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If you develop training materials, you've probably spent time interviewing subject matter experts to get the content from their heads into a form that can he communicated to trainees. And perhaps you've wondered if there's a better way.
The instructional systems design models that have been used in the past offer many prescriptions for selecting training strategies and managing course development. But they do not provide guidelines about how to elicit or generate the subject matter itself; they seem to assume that content is a given.
The reason may be that many ISD models were originally developed for traditional educational systems, in which the subject matter could quickly be found in existing textbooks, or for military use, in which content consisted of existing regulations or documented procedures.
It's different in corporations. Often, experts need to develop instruction for a new product that has not been fully documented or even completely developed. Even more critical, there is usually no single "correct" content. Various subject matter experts may have different opinions about what should be included in the training, how it should be explained, and which particular facts should be disseminated.
The art of specifying content for training courses is becoming more complex. Often the processes and products being taught are in a state of continuous change. And, as the community of trainees in U.S. companies becomes more diverse, it is progressively more difficult to communicate the same meanings accurately and efficiently to everyone. Basically, we have moved away from the following:
* teaching stable and agreed-upon content by having homogeneous audiences memorize relevant terms and procedures
* attempting to teach fluctuating and debatable content through abstract models for problem solving.
We have developed several techniques that should make the job of eliciting information from subject matter experts easier. The techniques should assist instructional designers in the following:
* avoiding some of the common pitfalls associated with debriefing experts on highly complex concepts
* making the process for eliciting knowledge more efficient
* generating and incorporating the input of a team of experts so that the training is valid, comprehensive, and appropriate to the intended audience
* identifying areas of commonality and areas of diversity in the input of the design team
* documenting the content to...