Today I had a meeting with an SME to review an eLearning course I have designed and developed. Having been a classroom trainer for years the SME was very clear on the learning outcomes and the flow of the content. They wanted a lot of information on each slide which, ideally, would be repeated on the previous and next slide to confirm that the content was being covered, retained and linked together.

Every instructional element was questioned, I had to explain my design decisions of where to include activities, reflection points and certain wording.

As a learning designer sometimes we have to advise SME’s that learners need to take ownership of their learning experience, have time to think before information is provided and to make the wording personalised instead of formal.