Social Impact ELO Initiative

Today’s MIT students are deeply concerned about the world’s most challenging problems such as climate change, health equity, and racial justice, but too few have the opportunity to engage deeply in social impact work through experiential learning. For instance, in recent years, demand has far outstripped supply for PKG Social Impact Internships– funding was available for just one in seven applicants. Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by CAPD, only seven percent of summer placements for MIT students take place at a nonprofit or public sector organization.

Yet when students apply their unique skills and knowledge to complicated social problems, they benefit in myriad ways including: increased personal and social responsibility, development of positive mindsets and dispositions, increased career-related skills, and other learning gains (Chittum, Enke, & Finley, 2022). Immersive social impact ELOs also help students build “change-making” skills such as communication, leadership, and ethical decision-making. Mission-driven experiential learning opportunities help students to better understand the real-world implications of their academic skills and to approach solutions with new perspectives while adding valuable capacity to community partners. 

MIT has made the expansion of these opportunities an Institute priority. One of the recommendations of the Task Force 2021 and Beyond was to increase the number of “experiential equity and civic responsibility internships” to keep pace with rising student demand. The Task Force emphasized that MIT should support nonprofit and public sector internships and social impact projects, whether local, across the country, or halfway around the world. MIT’s Climate Action Plan also promised to make a climate or clean-energy research or other experiential learning opportunity available to every undergraduate who wants one.

Consequently, MIT is looking to grow the number of rigorous social impact ELOs offered across the Institute so that, in time, 25-30% of undergraduates will have immersive, hands-on learning experiences with ethical, political, environmental, social, and community dimensions.  The Office of Experiential Learning seeks to catalyze, promote, and support social impact ELOs across a wide range of issues (e.g., tech for good, climate change, racial justice, and health equity) and a wide range of MIT programs– both programs currently offering impact opportunities and those seeking to incorporate this approach.

An Experiential Learning Opportunity (ELO) immerses and supports students in action-feedback-reflection cycle(s) that connect learners to the world around them.

• The “experiential” is the application of knowledge to create, discover, or do something in an authentic or simulated context, with potential societal and/or scholarly impact. 
• The “learning” involves building new knowledge, skills, and/or perspectives by grappling with challenges, getting feedback from experts, and reflecting on the experience. 
• The structured opportunity is supported by reflection, guidance, feedback, time, financial aid, and space to connect the learning to the context.

ELOs should include the following components:

1. Hands-on, applied work in authentic, real-world contexts.
2. Meaningful guidance, supervision, and feedback.
3. Adequate duration and intensity (e.g., students complete at least one action- feedback- reflection cycle).
4. Critical reflection performed by the student.
5. Assessment of student learning, measured against identified learning objectives (and optionally, for more advanced programs, the learner’s broader impact is evaluated).