Diversity
Open + Inclusive Course
What is Open+Inclusive?
Nearly 80% of all MIT Sloan staff have completed the O+I course.
Open+Inclusive is a course designed to help organizations improve communication, employee engagement, and decision-making. Delivered over four sessions, cohorts of 15-25 people complete the course under the guidance of two trained staff facilitators. It is available to all MIT Sloan staff.
The course content draws upon the research and instructional work of our own MIT Sloan faculty and explores collective learning, the curse of knowledge, and psychological safety. Participants examine the relationship between team diversity and its performance, team preferences for shared knowledge, and learn techniques for uncovering implicit knowledge and underutilized expertise. At its core, O+I explores organizational change.
The Impact of O+I
When developing the course, we created pre- and post-course assessments to measure its impact. As of July 2023, nearly 80 percent of participants who completed both a pre- and post-test scored higher on their post-test. When asked why they took the course, most noted that a colleague recommended it. To truly assess O+I’s effectiveness, we’ll continue to study behavioral change with qualitative and quantitative data. We hope participants apply these principles effectively in their work and departments. And we’re constantly incorporating feedback from each cohort and making adjustments and improvements to the course.
I feel like the most concrete take away from O+I was the importance of broadening networks and that [we] tend to default to groups that are similar to [us]. With this knowledge, it is important to remember to actively push on the normal boundaries of my network.