The Way Back: Digital Dawn

Today’s lecture halls are filled with iPads, Apple “pencils,” MacBooks, cellphones, and smart watches. There was a time, however, when just the thought of a computer helping you with your trigonometry homework was out of this world. That was until 1972, when John J. Allan and J.J. Lagowski introduced Project Computer-Based Education, or Project C-BE, to the University. The initiative established a four-year program to gradually implement the use of computers in daily classroom operations across different majors. Lagowski, a chemistry professor, first wondered how a computer could be used to disseminate lecture material to students more efficiently while he was instructing one of his classes in 1965. When Allan started at UT as an associate professor of mechanical engineering in 1968, he brought his own ideas for computer-based education to Lagowski. Together, they recruited faculty, teaching assistants, and students to experiment with the versatility of computers in higher education, and how they could be used across the campus. Engineering students were taught how to utilize a “light pen” to draw out their designs on the screen of an IMLAC computer. Physics students could enter calculations or homework problems, and the computer would spit out a formula or answer. With the launch of Project CB-E in 1972, the Alcalde staff wrote that textbooks would become obsolete within 15 years. While our prediction didn’t exactly hit its mark, Lagowski and Allan’s efforts were an early sign of technological innovation in higher education claiming its place on the Forty Acres.  

CREDIT: Texas Exes