At the recent eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions conference in Orlando, I presented a session on how managers can enable greater subject matter expert collaboration with design and development teams (IDD). I was excited to see a packed room with a very attentive group of eLearning project managers and instructional designers.
Adding to the inspiration were the two conference keynote speakers (Sir Ken Robertson and Jonah Lehrer), who also addressed the value of understanding the tacit knowledge that experts may know but find hard to share. Jonah Lehrer, author of
How We Decide, talked about his flight simulator experience and the importance of understanding how emotions and hidden patterns play a big part in an expert’s decision-making process.
Getting at those hidden patterns that experts might not consciously realize is an important task of a designer of eLearning programs, especially games and simulations. In his
white paper Clark Aldrich discusses a process to get at the invisible systems that experts know from experience. He strongly advocates asking experts to discuss failure, so designers can use it to allow learners to experience the consequence of a bad decision.
