knowledge, and also make the whole process a less prickly one!
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