About us

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The Centre for Work-Integrated Learning (WIL)

We design curriculum that enhances student learning through WIL experiences and encourages the development of future-ready skills. Our curriculum delivers academic courses that are complemented by hands-on work experiences inside and outside of Waterloo’s co-operative education program. This includes:

  • Professional Development (PD) courses
  • EDGE experiential education certificate
  • WE Accelerate program
  • Digital skills fundamentals micro-courses

We collaborate with on-campus partners to design and deliver courses and programs that advance the University’s goals, reputation, innovation, WIL leadership and industry engagement.

Our WIL curriculum

Our team is comprised of teaching and learning experts that rely on careful research and best practices to co-construct curriculum with faculty members, industry partners, students and other WIL teaching experts. We:

  • provide practice opportunities by leveraging the concept of productive failure,
  • include timely assessments that help learners apply what they are learning to a workplace or practice setting, ​and
  • prompt learners to make explicit connections between classroom learning and the world of work through authentic critical reflection.

We develop our courses and programs using instructional tools and technologies that aim to help authentic learning. By design, our WIL curriculum encourages learner agency, leverages the power of peer-to-peer learning, and applies best practices in universal design.

What is WIL?

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a model and process of curricular experiential education which formally and intentionally integrates a student’s academic studies within a workplace or practice setting.

WIL experiences include an engaged partnership of at least these three components:

  • an academic institution
  • a host organization
  • a student

WIL can occur at the course or program level and includes the development of learning outcomes related to employability, personal agency and life-long learning (CEWIL Canada, 2018).

Instructors use WIL to create meaningful learning experiences for Waterloo students through engagement with industry or community partners. Students can complete coursework and/or program requirements through WIL while simultaneously making meaningful contributions within organizations.

WIL involves collaboration between Waterloo instructors and the organizations students partner with to enhance students learning and the development of future-ready skills.

Discover types of WIL

*All definitions are based on Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL Canada)

CO-OPERATIVE EDUCATION

Co-op students alternate study terms with work terms. They graduate with up to two years of relevant, paid work experience.
INTERNSHIP

Internships typically include a full-time, discipline-specific placement that may be supervised, structured, paid or unpaid. They may occur midway through an academic program or once coursework is completed prior to graduation.
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICUM

Involves work experience under the supervision of an experienced registered or licensed professional in any discipline that requires practice-based work experience for professional license or certification.
APPLIED RESEARCH

Students participating in applied research projects solve workplace problems in partnership with community organizations or industry. Solutions to these problems are typically generated through consulting, design, community-based research, or some combination of all three.
FIELD PLACEMENT

In field placements, students gain intensive, part-time/short-term, hands-on, practical experience in a setting relevant to their subject of study. Field placements may not require the supervision of a registered or licensed professional, and the completed work experience hours are not required for professional certification. 
WORK EXPERIENCE

Intersperses one or two work terms (typically full-time) into an academic program, where work terms provide experience in a workplace setting related to the student’s field of study and/or career goals.
SERVICE LEARNING

Service learning integrates meaningful community service with classroom instruction and critical reflection to enrich the learning experience and strengthen communities. In practice, students work in partnership with a community-based organization to apply their disciplinary knowledge to a challenge identified by the community.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Allows a student to leverage resources, space, mentorship and/or funding to engage in the early-stage development of business start-ups and/or to advance external ideas that address real-world needs for academic credit.
APPRENTICESHIP

An agreement between a person who wants to learn a skill and an employer who needs a skilled worker. The employer is also willing to sponsor the apprentice and provide paid related practical experience under the direction of a certified journeyperson in a work environment conducive to learning the tasks, activities and functions of a skilled worker.
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Our history

  1. 2002
    1. The University of Waterloo grants academic credit for work terms. This necessitates the creation of a complementary co-op curriculum, one that will help address employer needs by developing students’ professional (or “soft”) skills.

  2. 2006
    1. The faculties work together to create the Waterloo Professional Development Program and begin operations. Initially, the Waterloo Professional Development Program offers a single course (PD1) to two faculties (Arts and Mathematics).
  3. 2007
    1. Two new Professional Development courses added.

  4. 2008
    1. Another four additional Professional Development courses added and three additional faculties (Applied Health Sciences, Environment, and Science) join the program.

  5. 2011
    1. The Faculty of Engineering joins and PD course enrolment nearly doubles. The department launches several new courses while redeveloping and refining its existing courses.

  6. 2017
    1. We expand the department to support traditional (non-co-op) students with the launch of the EDGE certificate. EDGE is an experiential education certificate that helps students develop their professional skills and market themselves to employers.
  7. 2019
    1. The Waterloo Professional Development program department officially becomes known as Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) Programs.

  8. 2021
    1. We create and launch the Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate program to support students entering their first work term but facing challenges in finding a co-op position (amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic).
  9. 2022
    1. In collaboration with our partners in Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) and Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA), we begin designing curriculum for WIL experiences at the graduate level.

  10. 2023
    1. WIL Programs officially becomes Centre for Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) to better reflect the portfolio and expansion of the department's mandate to also help faculty, staff, employers, practitioners, and non-traditional learners benefit from WIL.