Designing and implementing a computer learning center in a college of medicine

This report describes the approach taken at the Penn State College of Medicine to develop a central Computer Learning Center (CLC) and the use characteristics during the first 21 months of operation. A task force was created to establish the CLC, and a 12-month timetable was used from initial planning until the CLC was operational. In the first 21 months of operation, the CLC use increased linearly from 48 users per month to 388 users per month. More than half of the users were medical students, with the remainder distributed among faculty, staff, graduate students, nursing students, and medical residents. The growth of CLC use and the diversity of computer-assisted applications have occurred due to its central location within the medical center library and to CLC operation being shared by the library and the Department of Educational Resources.