MUBS staff in eLearning training

MUBS has over the years been implementing effort as part of its strategy to increase access to education and reduce costs. The Africa Development Bank extended funds to government of Uganda to support improvement in high education with emphasis on science and technology. All the 8 public universities including the degree awarding institutions have benefitted from this. MUBS has received a building for computer science and a smaller one for business incubator. ADB has also funded a variety of other programmes including gender mainstreaming, people with disabilities, activates and eLearning among others.

MUBS eLearning Centre conducted a five day training at the Jinja Ci’sand hotel. Each academic department in MUBS has an elearning champion and one other person was nominated to attend the eContent development training workshop. The training was intense and staff felt they were ready to go but it requires management to ensure that the facilitating conditions are in place. The training was intended to be in three groups of 12 people however the groups were combined. The training of the three groups were combined together to be able to get the necessary synergy among those who had some knowledge with those who did not. In the past, the Commonwealth of Learning has supported the MUBS eLearning programmes. The developing countries have challenges that while the developed world has already adopted the facilitating condition for eLearning are poor in many developing countries including Uganda. 

Not many Ugandans have computers and if they do, internet may not be available. For some even if it is available, they cannot afford it. There is also the electricity challenge. While some people may have the computers, the knowledge and the internet he or she may not have electricity or it may not be stable. In Uganda, access to electricity is limited to 20% of the population. With 80% of the population in rural areas even knowing about computers or elearning is a major issue. With this in mind, MUBS will proceed with caution on how it will implement its elearning strategy.