What Happens When SMEs are Building All the Courses?
When is a SME not a SME, when they're also a course developer...
Read this.
Now read that again. Here’s how I read it - one person can do both jobs - they just switch tool sets. They really just need to be able think like one or the other. It goes deeper though. AI has been shown to raise the performance of people using it well. That means that not only can everyone be a front and back end dev (who knows how to think like that) but the worst will perform at a higher level.
Jane Bozarth, quoting the Future of Instructional Design survey (2024) done by Synthesia and Dr Philippa Hardman, pointed to one result - “Almost one third of ~400 respondents identify as subject matter experts who design courses, rather than instructional designers who work with SMEs.”
So now look, just extrapolate a little. What if the systems get smart enough so that we don’t need anyone creating compliance training content anymore? I mean we will but it’ll just be Brad in HR bringing up his AI assistant to create the new course on ethics, or sexual harassment, or information awareness. And the AI will spit out that content, customized for that company, with appropriate quizzes, etc., in about 10 seconds. Then an agent will load it into the LMS and another agent will send out the reminder emails and yet another will track results and ping the people slow to take the course. Then it’ll come for the sales enablement training.
Your ISDs aren’t sales SMEs. The sales people are. They’ll create their own content thanks. And it’ll be tied to an agent in SFDC that tracks where they are having issues and sends them content that it creates BY ITSELF, so that they can improve their performance. Then it’ll come for new product training and onboarding and on and on.
I’m not really trying to be all doom and gloom here but I will say that getting to be a subject-matter expert in a knowledge domain would be really helpful right about now. And thinking up the value chain - if AI automates away 70% of your current TO DO list, how will you describe your value to the company?
Wait. Didn’t this happen with REL tools starting around ‘09? (I’m looking at you articulate.)
Yes, SMEs building everything will be a phase. It has been before! This time, unlike with the trial of SMEs everywhere recording their meetings as trainings, or walking through their day with mobile video capture, AI will be there to help organize and curate. It can DO the editing, it can make the outline, and it can do it much faster and on average better than many average humans.
Though I don't think it can last. Why? Because human sensemakers are still better than silicon ones for fellow humans. We just don't seem to care as much about what our botfriends say or evaluate what they are telling us in the same way. We glaze over and gloss over. We do this for humans too, but less so and we already have developed cultures and other processes to deal with that.
As far as content quality? Sure, current tech probably gets us there now, and it's evolving fast to become even better.
It's the audience quality that I'm speaking to with reversion post-AI-SME boom. We humans have very predictable preferences, biases, and failings, and I don't see changing nearly so quickly. If we want to move people, for better or worse, it generally takes other people to do it.
Love all your posts and thanks so much for this one!