Situated in and fostered by the Department of English and Humanities, Brac University Media Lab is perhaps one of the major pioneering attempts in extra-curricular activities taken by Brac University of Bangladesh. Its aim is to give students complete access to a world of digital audio and video editing and mastering, which helps acquaint them with the digital world. The students of Brac University have been interested in using the digital media since the beginning, which made the establishment of this lab possible. Brac University Media Lab has opened up new dimensions for exercising various audio and video missions. This facility is bagged with simple yet state-of-the-art audio and video recording and recoding tools along with the facility of track recording and multiple screen editing. The limitations of complex hardware make this facility a very user friendly medium for exploring students’ potentials.
However, this facility is not limited to extra-curricular activities only; it also vows to assist on academic ventures such as presentation preparations and grooming, class documentation and so on. Attempts are being taken currently so that this facility can be an ideal one for engineering courses too.
The Media Lab is also a part-time education Technology Research and Development unit. The introduction of learning management system in Brac University (popularly known as Moodle) was a bi-product of research and development activities of the media lab. The installation of this Learning Management System is perhaps the first fully functional and widely utilized (used by almost 2700 users) Learning Management System in Bangladesh. All maintenance of the LMS is done from the media lab.
The Media Lab is also working on the set up of synchronous and asynchronous distance learning courses. One of the prominent examples is the course “HST 410- Bay of Bengal: Flow of Change”, which is being conducted in collaboration with TUFTS University, Boston, USA. The course started from 15th January 2014 and will run during Spring 2014.
The Media Lab is trying to incorporate ICT with other teaching tools to advance the current pedagogy. Representatives from this unit have taken part in national and international conferences on such issues.