Spring 2008
15.990 Projects for change: A collaborative management learning lab
MW 1-2:30 p.m. Room E53-057
This full-semester, 9-unit course is open to MBA students, as well as other MIT graduate students with the instructor's permission.
This class puts your projects front and center. Our goal is to help you learn the most you can from your projects. In Spring 08, the focus will be on clusters of projects that tackle common themes in three general areas:
- global health delivery, with possible linkages to projects connected to GHD at Harvard University
- working with startups addressing international development or poverty alleviation that have emerged from MIT classes, projects, and research
- scaling up and developing the enterprises built around international development innovations that have emerged from MIT's DLab
The class design is as follows: You'll work with other students from the class in teams on your project all semester long. We'll use class sessions to map out questions, concerns, and issues that arise at each stage of your project, and will examine readings and research that can help, turning to very practical, applied tools and exercises at every step of the way. Each team will post weekly blog entries that document its learning journey. Class clinics, where you ask for help from the entire group, are designed to let you tap into the collective intelligence of the class. And students vote on specific topics to examine in some of the class sessions.
Projects for Change is a class that puts you in charge of your learning!
How to get started.
First, you need a project. We have some of these, or you may be able to bring your own if they fit with the class themes.
Have an idea that you'd like to work on?
Work with us to sort it out.
Would you like to get in on the ground floor with an existing effort?
Please talk to us over IAP to figure out how you can help define and shape one of the many possibilities we already have.
Busy during IAP?
Let us know of your interest and join the class in the spring when you'll be able to sign up for a project.
Stay tuned for more
Work on projects that could make a real difference in tackling poverty, improving health, or furthering development. Learn the skills for effective action while you do so. Classes are designed as working sessions that address a key aspect of your project every week. Learn about relevant ideas, research, and theory via focused readings and mini lectures, and apply them right away via in-class exercises and clinics. You will accomplish something on your project every week and are expected to participate actively in class to integrate your project experience with course content.
Get started!
Fill out a the questionnaireStudents can sign up for an IAP workshop in which they work with the instructor and others to scope and shape a project for this class.