Lesson 4 Getting Started in Course Design
4-4 Learners and Experts
As the e-learning designer you are bridging the gap between the learner and the expert. To be successful, you will need to determine what it is a beginner (the learner) can do with digestible knowledge from the expert. There will always been some level of learning curve but your aim is to make that slope gradual by scaffolding (Granite State College, 2017) or providing relevance.
Albert Education, 2018. Scaffolding for student success.
What do Learners need to do?
- Learning Objectives, again
Getting learning objectives right is important, as they provide your roadmap in terms of scope and content, and will drive your assessments. For more about learning objectives and using them to ensure content alignment, see Carnegie Mellon’s excellent overview. To ensure that your learning objectives are measurable, use Bloom’s Taxonomy Action Verbs.
- Learners learn in many ways; The Myth of Learning Styles New research has moved away from the idea of learning styles. Check out any of the following articles:
- Asher Cashdan, May 2021. Learning styles – the myth persists
- William Furey, April 2020. The Stubborn Myth of “Learning Styles”
- Shaylene Nancekivell, May 2019. Belief in Learning Styles Myth May Be Detrimental
- Cindi May, May 2018. The Problem with “Learning Styles”
- Christian Jarrett, Jan 2015. All You Need to Know About the ‘Learning Styles’ Myth in Two Minutes
- NPR, Aug 2011. Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
Working with Subject Matter Experts (SME)
Excerpted from Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right, by Piskurich, George M (2015).
- When requesting an SME from a department, provide the manager with a list of the characteristics you are looking for.
- Prepare your SMEs by sending them a list of topics or concepts you want to cover, and even objectives and test questions if you have them.
- At the start, talk to them about their value to the program, and the program’s value to their work group.
- Give them an outline of what their duties will be and how much time those duties will take. (Don’t forget review time, especially after beta tests and pilots.) This is particularly important as many of the problems IDs experience with SMEs are simply because their role is taking much longer than they thought it would. Discuss with them both the amount of time for each responsibility and how many weeks they’ll have to do each one.
- Listen, don’t talk.
- Don’t interrupt to ask new questions until the SME’s thought is complete.
- Don’t use trainer terminology like “job aids” or “performance tools.” Ask it in their language, or they won’t know what you are looking for.
- Use both verbal (ahh, uh huh) and nonverbal (smiling, nodding head, frowning, open body language, eye contact) behaviors to elicit more and better responses.
- Keep your SMEs updated on the progress of the course, as they own part of it now. It will pay big dividends later when you need reviewers.
- Request a backup SME for times when the SME is too busy to help.
⭐Shar’s Note: I once worked with an instructor SME who began each objective with the word “understand” for the weekly objectives. When I pointed out that we cannot measure understanding and provided the list of action verbs, the instructor very easily (and happily) updated the objectives from understand to explicit actions (like analyze, describe, identify, list) that would be measured by essay questions, discussions, or quiz questions.