Welcome to ryanrwatkins.com

Research, teaching, and consulting on needs assessment, human and organizational performance improvement, e-learning readiness, and instructional design for distance education.

Improving both personal and organizational performance is typically a worthwhile, valuable, and often valiant effort. Improvement efforts will routinely bring about "bottom-line" benefits for your organization, and they will likewise regularly change lives within your organization. After all, improving performance isn’t just about improving productivity; it can also lead to increased job satisfaction, longer retention, improved the quality of life for employees, less stress, new social networks, retained knowledge, and numerous benefits that impact on the individuals that make up all organization as much as the organization itself and the society that the organization serves.

These beneficial results, nevertheless, rarely happen by chance alone.  Systematic and continual efforts to improve individual, team, organizational, and societal performance are required to ensure success. My research, teaching, and consulting focuses on one critical process in any performance improvement effort: the needs assessment. From developing theories to guide needs assessment applications to developing for determining what actions should be taken when needs are identified, my needs assessment work includes topics associated with collecting useful information, making informed decisions, and improving valued performance. I am currently working on my 6th book related to needs assessment, focusing on applications in international development assistance programs.

Having taught in distance education for over a decade, I also do a fair amount of writing, research, and consulting on topics associated with instructional design and e-learning readiness. From authoring the world's best-selling text on e-learning, the E-Learning Companion, to creating an online self-assessment of organizational readiness for e-learning, my work in distance education has offered practical challenges throughout my career. At George Washington University I am an Associate Professor in the completely online Educational Technology Leadership program, where I teach needs assessment, instructional design, organizational learning, and a number of related courses.

Lastly, I also develop and maintain two Websites:

www.needsassessment.org (a resource page of needs assessment related resources for practitioners, instructors, students, and others)

www.triplitcafe.com (a place where travelers can find, buy, share, and discuss books they read about the places they visit)