2016 Issue

through IT innovation, joins the view of technological history to the popular tradi- tion known as consensus history. The latest phase of any technology may appear to be an emerging trend, but tech- nology, like science, evolves from previous stages as famously described by Thomas Kuhn [2]. Knowledge of technology history is what is often meant by the expression relevant job experience within job descrip- tions used in the industry. Technological history is also used to establish required novelty by describing the prior art in pat- ents [4]. As this symposium investigates emerging Information Technology (IT) trends in higher education, a brief review of the development of those technologies seems consistent with those practices. EVOLUTION OF ONLINE LEARNING Distance learning might be defined as methods that serve remote communities of otherwise less privileged students, whether these students are inner city, rural or de- ployed military. The University of Maryland University College was established to serve in this manner in 1947 [5]. Initial distance learning began with written course materi- als. As television evolved, distance learning incorporated broadcasts, closed-circuit courses and recorded courses (prior to the Internet). In 1945, a now famous draft paper on com- puters by John von Neumann was distrib- uted. Universities built their own versions based upon this report, and the University of Illinois was the first, completing its Il- liac computer in 1952 [6, 31, 32]. In 1949 Physicist Ralph Meager headed Digital Computer Laboratory, an engineering & physics (hardware) focus that became Computer Science in 1964. He was chief engineer in developing the Il- liac (Figure 2). This early electric computer design and manufacture was coordinated under the (now known as Coordinated Science Lab (CSL) which was founded by Francis Wheeler Loomis in 1951. As much of modern tech- nology, the inspiration and professional relationships for groundbreaking work came out of the war effort. Loomis worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground (where the early electronic computers were located), was associate head of the MIT Radiation Lab (fromwhichmuch of the fundingmodel for academic research originated) and was the founder of MIT Lincoln Labs (the sec- ond two accomplishments while on leave to assist the government from the University of Illinois) to assist the government [39, 41]. Thus, Loomis was a contemporary of Vannevar Bush at MIT who was Frederick Terman’s doctoral advisor (Terman became well known fromhis leadership at Stanford). John von Neumann, Francis Wheeler Loo- mis, Vannevar Bush and Frederick Terman created much of the organizational basis of today’s science and the foundational basis for modern technology. In 1959 Donald Bitzer and others at the university had the idea to use the new computer for online education [10, 40, 43]. Bitzer invented the acronym Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations (PLATO). His vision was distance learning via computer, especially for inner city stu- dents [16] which still rings true today [17]. Funding came initially through The Joint Services Program, then through NSF and later fromControl Data Corporation (CDC) [7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 36]. PLATO went through a series of proof of concept and hardware iterations that increased the number of student terminals, beginning with just one terminal [15, 22]. To provide historical per- spective, this was still the era of calculations by slide rule. The first handheld electronic calculator was not commercially available until 1972 (and was prohibitively expensive). The revolutionary computing innovations that sprung out of PLATO are legendary. These include employment of high school students as programmers (many who grew to computing gurus), online community, so- cial gaming, instant message, chat rooms, email, time sharing, what became Lotus Notes, the high speed modem, display with touch input, and the invention of the plasma display [33, 34, 35]. However, the PLATO approach did not become a successful mainstream product (although its software remained in com- mercial use). Instead, the conventional practice of courses televised to off-campus locations grew. Therefore, PLATO has been viewed by some business scholars as a case study of failed innovation. Further- more, PLATO so predated the personal computer and internet booms that most are unaware of this set of innovations (such as the admission by John Markoff in the Computer History Museum interview [10], a well-known author of What the Doormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. Another of the most fascinating aspects of Bitzer’s contribution to education was his seminal reliance upon high school programmers, foreshadowing today’s tradition of venture capital funding IT start-ups foundered by college drop-outs. These programmers came from the small but prestigious experimental University of Illinois Laboratory High School in Urbana Figure 1 – Trend chart for NSF (red), nanotechnology (yellow), MOOC (blue), ranking in that order Figure 2 - Illiac with permission, University of Illinois Archives TECHNOLOGY | continued on page 34 33