'Tony Bates is Director of Distance Education and Technology, Continuing Studies, the University of British Columbia, since 1995. As such, he is responsible for managing the development and delivery of 100 distance education courses with 5,500 student enrolments a year. He is also a member of a committee developing a plan for learning technologies throughout UBC.

He was project leader for a national research study on cost-benefit analysis of telelearning, funded by the Canadian Federal Government’s NCE-Telelearning project and its Office of Learning Technologies (OLT) between 1996-2000. He was also project leader from 1997-2000 of an OLT funded study on the impact of technology on adult learners. He is heading up a new three year (2001-2003) OLT funded project on the costs and benefits of learning technologies. He is also the Director of an international Centre for Planning and Managing Learning Technologies in Higher Education established at UBC.

Prior to working for UBC, he was Executive Director, Research, Strategic Planning, and Information Technology at the Open Learning Agency of British Columbia, where he worked from 1990 to 1995. Before that, he was a founding member of staff and Professor of Educational Media Research at the British Open University, where he worked for 20 years.

He is the author of six books, including his latest, co-edited with Rhonda Epper, ‘Teaching Faculty How to Use Technology’, published in 2001 by ACE/Oryx. He is also author of 'Managing Technological Change: Strategies for University and College Leaders' published by Jossey Bass in 2000. A previous book, ‘Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education’, Routledge, 1995 won UCEA’s Charles Wedemeyer award for the best book on distance education published in 1995. His research groups at the UKOU, OLA and UBC have published over 350 papers in the area of distance education and the use of technology for teaching.

He has worked as a consultant in over 30 countries. His clients include State Higher Education Commissions, international organizations such as the World Bank and UNESCO, and universities in many different countries. In 2000 was awarded honorary life membership of the Canadian Association of Distance Education.

He has a Ph.D. in educational administration and a post-graduate certificate of education from the University of London, and a B.A. (Hons.) in psychology from the University of Sheffield, U.K. In 1995 the Open University of Portugal awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa for his research in distance education, and he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Laurentian University in 2001.'