Little Known Facts
Internet Educational BBS Pioneers of Alberta – Part 1
Introduction
This micro memoir of the SciTech BBS is organized into five parts. The front matter is followed by a four part chronological narrative of Internet Educational BBS Pioneers of Alberta with some content originally published from the Athabasca University Landing personal blog of Steve Swettenham between June 28, 2019 and February 13, 2020. Additional evidence has been reproduced from digital archives found by Dennis Leask. The third part is backstory which has been reconstituted from a 1998 Webolution CD-ROM to an open e-book format. The forth part is the news reports about the SciTech BBS in education, followed by the back matter.
Although this open e-book may appear to be digital archaeological exercise, my compilation of recollections and evidence on the existence of the SciTech BBS was motivated by a comment from a distance education professor that Canada did not have online distance education in the early 1990’s. Such a fallacy that may have permeated Canadian history of distance education, is what this open e-book will remedy with chronological evidence for online learning beginning in 1993 at Mount Royal College.
The SciTech BBS
Once upon a time in Canada, leadership and innovation existed within a digital frontier for online distance education in Alberta called the SciTech BBS – circa 1993 (also known as the SciTech ISP – circa 1994 – 1999). “BBS” is the acronym for Bulletin Board System (further information can be found at http://www.bbscorner.com/usersinfo/bbsintro.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system).
Credit: Media Production Services, Mount Royal College, Spring 1994
Originally created for INTERFACE ’94 (A Conference on Educational Technology: Tools and Solutions)
(web format transcoded from source – 1994-SciTechBBS.avi – video to digital conversion April 1998)
Script for 1994 SciTech BBS Video
Steve Swettenham, Dennis Leask, Ray Sloan, and Bruce Horrey were the online distance and blended education pioneers of an academic PC based Internet BBS for learners and global community at a post-secondary institution in Alberta. This little known history brought together four unique individuals from various backgrounds to create an autonomous microcomputer communications system that would be freely available anytime, anywhere, to students, educators, and interested global community via a telephone modem, local area network, and Internet connection. The academic BBS was a mixture of social networking attributes and online courses.
Dennis and Steve are the remaining living founders to the story of an extraordinary achievement starting from no budget or institutional support, to a world class online educational system demonstrated at the 1994 National Educational Computing Conference in Boston (NECC ’94 CD-ROM). The NECC ’94 CD-ROM was created in Mac Hypercard format and is non-readable in modern operating systems. However, the following image of the CD-ROM contents has been recovered:
