D-Lab Development
General
As the about page reads:
D-Lab is a series of classes and field trips offered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that focuses on international development, appropriate technologies and sustainable solutions for low-income communities, mostly in developing countries. There are currently nine different academic offerings that make up the suite of D-Lab classes, falling into the broad categories of Development, Design and Dissemination.
D-Lab also commonly refers to the first of this series classes: D-Lab Development
If you are enrolled as an MIT student, either undergraduate or graduate, you can take any of the D-Lab classes as unrestricted electives from the Edgerton Center listings. Some of the classes are also cross-listed in other departments as restricted electives. Please check the details in each of the classes offered.
D-Lab Development
D-Lab Development has been oversubscribed by more than 200% over the past several years, and continues to be. In addition to doubling class size (fall 2008), we have had to come up with a mechanism to grant spaces for this class, hence the class lottery.
The class lottery is held on the first day of classes, and attendance is mandatory if you are enrolled in the class, since registration per se doesn't directly imply that you can take the class. After a presentation of the course, each attendee is asked to fill in a student profile. The results of the lottery are published before the next class, and that serves as the definitive list of enrolled students.
If you don't make it in a given semester, you may want to consider taking another class of the D-Lab family offered in the fall:
D-Lab Health
D-Lab Health is the MIT-based educational component for International Innovations in Health (IIH). D-Lab Health student projects enjoy the support of IIH partner organizations around the world. The lead geographic site for D-Lab Health 2009 is the IIH Managua H-Lab. It is comprised of a cluster of health care institutions in Managua, Nicaragua.
D-Lab Health projects that show promise may be picked up for continued nurturing by IIH for continuing development with the students. In the event that a former D-Lab Health student opts to not continue the project, IIH has a continuity plan in place to ensure the success of the technology.
D-Lab ICT
The NextLab class series (partially sponsored by TelMex) is based on using the mobile phone as the development platform for all projects. NextLab is also broadly interdisciplinary and explores ways that mobile phones can enable development and commerce to emerging regions. The D-Lab series is predominantly an engineering design lab course, intended for students who want to go deeper into the technology, and the class projects include a broader range of technologies--not necessarily cell phones. The two courses are intended to be complementary, such that some of the accessories, sensors, or processing algorithms created in the D-Lab ICT class can be integrated into the software and business models created in NextLab course.