MIT Professional Education Launches Digital Plus Programs: An Innovative Collaborative Learning Offering

Courses Combine Online Technology with Live Interactions to Greatly Enhance Critical Learning of Leading-Edge Topics

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - September 28, 2017 - MIT Professional Education is announcing the launch of Digital Plus Programs, an innovative, collaborative learning portfolio of courses that allows organizations to enhance skills of their employees by bringing cohorts together to learn and work through a combination of project-based challenges and exercises designed by MIT faculty experts. The programs create a learning environment that is personal and highly effective for individuals, while offering organizations insights on participant engagement and outcomes. MIT Professional Education leverages some of the world's most advanced online platforms, which use a variety of collaborative tools in order to meet the needs of individual and corporate participants. 

These dynamic six-to-ten week courses deploy a variety of design and teaching modalities that range from interactive online to in-person sessions in order to impart leading-edge content and practices that are highly relevant to professionals across all industries. The courses include embedded group-based projects, challenges and learning activities, enabling knowledge-sharing, networking and innovation.

"With the introduction of Digital Plus Programs, we have adapted the pedagogy of instruction to take full advantage of advances in collaborative learning tools. Collaborative online and blended learning have consistently shown to produce the most effective learning outcomes for today’s highly time-constrained technical professionals. That combined with courses addressing the most high-demand technical and non-technical topics of the day, should garner significant interest from individuals and organizations around the world,” said Bhaskar Pant, Executive Director at MIT Professional Education.

The first Digital Plus Programs course, The Intersection of Leadership & Innovation, begins with a live, virtual kick-off session and empowers technical leaders with self-awareness and creativity to drive innovation in their teams, culture and organizations toward the goal of improving performance and competitive positioning. 

This course is being delivered in collaboration with Cahoot Learning International, which offers an online learning environment designed to accommodate multiple, global cohorts. Some advanced features and functionalities of the platform include: 

  • Collaboration & live communication capabilities
  • Responsive mobile friendly and social & multi-media integration tools
  • Customizable assessments and reflection activities
  • Real-time engagement analytics for tracking individual and group progress

MIT Professional Education is also developing two new dual-track Digital Plus professional certificate programs:

  • Leading in the Transformative Era: Focuses on the business impact of key trends in the fourth industrial revolution
  • Strategic Leadership & Innovation: Develops skills needed to build high-performing teams and cultures with greater capacity for successful innovation

Each certificate path requires participants to complete four required courses, including the program’s debut course: The Intersection of Leadership & Innovation, which kicks off by selective invitation on Monday, October 30, 2017. 

Digital Plus Programs integrate blended learning to MIT Professional Education's Digital portfolio, which was founded in the fall of 2013. Since that time, approximately 30,000 participants from more than 150 countries have enrolled in MIT's professional online courses to gain crucial knowledge from leading MIT faculty to help advance their careers and/or bolster their companies’ performance. 

Courses offered through Digital Plus Programs can be run for large groups of employees from the same organization on a stand-alone basis, or as part of a multi-part Custom Program taught on the MIT campus.

About MIT Professional Education
For more than 65 years, MIT Professional Education has been providing a gateway to renowned MIT research, knowledge and expertise through advanced education programs designed specifically for working professionals worldwide engaged in the fields of technology and technology management. In addition to blended learning courses offered through Digital Plus Programs, MIT Professional Education provides professionals the opportunity to take industry-focused, one-to-five-day in-classroom courses on campus through Short Programs, courses abroad through International Programs, to enroll  in regular MIT academic courses through the Advanced Study Program or attend Custom Programs designed specifically for their companies. Participants are drawn from across the U.S. and around the world, with about 50 percent collectively coming from outside the U.S. Upon successful completion of a program, participants receive an MIT Professional Education Certificate of Completion as well as access to MIT Professional Education’s expansive, professional alumni network. For more information, please visit: professional.mit.edu