Who writes content?

In a conversation with Dr. Hansen, an extraordinary Instructional Design professor, she asked me who wrote content for my modules.

I responded that I did. She looked a little concerned as she stated that, when she worked at Arthur Anderson, she had her SMEs write the content, after they agreed on objectives. She would work with the material, but never sat down with a blank piece of paper.

All of the designers I know sit down with volumes of material, and select and assemble the pieces of information needed for the module with SME help. Thus, we do a lot more content development than she was describing.

There are some marked difference between her SME set-up and the ones that I've work with. Her SMEs were dedicated to her for a number of month. Content development was their job. Her SMEs were also, I think, better able to write content. I absolutely don't look down on the salespeople that I work with, but they are not very skilled at setting words to paper.

Product people and engineers, on the other hand, are able to create an initial draft of content. That, then, raises the issue that they'll try to add the history of the world and expect it all to be taught the way it is written. This will lead to a game of "Push-back" as I try to trim the material down to the objectives.

You can see that I'm still thinking through this. But it does raise the both raise the question of what I should be focusing on, and gives me some small amount of authority to question the expectation that I am a content developer.