Let’s face it, in the world of Instructional Design, our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) aren’t always as available as we’d like them to be. On paper, an Instructional Designer harvests knowledge from an expert at the company and then translates all that raw knowledge into learning. However, being a SME is never someone’s full-time job; they often have to squeeze any knowledge transfer between their day-to-day duties. I’ve gotten pretty good at nailing down a SME’s preferred method of communication, and it does help to communicate using whatever method your SME is most comfortable with… But no matter how much you may be able to cater to your SME’s communication methods and availability, you’ll never really get as much time with them as you wish you could.
In actual practice, we often don’t even get as much time with our SMEs as we need. Most IDs I know have had a project get delayed because someone hasn’t answered an email in 3 weeks, but that’s a hard blocker to convey to someone who’s managing our projects. After all, we live in the age of the internet, where information is at our fingertips, so even if our expert can’t provide us with information, shouldn’t we be able to find it? When faced with multiple delays from my SMEs, I’ve had the most gung-ho managers suggest Googling it and continuing with the march forward. But is that a viable solution?
I’ve worked in two companies now that deal in publicly-available information. My current role in the mortgage industry bases its loan offers on government-mandated regulations. These are technically available for anyone to look up and read. My last role, in the web hosting environment, utilized a ton of open-standard/open-source technology and programming languages. Again, in theory, information about these protocols is available to anyone to teach themselves. In order to keep my nose clean in my current position, we’ll focus primarily on the shortcomings from the web hosting role. But rest assured examples like this can be found in every industry.
Disclaimer: Your ID Shouldn’t be Your Expert
Before any of the seasoned Instructional Designers can roll their eyes, let me clarify something: I’m not talking about whether it’s the role of an Instructional Designer to become an expert in the field of a module they’re designing. However, for both industries I’ve been in, there are often miniscule differences that lead to very specific questions that MUST be answered, and whose answers can alter the course of a learning product. These are the things that, ideally, would be answered by your SME. The question we’re attempting to answer here is, will Google replace your SME for this purpose?
The Result of “Googling It”
I’ll give us two real-world anecdotes that came as the result of my ID department trying to “Google” their information when they were forced to meet a deadline that their SMEs were unable to support.
In my last role designing an intro course for web hosting technicians, we had to discuss server types. While TechRadar lists six different types of servers available for web hosting, our company only offered four. This wasn’t catastrophic, but in a two-week course that already overloaded our poor learners with information, it wasn’t a good experience that they were given 2 extra categories they needed to memorize when in reality they were never going to work with them.
Our company also owned a call center that specialized in WordPress sites. WordPress is a huge, open-source platform with many options for themes and plugins. It is unsurprising then, that when my coworker needed to search up examples of themes and plugins, not one of the examples he listed was actually sold by the WordPress center, or any of its parent companies. However, it would obviously be more beneficial to the company if the trainees were made most familiar with the themes and plugins we sold. A SME would know this. Google, and an ID who hasn’t been with our company long, would not.
These are two relatively-benign examples, and while they are not helpful experiences for leaners or our company, they do little to harm anyone either. However, the results of misinformation are not to be taken lightly. I’ve chosen these examples so as to not embarrass any former coworkers or drag my old company’s dirty laundry out in the open, but we can imagine what kind of consequences result from including misinformation in training. And misinformation is certainly out there, as we can see from the rise of medical misinformation.
Why is it Like This?
There’s a few answers to that: As Google hones in on the smart device market, it’s made use of Snippets – clips that display as enlarged text on a search result, that your Google Home reads off as the answer to any questions you ask it. The trouble is, these snippets are algorithmically based, and the machine learning behind the algorithms sometimes leads to incorrect results, such as telling you women are evil and that Hylian mushrooms from the Legend of Zelda are a key ingredient to red dye.
There’s also the fast-growing world of SEO- Search Engine Optimization. While I could take the rest of this article to explain what that is, Yoast and Semrush do it better, so I’ll keep it short. Remember how you used to be able to look up a recipe WITHOUT scrolling through an essay-long breakdown of where it came from? Well, we have SEO to thank for that era’s destruction. As more and more recipe blogs crowd the market and compete for space in the top pages of Google’s results, they are forced to add more content for the ‘bots to pick up on. Thus, the plainest, easiest-to-read, most reliable information isn’t always the top result in a search.
So What Can We Do?
In a field constantly plagued by deadlines and fast-flowing information, we can only attempt to alter what is within our grasp. Through educating our leadership, we can hope to open their eyes to the risks behind attempting to research something ourselves. Instead of going around our SMEs, we can make time for them. I say “make time” very deliberately here, because creating time for knowledge transfer is something an L&D department may have the ability to do. Instead of delaying a project because we must wait on a SME, consider how an L&D professional may interface with a manager. I’ve pulled my corporate weight on more than a few occasions to have my SME go on “training” time in their phone, and told them to refer to me if anyone asks questions. I find it very rare that anyone does. Educating leadership on a SME’s impact is crucial here, and I find that I’m able to utilize my weight more than my leadership sometimes counts on. Of course, there are situations where that’s not feasible, so in those cases where we have to research for ourselves, we must learn to “Google” better.
We CAN manipulate Google into working for us better. Time to talk about Search Operators.
Again, if you want a deep-dive into the hows and whys behind search operators, I refer you to Moz and SEJ, who will give you a better explanation than I can. But, if you’ve ever used the “and,” “or,” or quotations commands in a Google search, you’ve used search operators. These are special characters and commands within a Google search that refine your search into something that you actually want. So, in the case of the WordPress course, let’s say I need a list of image gallery plugins. I know that a trusted website already referred to in the existing training is WordPress’s open repository, WordPress.org. So, I can force Google to only search that website by using the command inurl:wordpress.org, gallery plugin.
With a leadership organization that’s willing to listen, and a few extra search command tricks up our sleeves, we can overcome a shortage of information directly from our SMEs.