Course · 4 lessons · 48 minutes
The Human Side of Instructional Design
Working with Subject Matter Experts
Your expert just sent a 212-page manual instead of taking the meeting. In under an hour you’ll know what that email is telling you, and what to send back.
What you walk away with
Module 1 is free. By the end you can:
- Read deflection, nitpicking, hostility and silence as signals of what helping you costs the expert.
- Name the four stakes behind it (time, reputation, control, history) and know which to check first.
- See thin or bloated content as expertise compressing, not as laziness.
- Draft a reply to a reluctant expert that checks the constraint and secures a workable next step: twenty minutes aimed at what the expert is protecting, not three weeks of building and a draft back with 61 comments.
Who it’s for
Instructional designers who can already build a course. If you’re about to meet your first subject matter expert, start here. If you’ve worked with fifty and still take the deflection personally, Lesson 3 changes how you read the next email. It skips tool training.
The practice is fictional: Ray Ostrowski’s email, read line by line and answered in your own words, and Priya Raghavan’s “just build it from my deck,” answered in a branching scenario.
By the end of Module 1, you’ll be able to
- Read an expert’s behavior (deflection, over-supply, silence) as information about what helping you costs them, and draft a reply that checks the constraint and secures a workable next step
About Dean
I’m Dean Ahlgren. I’ve been an instructional designer for 25 years, built more than 200 courses, and worked with more than 200 subject matter experts, most of them at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The rest were in pharmaceutical compliance, heavy machinery safety at Bechtel, and a tech startup. Different industries, same job.
What the full course will cover (planned)
Only Module 1 is built, and it is free. Modules 0 and 2 to 7 are planned and not built.
| Module | What it covers | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Module 0, Orientation | How the course works, a self-assessment, and picking your project. | Planned |
| Module 1, Think Like Your SME | Why experts behave the way they do, and what helping you costs them. | Built. Free. |
| Module 2, The Kickoff | The meeting that prevents most of what goes wrong later, and the one-page brief. | Planned |
| Module 3, Extraction | Getting knowledge out of a busy expert in 30 minutes, and getting them to prioritize. | Planned |
| Module 4, Translation | Expert material into learning material that survives the expert’s accuracy review. | Planned |
| Module 5, Review Cycles | Feedback in both directions, including telling a senior expert their content needs rework. | Planned |
| Module 6, When It Goes Sideways | Six difficult-SME patterns, what each means, and what to do first. | Planned |
| Module 7, Capstone | One complete SME relationship on the Meridian project, then your personal playbook. | Planned |
What the full course is planned to include
The full course is planned to come with fourteen job aids (kickoff brief, question bank, review template, email pack, field guide among them), seven branching practice scenarios, and a personal SME playbook you would assemble in the capstone. This module gives you the idea, the practice, and one checklist to take with you.
Lessons
- The Course That Two Experts Nearly Sank One sculpture course, two experts, and what was really wrong with the content. · 5 minutes
- The Curse of Knowledge Why thin or bloated expert content is not a verdict on the expert. · 8 minutes
- What Your SME Has at Stake The four things an expert risks when they help you, and how to read them. · 20 minutes
- Translator, Advocate, Driver What you are in this relationship, and what to do with a reluctant expert. · 15 minutes