Not very interesting, I’m afraid, but I have made some changes to the structure of my web site prior to a new graphics design, and I’d like readers to be aware of these changes. The aim has been to make search for specific resources easier and to provide eventually a cleaner home page.
This has been quite a challenge with more than 2,500 posts over a 10 year period. A lot of the changes are boring but necessary maintenance – removing or up-dating dead links, in some cases up-dating earlier posts to take account of later developments, adding graphics, but the main work has been to provide a simplified but logical structure to make search easier and more intuitive. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much there is on many topics, but also where there are large gaps. I want this site though to be as useful as possible as source of information on online and distance education.
Let me know what you think, although the new graphic design is still to be implemented.
Simplified menu on home page
You will see I have reduced the pull-down menus to five:
- home (front/first page)
- latest (all posts in chronological order, latest first)
- resources
- about Tony Bates
- contact
Resources page
This is now one page (instead of 10 pull-down pages), with several sub-pages (click on ‘Resources’ in the menu):
- finding topics on the site, with three possible search strategies:
- using the ‘search’ box (top right corner of each page/post)
- search by curated topic: I have taken some popular topics and provided links to all the post on those topics
- search by category: either by author, or by ‘tagged’ categories
- definitions: a whole page devoted to definitions of online learning, distance education, open education, etc.
- book series on online and distance education
- journals
- research on online and distance learning
- organisations supporting online and distance learning
- recommended graduate programs on online and distance education
- video for teaching online or at a distance
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- videos about online and distance education (except videos of me, which are under ‘about Tony Bates‘)
- virtual worlds/reality
- serious games
- e-portfolios
- OER
- other resources (other web sites focused on online or distance education)
About Tony Bates
Several previous home page menu items are now integrated into this one page, with sub-pages. This is the area where I have added a considerable amount of new material:
- short bio (the sub-page linking to a full CV)
- my books (finalised)
- my papers and keynotes
- videos of my presentations or interviews with me
- a personal guide to online and distance learning around the world.
This personal guide to online learning around the world is a considerable enlargement of what previously was a carousel of images from different countries. In particular, I am developing a guide to online learning in every province in Canada, combined with my own photographs from within these provinces, as well as a range of other countries. This is a work still in process and will be for the rest of the year.
Next
There is still some tidying up to do to complete changes to some pages, but the next big step will be a complete redesign of the page and post layouts, to give them a cleaner, more visual and more current graphic design. I hope this will be complete by the end of this month.
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.
