Sloan Action Learning Program

Action Learning students embody the MIT motto “mens et manus” or “mind and hand” by bringing their classroom learning to address real management opportunities and challenges. Depending on each Action Learning lab’s context, industry and region, students work with organizations that include startups, domestic players, multinational corporations, and non-profits located in Boston, across the USA, and around the globe. These elective courses address a wide variety of regional, functional, and interdisciplinary subjects, including analytics, entrepreneurship, healthcare, operations, and sustainability.  We are committed to offering a diverse portfolio of courses so that students can experience Action Learning more than once, unlike a traditional capstone opportunity.

Participating students get a rare, first-hand look at a wide array of growth and operational challenges facing organizations, markets, and regions. They manage projects in unfamiliar work environments, a valuable experience that strengthens their sensemaking, collaboration, and adaptability. Throughout this immersive learning experience, students reflect on themselves professionally and personally, both to assimilate management theory and to be intentional about their leadership journey.  Though the content of each Action Learning lab or course varies greatly these central themes remain the same.   As students solidify their learning by taking on their hosts' business challenges, the organizations benefit from students’ fresh perspectives and actionable recommendations. 

The Action Learning model consists of five learning objectives:

(1) LEARNING IN A COMPLEX, REAL WORLD ENVIRONMENT: Students work alongside hosts at their companies to solve real business challenges; they are immersed in a real-time project where there are many stakeholders, opportunities to contribute, and possible solutions.
(2) STRUCTURING AND SOLVING PROBLEMS TO DEVELOP PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS: In order to work on the business challenges proposed by their hosts, students need to learn how to take initiative, break the project into specific timelines and workstreams and obtain the required information and resources.
(3) COLLABORATING EFFECTIVELY IN TEAMS: One of the most crucial aspects of Action Learning is teamwork; students must work together and integrate their skills in order to meet the goals of the host organization.
(4) REFLECTING FOR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL GROWTH: In order to truly grow as professionals, students take the opportunity to reflect throughout the Action Learning lab, examining themselves as teammates, evaluating their work ethic, and discovering and internalizing ways to improve their work.
(5) LEARNING TO LEAD: By witnessing senior leaders at work and collaborating with both their host organizations and teammates, students better understand what it means to lead. 

Today, MIT Sloan’s Action Learning portfolio includes labs addressing a wide range of subjects -- America’s cultural and economic divides, blockchain technology, global economics, investment management, operations, product management, sustainability,  and more.