Exploring opportunities in WIL

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Welcome to exploring opportunities in WIL, a resource designed to help instructors assess, define and clearly understand how to introduce a work-integrated learning (WIL) component into their course. This resource offers tools to help you decide if WIL is right for you and your course. It also outlines strategies for finding and managing partnerships with industry and community organizations.

Before integrating WIL, it’s essential to validate that your course aligns with WIL objectives and that potential partnerships support your students' academic and professional growth.

Validating WIL Compatibility

Use our WIL decision tree to assess whether WIL is a good fit for you and your course. This tool helps you evaluate factors such as:

  • Time and space considerations: Ensure you have enough time and space in your course to integrate WIL. Plan for the necessary preparation and the integration of WIL activities within the course timeline to ensure readiness for you and your students.
  • Program requirements: Ensure that your WIL experience aligns with departmental or faculty guidelines and any external accreditation or professional standards that may apply to your course.
  • Skills and competencies: Ensure your students have the opportunity to develop the necessary skills, knowledge and competencies, and can effectively transfer and apply theoretical concepts and principles from your course to a real-world work experience. Choose partners that provide opportunities supporting these developmental needs.
  • Learning outcomes: Determine specific learning outcomes and identify how a WIL experience partner can contribute to these through hands-on experiences.

Optimizing partnerships for projects

The Centre for WIL offers several flexible resources to support your WIL partnerships. Partnerships can take many forms, and we provide various resources to help you find and maintain the right fit for your course.

Many instructors already have relationships with industry or community partners that can be adapted into WIL opportunities. We offer tools and templates to help formalize these partnerships.

Explore our resources

Each resource is designed to help you create meaningful, structured partnerships that align with your course goals and provide impactful experiences for your students.

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