Apps and Platforms: Canva, Envato Elements

Time allocated (research and development): 60 hours  

My role: research, graphic design, development

Client: personal project, adapted by IDOL Courses Academy

CASE STUDY

Context: This guide was developed for my fellow E-learning Developers and Instructional Designers who could use some guidelines and advice when preparing for a kick-off meeting with a SME.

Challenges: Preparing for a kick-off meeting with a SME is probably one of the trickiest moments in a project collaboration. During my research for creating this guide, I discovered that there are limited sources of information available for the kick-off meeting stage. Most of the information focuses on the entire collaboration with a SME, but it rarely selects only one step and provides guidelines on what to do or how to approach specific challenges.

With or without experience in the field of L&D, the feeling of new beginnings still strikes a cord, because if you are a newbie, you want to make a good impression and create the foundations for an effective future collaboration, and if you are a seasoned professional, you want to make sure you tick the right boxes and find that wavelength where you create a connection with the SME and what you say makes sense and vice versa.

Solutions: This quick guide includes 8 major advice categories, and each category presents additional micro-guidelines. This collection is, for sure, incomplete and I do consider it a work in progress, but the added value of it consists in having a guide of recommendations focused only one stage in the SME collaboration, and that is the kick-off meeting.

Results: The targeted approach helps all level L&D professionals to approach the kick-off meeting less like a challenge and more like a constructive opportunity, for themselves and their projects.