How We Work

The Jameel World Education Lab builds on MIT’s strengths to transform the nature, reach, and quality of education for learners everywhere.

We leverage real-world experience and evidence-based approaches to tackle grand challenges in education in sustainable, scalable ways. Through our innovative projects, our collaborators gain new perspectives on teaching, learning, knowledge production, technology, and other ways to maximize impact with the resources they already have.

Our Activities

The Jameel World Education Lab promotes excellence and transformation in education by engaging with educators and leaders, along with employers, technologists, community representatives, and policymakers. Students, employees, and learners not in formal education, training, and employment are also key stakeholders. Jameel World Education Lab research scientists design and conduct educational research, and we also draw on practical field experience, for example through case study research and action research.

Our members are important drivers of our shared knowledge. Through online and in-person collaborations, workshops, research, and information-sharing events, Jameel World Education Lab members work with MIT faculty and staff to address global opportunities for scalable change in education. To fuel our own learning, our staff join every event, documenting insights as we go.

Drawing on what we learn with our members along with our own research and content we field from across MIT and other sources, the Jameel World Education Lab creates materials and content to share even more widely, through research publications, toolkits, downloadable papers, conference talks, and open events. Every collaboration contributes to our growing insights on implementation and localization challenges and opportunities.

And as we work on a selected slate of projects at different levels that address different challenges, the Jameel World Education Lab threads together findings to create a suite of knowledge products to benefit multiple stakeholders within the world’s education systems. 

Some of the ways that the Jameel World Education Lab supports, shapes, learns from, and productizes innovations that could transform global education:

• We enable, document, and share educational innovations built on MIT experience, faculty innovations, and research, including new approaches enabled by our own grants.
• We scout for and syndicate learning science insights that could benefit many.
• We nurture and disseminate practical approaches to upgrading courses, curricula, educational technology, and teaching models, all in order to improve learning.
• We explore and share every good idea that we see working in multiple settings, especially those that harness MIT strengths and knowhow.
• We hunt for routes to innovation dissemination and replication, including any policy insights, putting applicability, contextualization, and generalizability at the fore.
• We build networks and collaborations to spur action, sharing learning and resources while equipping champions with frameworks, examples, and more.
• We identify and share practical approaches to technology selection, capacity development, governance, technology selection, institutional and program sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.
• We enable, search for, and share insights for transforming ecosystem engagement, for reimagining educational pathways, and for building innovation pipelines that connect academia to society and markets.
• We invest in understanding how careers are shifting, how learner experience can be improved, and how diverse capabilities and life experiences strengthen learning and education.
• We develop new collaborations to fuel innovation for local markets, communities, industry, and educators everywhere.

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For Members

Jameel World Education Lab members have unparalleled access to the breadth of our scholarly and practical knowledge through a range of different activities, such as:

• Jameel World Education Lab Weeks, our signature events in which members convene with the MIT community for relevant presentations, research briefs, hands-on exercises, panels, and workshops
• Jameel World Education Lab Connections, a series of synchronous and asynchronous online activities that allow members to explore of the frontiers of educational transformation worldwide
• Jameel World Education Lab Exchanges and Workshops offer deep dives into curated, relevant topics for our members, such as course design, university governance, and more
• Access to events offered by affiliate organizations
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Learn more about membership. →

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For the MIT Community

To capitalize on MIT’s longstanding tradition of innovation in education, the Jameel World Education Lab relies on the whole of the MIT community as essential collaborators in the important work of shaping educational innovation across the world. Ways in which we involve MIT personnel:

• We support educational research and innovation by MIT faculty and researchers, along with mentored graduate students and post docs, through wide-ranging Education Innovation Grants every year.
• We invite MIT research and faculty experts to join us in projects that we co-design with the collaborating MIT expert and the proposing member institution. These projects may run for a month or a year; some extend multiple years. MIT faculty or others may serve as PIs; research roles also accommodate students, faculty, and other staff. Members who collaborate with the Jameel World Education Lab on such projects derive immeasurable benefits from working with MIT experts. Contact us to learn more.
• Events, workshops, workshop series, and courses provide MIT faculty and staff with a broad slate of meaningful opportunities for both compensated or uncompensated contributions, from an hour-long session to a series of workshops interspersed over the course of a year, that multiply MIT faculty and staff impact and expertise globally. Jameel World Education Lab staff help manage the engagement. Your contribution will inform and inspire fellow faculty, leaders, or learners from across the world. 
• We rely on our MIT Faculty Advisory Committee to help guide the Jameel World Education Lab’s work and inform our strategy. We seek new candidates to join this important global work.

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Learn more about how the Jameel World Education Lab both leverages the existing strengths of MIT and supports future innovations.→