I am a technical content development professional myself, and when I have created courses, I ‘ve been heavily involved with the subject.

However, there is a distinct difference between the ID and a content developer. The ID needs to focus on the course structure, and the content development on the course content.

Sometimes, the 2 roles may merge into one, depending on resource availability, budgets etc.

That’s my 2 cents !

Thanks for this!

You have pointed to a fundamental flaw – the first elearning myth – that it’s easy to convert printable resource material into elearning resources.

However skilled the cook is, the idea of making a good soup out of a given sauce with little or no extra ingredients is what dooms the project. It’s not the technologists or knowledge workers that are flawed. It’s the given materials.

Catchya later

An SME is just not available for the ID many times. So, even though the ID is obviously not an expert, demands are placed on them to deliver storyboards for learning modules or simulations. In such scenarios, summarizing skills and quick comprehensions of the outline if not the subject becomes key.

This obviously will not work always, but for certain types of courses like say soft-skills courses, it is not unusual to see this being followed. For something really heavy like say an ERP, this certainly will not work .

My 2 Cents.

Though I admire the diligent approach here, I can’t say I altogether agree with it. I feel that there is the tendency for instructional designers to start believing that they can rapidly become be subject experts. There is a fallacy in this assumption.

I teach Level 3 Chemistry, and I’ve also taught Level 3 Physics and a similar level of Mathematics (Level 3 is equivalent to just below first year university). I have a degree with stage 2 Physics and Mathematics and a PhD in Chemistry. I am adequately educated to teach all these subjects at Level 3.

From what I read from your post, I would assume that if I hired an instructional designer to create some Level 3 Science resources, the designer would have to go away and study the relevant theory from texts or off the Net. Presumably I might be able to help with this by selecting suitable resources for this study?

Frankly, I might as well find myself a few recommended books on instructional designing and with direction from an instructional designer, I could then go about the task of doing the instructional designing for myself.

So I challenge the idea that the instructional designer has to learn all this subject stuff, no more than you would expect me to start learning all about instructional design.

There is far too much involved in understanding the theory and background of most technical subjects – in business management, language, or specialised Science etc – for it to be effective and efficient for the instructional designer to assimilate all this.

Instructional designers and subject matter specialists have simply to learn to work with one another. Sure, they both need skills to do this. Good people skills, good communication skills and a willingness to learn are certainly among the needs of both. But that’s where it should remain.

Do you see my point?

Catchya later

Just one more point I would like to add: When reading any content that will converted to a course, keep the learner at the forefront of your mind…

Basically, we have to do two things:
1. Read to deconstruct and construct the content differently for online presentation
2. Read to understand what would be the key “learning points” in the content–what constitutes must knows and what is the fluff surrounding that.