Submitting courses for pre-approval

Pre-approving your course as an EDGE milestone makes it easier for students to find meaningful experiences in an academic context. We maintain a list of all pre-approved EDGE courses on our website for student use, so pre-approval can help draw engaged students to your course. It's a great way to support the program and highlight your industry or community partnership.

Experiential learning courses must satisfy the following criteria to receive approval: 

• The course must be open to students in traditional (i.e. non-co-op) programs.
• The course must be weighted for academic achievement at 0.25 credits or higher.
• The course must include an external party (e.g. an industry or community partner) who actively engages students in providing support for the partner.
• The external party must work closely enough with students to enable the provision of feedback on students’ development.
• The external party must complete a student evaluation that focuses on their performance within the experience, not their academic performance.
• The external party must engage students for a minimum of 18 hours. This engagement can take place within the classroom environment (e.g. supervising an industry project) or outside of the classroom (e.g. field work, practicum, internship).

If you want to submit a course you teach for approval, contact us at edge@uwaterloo.ca. Please include a description of the nature of the external party connected to your course and the number of hours students are expected to work with this external party. You should also make the nature of your teaching commitment clear — whether it’s on a regular basis, as part of a rotation, or a one-off — as part of your email. Finally, please include the course’s syllabus (or draft syllabus) in your submission if possible.