What Should We Be Teaching ICT4D Students?

June 16, 2015 Editor 0

Every year, waves of excited young professionals graduate with university degrees in international development and become our colleagues and co-workers. I would love to have your thoughts on two questions about them:

• What should new development professionals know about ICT4D?
• What do you wish you knew about ICT4D when you started?

I ask these two questions because this fall, I am honored to be co-teaching an ICT4D class at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with Patty Mechael. She and I will be building on the ICT4D course she and Matt Berg pioneered at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

And while James Bontempo might argue that new college graduates are already inherently experts in ICT4D, growing up as digital natives, I believe we still need to be teaching core ICT4D principles. Patty and I are building our course around the Principles of Digital Development, with a class on each of the principles. We’ll be bringing in guest speakers to talk about each principle, and have class assignments around them.

[ad name=”Inno300x250″]We’ll also have demo days with new technology tools and require students to write a proposal based on a real RFP that will need to include a technology component. We are finalizing the curriculum now, and we have one final question for you:

• What books, publications, websites, and blogs should we have students read?

Anything else we should be doing? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

Go to SourceReprinted from ICTWorks

Categories: ICT