Establishment of a Learning Centre at Mbarara University of Science and Technology

Sammanfattning: This report focuses on the establishment of a new Learning Centre within the LUMUST-project at MUST in Uganda. One important part of the development is to carry through careful examination of the situation and what the needs and expectation are. If this is done it would be easier to reach peoples expectations. The main purpose is to carry through a study among students and staff and map out their requirements and expectation on the new learning centre and summarize this in the report. During a period of two weeks I have conducted a fieldwork at MUST and I have carried out interviews, focus groups and observations at the university. Through this fieldwork I have been able to map out the needs and how the Learning centre should be managed and conducted in the future. One important observation I made was that the accessibility of computers are rare however students found computer and IT access very important in their schoolwork and research so a new Learning centre will be welcomed. Gradually the development of a new Learning centre has begun, this also enables the expansion of the LUMUST-project and hopefully in a near future enabling the expansion of Net based courses intended for students and staff. The development of the new Learning centre will hopefully broaden both the staff and the students learning environment in a positive way. The result of my work is this report, which is based on my observations and my recommendations of a Learning centre. I have also, on the basis of a PCW perspective, discussed how the new Learning centre will be managed to be able to achieve sustainability.