Project: Sustainable Development, Emerging Technologies, and Developing Countries

Project Content:
The proposed project is based on “The role of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Africa and their ability to support the most marginalized”. The research is interdisciplinary, at the intersection of engineering, development, technology, and education. In particular, it deals with the intersection between empirical sciences and social sciences. Often in engineering designs, the practical use of the design by civilians is overlooked, while in fact, their opinion and insights should to be considered. This is particularly important in a developing country context, as different needs must be met with a limited availability of resources. Rather than letting technologies trickle down from developed countries into developing countries, this course will focus specifically on how one would design for the bottom billion of the world population.

Project Purpose:
1. To understand the scope of the interdisciplinary research, and that often “hard sciences” and “social sciences” intersection.
2. To encourage the student to become a change maker, innovator, and to contribute to the betterment of society.
3. To introduce ways of critical thinking, problem analysis and ideation of solutions to complex problems.
4. To improve English proficiency and be comfortable expressing and brainstorming ideas in an informal and formal way.

Major:
Computer Science