EL for Everyone Initiative
In March 2021, the MIT ICEO released a draft Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategic Action Plan, outlining five years of strategic priorities around composition, belonging, and achievement within the Institute. The draft plan included a commitment to “close achievement gaps and advance equity in all forms of success among underrepresented undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, staff, and faculty at MIT” which was also included in the final Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition (released on September 1, 2022).
Both versions of the plan go on to specify that MIT should:
Determine if there are differences in participation rates and outcomes in experiential learning programs and develop strategies for addressing any areas of concern.
In May 2022, an ad hoc group representing 12 different MIT experiential learning programs was created to formulate a plan to answer that question. The group met regularly between May and September 2022 and produced a report detailing their recommended assessment plan. With this plan as a template, the Office of Experiential Learning has engaged in ongoing evaluation work to inform our efforts to provide high-quality experiential learning opportunities to all MIT students.
Reports
Why Experiential Learning Matters
MIT boasts many Experiential Learning (EL) programs ranging from credit-bearing courses, undergraduate research, venture incubators, global internships, public service opportunities, and more. It is an essential part of an MIT education, baked into our institutional motto (mens et manus) and MIT’s long history of “learning by doing.” Research shows the critically important outcomes of EL, including but not limited to (a) higher-order thinking skills, (b) communication skills, (c) ability to work effectively with others, and (d) subject-specific learning outcomes (Coker et al., 2017).
We know that EL is critical to students’ academic experiences; yet at MIT, the decentralized nature of EL programming makes it difficult to see the full picture of who is– and perhaps more importantly, who is not– participating in and benefitting from these programs.
Research Questions
The 2022 Ad Hoc group recommended that OEL study the following questions:
- Who is participating in EL, and who is not? (Overall and by program, program characteristics, and student demographics)
- How do we understand student participation at various stages of the EL process: program application, selection/yield, and completion? What demographic patterns are present at each stage?
- What are the barriers to students participating in EL?
- Which factors draw students away from/towards certain programs?
Data collection efforts from Fall 2022 through Spring 2025 have focused primarily on questions 1, 3, and 4. While we have been able to learn more about potential barriers at various stages of the EL process, we learned that data collection at those stages is less robust and therefore have focused our quantitative data analysis on participation rates.
The Ad Hoc group also recommended that further work specifically assess differences in outcomes, and work is ongoing to build outcomes assessment capacity within more EL programs to enable this analysis.
Ad Hoc Group Membership
- Francis Borrego, Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD)
- Sebastien Delisle, Sloan Action Learning
- Libby Hsu, D-Lab
- Rea Lavi, NEET
- Jim Magarian, Gordon Engineering Leadership program (GEL)
- Melissa Martin-Greene, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)
- Mary McCrossan, Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP)
- Rebecca Roseme Obounou, Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG)
- Seckin Ozdamar, Sandbox
- Maria Segala, MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI)
- Lauren Tyger, Office of Innovation, Co-chair
- Kate Weishaar, Office of Experiential Learning (OEL), Co-chair
Project Status
As of April 2025, OEL has collected three academic years’ worth of participation data and program details. Institutional Research has created dashboards for internal use within OEL and participating programs to inform ongoing efforts to ensure student access to their programs.
In 2024, OEL also conducted a set of interviews of undergraduate and graduate students about their experiences searching for, applying to, and participating in experiential learning programs at MIT. The results of this analysis were shared with relevant programs to inform improvements.