No topic is more emotional to Instructional Designers that the role of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Often, the lack of availability of SMEs leads to immense frustration. Organizations should promote a culture where the contributions of SMEs to training is properly valued. Whenever possible, the SME should be encouraged to have an attitude of “ownership” towards the outcome, and rewarded for this.

As a practical consideration though, one must remember that the SMEs have many competing demands, and they may see training development as a relatively low priority. Instructional Designers must be able to extract the maximum benefit in the least possible time.

Clearly, in order to be highly effective, training material should include input from those with the most expertise. The phase for this input should be "front loaded," so that the most effort from the SME is during the analysis phase. That way, when the SME is asked to review the material, hopefully only minimal revisions are required. It can be very frustrating to everyone when the knowledge transfer early on is insufficient, and as a result large parts of the materials must be redone.

In reality, for most content, the Instructional Designer must become a "sub-expert" in the content over time. This allows the Instructional Designer to figure out the best way to teach the content. An advantage that the Instructional Designer has is that by learning the content, they can also figure out how someone else can best learn the content. Often, it is almost impossible for SMEs to describe content in "layman's terms." In general, technical content should be written in such terms, i.e., not assuming much prior knowledge. When interacting with SMEs you must convince them that they must respond to your cues to explain things in ways that make sense to someone who is not already an expert.