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Within the context of other activities at MIT Sloan, this cycle is even more apparent. For instance, it's embedded in orientation activities. And writ large, the MIT Sloan education can be seen as a big chunk of preparation that the students engage in prior to acting by working in the real world. Reflection takes place naturally as one encounters the feedback of one's actions.
But we know from research on learning, change, and innovation, that we miss crucial opportunities to learn and improve if we only focus on the large-scale, long time-frame learning experiences. Every chunk of experience can be seen from this preparation-action-reflection lens: for instance, the summer job - summer internships - are an ideal action experience, and first-year courses are designed to prepare students for this experience, with second-year courses offering students a chance to revisit, reflect on, and expand their understanding of their experience over the summer.
In fact, it might be useful to think of the entire two-year program a journey around a spiral in which students work through the preparation-action-reflection cycle several times, focusing on more advanced things each time as they learn more from their experience.
Here's what we'd like to tell students: travel around the learning spiral as many times as you can, while your're here. Exploit every opportunity We think that the effective student learner is one who understands that they face many opportunities to work through the preparation-action-reflection cycle , and who chooses in the domains that are most important to you. Choose courses, experiences, and job opportunties that maximize learning from each of these.
To do this effectively, students need both some self-knowledge, as well as a good understanding of the range of opportunities that they face. This is part of their task as students here--to figure out what they want to learn, and to seek opportunities to engage in the traditional types of learning combined with action that draws on and uses this learning. Then, while they are still here, students should reflect on their experiences and work to figure out what they would like to learn next.
To this end, we're preparing a master list of particular skills and capabilities that we think any manager needs in order to act effectively, and we list ways in which students can work on each area (courses, SIPs, workshops, etc). This matrix, in conjunction with a more traditional mapping of courses and tracks, will help students to design their own learning experience. Our hope is that the skills they learn in doing this will help them to not only make the most of their learning here, but also to be effective lifelong learners.
We also know that the natural processes of reflection face obstacles: we often leave little time for reflection; at the individual level, strong cognitive and psychological processes can make it difficult to learn effectively from experience; at the collective level, we have few processes, cultural norms, and other practices that enable ongoing reflection. Hence the need for a teaching approach that links all three elements of the learning process and that equips students with skills, tools, perspectives, and theories useful in reflective action.