History of Computing within the College of Business
by Dave Sullivan
History moves quickly in the computer field—each "generation" of personal
computers lasts about three years. Given this sort of relentless change, it
becomes critical to understand the progression of technology and make reasonable
predictions about what the future will bring.
 We
all need to rethink how we communicate. Everyone is familiar with face-to-face
communication and print media. These methods work reliably and have been the
historical backbone of education at all levels—from kindergarten through
doctoral programs. I can't blame anyone who has a knee-jerk reaction against
shifting away from such time-honored methods of interacting. On the other hand,
as computers keep getting faster, cheaper, and better, they become useful in
more and more settings. Because people don't like change, the conversion from
one method of operating to another is unsettling. Face-to-face communication and
printed documents will remain important, but in many settings, we should adopt
newer, better methods.
The importance of rethinking our activities becomes clearer when we look
through a historical perspective. Think about the implications of the photo at
the right. It shows students at Oregon Agricultural College (since renamed
Oregon State University) learning to use high-tech equipment in 1911.
Although I was hired at Oregon State University in 1981, I still think of
myself as a young man. But my body has started to creak, and I now find myself a
senior faculty member. So I suppose it is appropriate for me to discuss where we
stand in an historical context. I have seen our introductory computing classes
go through four milestones.
Milestone #1—Moving from batch-oriented to interactive processing.
Prior to my arrival in 1981, students learned to program in Fortran with
punched cards. But in Fall term 1981, the College began teaching students to
enter Basic programs directly into a mainframe computer. At that time, the
College required students to study programming even though students were
unlikely to use the skill after graduation. The faculty thought the study of
step-by-step programming logic was good for its own sake—like Castor oil or
physical education.
Milestone #2—Using personal computers as stand-alone tools.
The next shift occurred around 1985 when the College set up a personal
computer lab to teach about word processing and spreadsheets. This shift was
more controversial than it might seem today. I remember a University Computer
Committee meeting at which the computer center's director pounded the table
red-faced when I argued against buying another mainframe computer so we could
buy PCs instead. More locally, the college faculty discussed extensively
whether to continue teaching programming, and eventually decided to drop the
requirement.
Milestone #3—Using the web to publish ideas.
Fall 1994 brought two innovations: students received storage locations on
our network, and we installed the college's first web server. We probably were
the first Business College in the nation to require all students to build web
pages. Without much public discussion, I simply stuck this material in the
required BA271 course. For whatever it is worth, to the best of my knowledge,
no one in the College of Business had built a web page prior to the summer of
1994.
More than the other milestones, this change represented a unique historic
shift. Never before had it been possible to publish an idea worldwide at the
touch of a button.
Milestone #4—Using networks to support learning.
In the last few years, for the first time I had all necessary tools
to shift from batch-oriented, lecture-based teaching to on-demand learning.
This means I can now package instruction to play back at a student's
convenience. All student work in my classes—exams and assignments—is turned in
electronically or harvested automatically, and most feedback is returned
through personalized email messages. The only real downside that I have
noticed is the loss of textbook royalties. I no longer need a publisher to
package my ideas for distribution, and as a consequence, people no longer pay
to read my thoughts.
Unlike the other milestones, no single tool or invention has driven this
shift. Instead, a whole collection of programs and networking improvements now
work together and allow new ways of exchanging ideas. Part of this shift is
driven by better reliability and availability of networked computers, part by
better software tools, but a large part comes from learning better ways to
provide information interactively.
As enthusiastic as I am about the new techniques, they face large obstacles:
- Instructors can no longer rely on the next edition of "the textbook" to
"cover the material." Publishers have no clue how to charge for ideas
exchanged through networks, so they continue to push "cram-and-flush" models
of learning.
- Many tools for exchanging information through networks are new, and
they vary widely in ease of use and reliability. For example, the video files
that we have recorded for these classes are too large to download and play
reliably outside of Bexell Hall.
- Just as opinions were divided in 1985 about whether to replace mainframe
computers with PCs, opinions remain split about whether to replace traditional
methods of communication with electronic ones. Some people feel comfortable
judging intellectual prowess only by counting paper-based articles. Similarly,
the traditional way of measuring teaching loads has been to count lecture
periods. Thus, if I spend my time building instructional websites and video
files, I am likely to receive unsatisfactory performance reviews from
administrators who count publications in printed academic journals.
Given all these obstacles, why am I optimistic? The College of Business is in
a wonderful position to take full advantage of this most recent milestone. Gwen
Wolfram, the college's Information Services manager, and his support crew have
done an excellent job of putting together a reliable network with
state-of-the-art software. The Information Systems faculty—James Coakley, V. T.
Raja, Byron Marshall, Rene Reitsma, Ray Tanner, and
I—are committed to packing our courses with cutting-edge knowledge and
activities. Finally, except for a couple of years after the Dot.com
implosion, the response from the job market has been truly uplifting. Students
that graduate with good computer skills are at a premium in the job market.
Change necessarily involves turmoil. Since I am changing this course as
rapidly as I can in an attempt to keep up with the industry and new software
tools, you should expect some assignments to have flaws. The alternative would
be undoubtedly worse: I could still be asking students to learn about
programming.
Finally, if you would like to read more about the College's long and rich
history, I wrote the last definitive
historical overview of the College of Business.
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