DishingDesign

As we expand our culinary capabilities in the blog-sphere, DishingDesign is trying out something new; a blog series. We have been working tirelessly in the kitchen on this endeavor, with many a night ending in starting back at the beginning with flour on our face and no closer to a final dish to serve. But, now we are ready to present to you our series on the CIP.

To the majority of us we are probably scratching our heads and wondering what CIP means. It’s not an exotic fruit or a rare fish that must be cut precisely, it’s a Subject Matter Expert, or SME. A SME is the same as a CIP, or Content Information Provider. We would like instructional designers (IDs) and SMEs alike to begin thinking about using the latter titling to decrease potential performance and project risks. This could be a case of “We say Tah-MATE-TOE, you say Tah-MOT-TOE”, but let’s have the Iron Chef of ID, Dr. Karl M. Kapp, give us some insight to his rationalization for using (and creating!) this term.

He explains that when an individual is brought on to provide content or knowledge to develop learning materials that oftentimes it is their first experience in being part of a training initiative. Using the term “expert” may result in them choking (you know freezing up) from providing that valuable knowledge. Karl further elaborates by saying it can set an unrealistic expectation in the mind of the designated “expert” of what they must do as part of the team. This, in turn, can create risk within the project timeline because the performance of this individual may be skewed based on their comprehension of their role.

Using the term CIP allows for a more lay term designation to what IDs use as industry nomenclature; SME. Whether you opt to use the new terming or the old, it draws out an excellent element that can hinder the success of a training project; expectations and job function of a CIP.

Below is a list of roles and responsibilities that we believe a CIP should perform wholly or partly depending on if they are sharing the role of CIP with others. This list can be leveraged for use in general documentation for team positions or for onboarding a new CIP to your project.

Roles and Responsibilities
A CIP contributes the core content and original materials, as well as validates content accuracy. Additionally, the CIP will need to be available for future content gathering through formal or informal methods (interviews, e-mail, etc.). CIPs can be repositories of both primary and secondary sources of information such as:

• Source materials and reference items:
  • journal articles
  • books
  • websites
  • Intranet sites
  • trade and industry publications
• Personal experiences (which can lead to the formulation of best practices or the basis for specific instructional strategies):
  • case studies
  • labs
  • interactive scenarios
  • workshops
  • demonstrations
  • simulations

What term do you or your organization use for your “experts?”