Take an Action Learning lab

It is possible, but not encouraged to take more than one lab per semester. Action Learning labs are intensive courses that require you to spend dedicated time with your student team and your host, so we generally advise students to focus their energy on one per semester. However, we encourage students to try different Action Learning courses throughout their tenure as a student.   

Once students are enrolled in a lab, they may bid for projects as teams or individuals, depending on the course. If they bid as individuals, they will then be grouped with others to form a team. Faculty then match the teams to projects based on student interest, diversity of team skills, experiences and backgrounds, host preferences, and other factors.  

No, these are learning opportunities and neither the host nor the student should consider this an internship.  Students are enrolled in a credit-bearing course and supervised/evaluated by the faculty.  Students cannot be paid for any work done through an Action Learning course. 

If the course has a travel component, expenses including airfare, accommodations, and visas are not the student’s responsibility.  Any leisure travel, meals, phone bills, etc. are the student’s responsibility. 

Labs that work with startups do so with the ones that have typically gained a certain momentum in their growth stage/funding. Ideally, a startup with series A, B, or equivalent stage provides the ideal learning opportunity for students. If you are an EMBA student and have a very early-stage startup, you could potentially work on your own startup as an IDEA Lab project. 

Each term, we offer 8-12 Action Learning courses that address a wide range of topics. Therefore, students have plenty of choices available. 

Grading is course dependent; faculty consider students’ contribution as individuals and as a team to the course and project. 

Although some students do receive offers from their host organizations, the primary goal of Action Learning at MIT Sloan is student learning; for students to apply their classroom experience to real-world problem solving. That said, students find it helpful to quote their Action Learning experiences through the job search process. 

The CDO advises students to add a bullet point in their education section under MIT Sloan.  While it may vary with each student/project, the advice would be for students to highlight: 

• Company name 

• Functional work addressed in the project 

• Problem/goal students tried to solve or achieve during the project.   

The CDO would be happy to review student resumes or answer any student questions.