We can all feel our pulse quicken, our emotions rise when we get chance to talk or write about a topic that engages us totally.

And we usually know lots about this topic. We can frequently talk about it for hours without getting bored. We can tell anyone willing to listen about its every last detail. In that sense, we are all subject matter experts (SMEs) in something.

As instructional designers, when we have a talkative SME in front of us and limited time to get the information we want, it's worth remembering how our own passion for a particular subject matter can allow us to get carried away.

So aside from being more empathetic to a talkative SME, is there anything else we can do to make our time with them more productive? I think there are four areas to consider when gathering content from SMEs. By the way, the greater the quantity of content you need to gather, the more you are likely to want to formalise the approaches below.

Ownership
Before any information gathering even happens, you need to take ownership of the process. This may involve becoming more assertive than normal: be quite specific about how you want the process to unfold, including the number of meetings you'll need, how long each meeting should be and how much time you'll need between meetings for reviewing and feedback.

Planning
Tempting as it might be to go into your early meetings knowing nothing, better to do research to familiarise yourself with the subject matter area. Spend time creating a basic project plan. Clearly define your and their roles in the whole process. Formally identify the risks of not getting the required information in a timely fashion and communicate this to the project sponsor.

Connecting
Your initial research can pay dividends once you start interacting with your SME. Exhibiting some knowledge of his/her topic can help build rapport and, more important, establish your credibility. Earn trust by emphasising the confidentiality of your information gathering sessions and the promise of a review of content before making it more widely available.

As the content gathering progresses, aim to establish points of shared interest both within the subject matter area and outside. Most people appreciate a little interest in their life outside work.

Focusing
Set an agenda in advance of the meeting clearly stating goals and expectations.
During your content gathering sessions, regularly paraphrase, clarify and summarise what you have covered; use closed questioning techniques if your SME has a tendency to go off on tangents. After the session, collate the content into a structured document you can share with your SME for review and feedback.


It's easy to dismiss some of the subject matter experts we deal with in our professional capacity as out of control windbags who want to bore us and our learners with every last detail of their knowledge.

That may be true. But let's not forget, given the right topic and the opportunity, many of us can happily do the same.

So with a bit empathy and some detailed preparation and work before, during and after your content gathering, the analysis phase of your project need not be an out of control nightmare.

If out of control SMEs are your current nightmare, check out our the Analysis and Planning modules in our instructional design programme for help on dealing with this problem.

 At a conference a year or so ago, I noticed a seminar that drew a good crowd was entitled, "Who says e-learning compliance training has to be boring?". Well not me for sure.

Perhaps, I'm a bit naive, but even now (after many years in the world of learning) it shocks me that some people can shrug their shoulders and say., "well this material is pretty dry and boring, so we'll just have to accept that the way we deliver it is dry and boring". To me that's a bit like the designers at a car company saying, "well it's a bit difficult to design a really comfortable car seat, so we'll just fit the car with uncomfortable wooden benches and the passengers will have to lump it."

Perhaps the acceptance of poor quality compliance training is linked to the box ticking mentality that often accompanies the dreaded 'c' word. We have to do the training  -  even though nobody wants to, so let's just collectively hold our noses and all be bored together - designers, trainers and delegates. Oh yes, and let's make it even worse, by delivering it as the most boring, sleep-inducing piece of e-learning you have ever seen.

From this point of view, you'd think that compliance in a particular job role or organisation wasn't something anybody really needed to know or do. Yet it most definitely is.

So rather than treating it as a dry abstract topic, why not relate it back to the context or contexts in which learners need to be compliant? Why not provide the learners with challenging, life-like scenarios and activities that require them to think about what they actually need to do to be compliant. How about some intrinsic, contextual feedback that vividly demonstrates the consequences of not being compliant or trying to cut corners.

If you find yourself nodding your head in agreement but you are feeling a bit unsure about the effectiveness of your e-learning in general and your compliance e-learning in particular, take a couple of minutes to complete our E-Learning Impact Scorecard which can help you benchmark what you are doing against some of our recommended best practices. 

It was the late Steve Jobs who said: "Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Classic Steve. In just a couple of sentences he sums up one of the fundamental factors in Apple's phenomenal success.

But you don't have to be the producer of uber-cool computers and gadgets to find relevance in his words. They could be equally applied to aspects of e-learning - particularly with regard to the interface we devise for learners.

In my view, there's an interesting distinction to be made here between User Interface Design (UID) and Learner Interface Design (LID). The first is probably a more familiar term than the latter.

In an e-learning context, UID is about total simplicity and focusing on the ease of use of a course. Good UID shouldn't leave people pondering the outcome of alternative actions. It generally aims to minimise mental involvement. The overriding imperative of good UID? "Don't make the user think".

Now here's the difficult bit. LID, by contrast, has exactly the opposite imperative. It's totally about helping learners to think, learn and perform. Designing a learning interface is about getting learners to engage their mental faculties in order to learn. And this might involve confronting them with problems, challenges and issues.

In designing a learner interface, the focus should be on making it relevant and motivating. Something that will help the learner remember and implement what they learnt long after the learning event.

So, the challenge for e-learning developers is two-fold. First, being clear about the difference between the two concepts. Second, understanding where and when to apply one or the other.

If e-learning design and its overall effectiveness is something you are concerned with or responsible for, why not take our E-learning Impact Scorecard to help you benchmark where you might be with your overall e-learning design approach and any associated tools and techniques. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and it's entirely free.

When we are designing training programmes, how much should we consider learners' self-awareness of their learning preferences?

At the risk of doing a Donald Rumsfeld (he of the 'known unknowns'), one of the things that I find fascinating about learning and knowledge transfer is whether we know what we know.

In other words, how much are we really able to assess our own learning needs and preferences?

On this topic, I offer you a fascinating piece of research carried out by a group of people with the snappy surnames of Schnackenberg, Sullivan, Leader and Jones.

In their research, a group of learners taking an e-learning course, were given a survey about their preferences for the amount of practice they do when learning - either high or low.

The learners were then assigned to two different e-learning courses one with a high level of practice, the other with minimal practice.

Half the learners were given the version of the course that matched their preference, the other half were deliberately mismatched.

I've written previously about the significance of practice activities in learning, so you may not be surprised to discover that regardless of their preference, those who took the version of the course with more practice scored significantly higher on a post-course test than those who had taken the version with minimal practice.

First of all, this highlights the importance of practice activities in learning. But the results are important for another reason. They chime with quite a bit of other research that points to a frequent mismatch between what we think we want as learners and what actually produces results.

In other words, our perceived preferences about how we like to learn are not always good indicators of the way we actually need to learn.

If you are new to the world of learning and instructional design (or want to enhance your existing skills) then our modular impact and instructional design programme is very focused on practical tools, techniques and principles designed to get you better results from the training courses you design. The programme is ITOL accredited too, so you have the option to get a meaningful certificate or diploma from it upon completion.

Is a successful learning experience purely about external factors or do our own internal beliefs and motivations play a part?

We've all had good and bad learning experiences, so this is a fascinating question. How much is that success or failure purely down to external influences?

If we go back to the 1930s, Thorndike's Law of Effect holds that a correct answer needs a response to reward the learner. A "Well done, that's the right answer", from the trainer helps strengthen the association between the question and the correct answer and increases the probability of a similar correct response the next time around.

I think most people in the world of learning and development would broadly agree with this view. But this emphasises the external environment. What about if we also put an individual's beliefs into the centre of the picture. It's likely that we then have several other factors to take into account.

1. Beliefs about yourself
Do you believe you can succeed and acquire the knowledge and skills you are setting out to learn? This level of belief varies tremendously and is influenced by existing knowledge and experience. Go outside of familiar territories and domains and it is likely our self-belief and confidence will plummet.

2. Beliefs about the learning content
Is the content interesting? Genuine personal interest makes learners far more willing to engage with content - even when dull and boring. If personal interest is low or non-existent than we need to create situational interest. In other words, grab learners' attention and interest by making sure the learning content is well-crafted and engaging.

3. Beliefs about the success or failure of learning
Do learners believe the outcome they achieved was under or outside their control? Do they believe it was a poor trainer that caused them to fail or sheer good luck that they did well? Whether the outcome is positive or negative, research into something called attribution theory suggests a learner who believes an outcome was caused by factors outside their control, is far less likely to be motivated to succeed in the future.

By contrast, a learner who attributes success or failure to their own effort (or lack of it) is far more likely to be productive and put in more effort next time around.

This suggests it is hugely important to foster an environment that encourages learners to understand (and believe) that the success of learning outcomes is clearly within their control

Of course, all of this is just scraping the surface of an immensely complex (and very interesting) area. But it's a good reminder that we shouldn't just focus on external factors (important as they are) when thinking about how to achieve successful learning.