Experience with Teaching an Online Course in Mobile App Development for Senegalese Students and Professionals

Abstract

Online education has been described as a means to transform access to education and increase opportunities at a global scale. In this paper, we describe our experience with teaching an eight-week online course in mobile app development for Senegalese students and professionals. The course design and delivery leverage our understanding of the Senegalese context, and emphasized direct communication and the use of peer-review practices and professional tools such as Slack and GitHub. We focus on participants' motivation and experience. The preliminary results we present are useful for academic institutions, tech hubs and capacity building organizations targeting developing markets.