I had the great pleasure of participating and serving as a moderator* for TechChange’s Mobiles for International Development course from October 15-November 4, 2011, along with a great group of people interested in how mobile phones can support development processes.

Course topics included mMoney; mHealth; mobiles for monitoring, evaluation and data collection; mobiles and radio; and mobiles in education.

The first week of the course went both broad and deep via a compilation of blogs, videos and longer documents from a range of thinkers and doers in the mobile space.

The second week introduced participants to a number of mobile tools, including MPesa (Mobile Money Transfer Platform), InSTEDD GeoChat and Riff (Mobile Collaboration and Data Stream Analysis Software), RapidSMS/Souktel (Mass Texting Software Interface), Sana Mobile (Mobile Diagnostics Platform), Medic Mobile, TxtEagle, FreedomFone.

The third week offered a number of chats with well-known practitioners and thinkers in the above mentioned areas or developers of particular tools that had been covered in week 2.

Things I liked about the course:

• Platform. The TechChange platform is really nice. It’s engaging and well-designed. Things are easy to find making participation smooth. It took me a day or so to learn where to find things, but after that, it was easy to join in and access the course materials.
• Format. This was my first ever on-line course and I found it very energizing and thought-provoking. I loved that the first week was an in depth overview on ICTs and development in general. We were exposed to a huge range of thinking from very positive to very wary and critical of the use mobiles and ICTs in development work. Long and short videos, blogs, guides and research were made available and these really stimulated a lot of discussion around development models and frameworks, the role of NGOs and corporations, e-waste, top down vs bottom up, innovation and local capacities, and all kinds of issues. The second week dove deeper into particular areas and many of these discussions continued, but now with different groups as people began self-selecting according to their particular interests (health, education, etc.) Unfortunately I missed most of the 3rd week because I was out at another conference, but the roster of experts who came onto the platform to chat with the group was stellar and according to participant feedback, quite stimulating as well.
• Discussions. The format was conducive to great discussions, from small group Skype discussions (each participant was assigned to a small group at the beginning, and these groups held a few discussions over the course period), to random chats, to forums and sometimes Twitter. These discussions were very useful to generate new ideas and dig into topics and tricky issues.
• Participants. On the one hand it might be nice to have courses aimed at levels of experience, but on the other hand I liked that there were all levels of expertise chatting and discussing, and people from a wide range of backgrounds. This enriched the group discussions and the variety of inputs.
• Organizers. The organizers did a stellar job of engaging and encouraging the group and being responsive to any technical difficulties encountered.

Things I would like to see in future courses:

• Less hours per week. It was hard for me to clear my schedule to participate in everything as I would have liked. Dispersing the activities over 4 rather than 3 weeks (as the organizers are planning for the future) might help with that. Of course this might be an issue with me, not with everyone. The good thing is that course materials are available for a few months after the course has closed.
• Short sessions on setting up specific tools. I was really glad that Tech Change took the full first week to look at the big picture before focusing in on tools and  I was super impressed with the wide range of materials they pulled together to get people thinking and discussing all the different aspects that need considering before deciding on a technology tool or “solution.” I think it would be really helpful, following the big picture thinking, to offer some short courses or sessions focusing on the actual technical use of particular tools so that participants can get hands-on experience also.
• General courses as well as in-depth courses. This course was fantastic for getting a general overview, and good for both people with little experience with mobiles in development and for those who already have technical or practical experiences with programs with a mobile or ICT element. It would be great to also have courses that focus an entire 2-3 weeks on one aspect such as ICTs in Education, mHealth or mMoney. I certainly could have spent 2-3 weeks learning about and discussing a single aspect of “m” something. I’m sure TechChange has their hands full with new course offerings, but as they expand, this would be great to see.

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