Ryan Watkins, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the George Washington University in Washington DC. His most recent book is A Guide to Assessing Needs: Essential Tools for Collecting Information, Making Decisions, and Achieving Development Results (online copies available for free through the World Bank, 2011). He is also an author of the world's top-selling text on e-learning (with more than 100,000 copies in press and a 4th edition in the works), the E-learning Companion: A learner's guide to online success (Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 2007, 2010), along with other books including the Handbook for Improving Performance in the Workplace - Volume 2 (Pfieffer/Wiley, 2010), Performance By Design: The systematic selection, design, and development of performance technologies (HRD Press, 2006), and 75 E-learning Activities: Making online courses interactive (Pfieffer, 2005). The Handbook for Improving Performance in the Workplace won a 2011 ISPI Award of Excellence in the field of performance improvement. In addition, he has co-authored three other books on organizational planning and more than 95 articles on instructional design, strategic planning, needs assessment, distance education, and performance technology. His articles are frequently cited in the performance improvement literature, making him the 4th most cited author of journal articles in the field.* Ryan is an active member of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) and was a vice president of the Inter-American Distance Education Consortium (CREAD). In 2005 Ryan was a visiting scientist with the National Science Foundation, and he routinely works on projects with the World Bank on applying needs assessment, instructional design, and performance improvement to international assistance programs (including recent work in China and Laos).