WASHINGTON: A researcher from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) is teaching a course at his campus about designing technology for the developing world. But he is not standing in the classroom, giving lectures from halfway around the world in Mumbai via a remote Desktop. The interactive course is taught by Derek Lomas using various forms of web-based technologies, including wiki sites, video streams and e-mail.

The course, "Design for Development: Developing Technologies for Developing Economies", aims to connect UCSD students to the problems of the developing world. "It is a practicum class with a diverse set of undergraduate and graduate students whose varied majors include engineering, computer science, economics, biotechnology and art," UCSD said.

Lomas first traveled to India in July 2007 to work for QUALCOMM Inc, and stayed on because he was inspired to teach the course from an international perspective. Students of the course meet once a week in Atkinson Hall, the headquarters of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, where Lomas is a researcher and gives his three-hour lectures via a webcam. "I'm really used to being able to motivate students in person.

This has been a major learning experience," he said. He said one of the benefits to teaching the class from Mumbai is that he is able to provide students with a first-hand account of what life is like in India. "It increases the sense of connection to the people we are trying to serve," he said adding that he has been able to capture footage of the streets of Mumbai by wearing sunglasses that record video.

"I am able to show them the street life by walking through crowded markets and letting students see what a rickshaw driver sees," he said.

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