Work-term reports in History give you the opportunity to show the connections between your classroom learning, your work-term learning, and, as relevant, your extra-curricular and personal experiences. The work-term reports enable you to reflect upon and write about the work-place experiences that are most meaningful to you, as both an emerging disciplinary expert in History, and as an emerging professional in diverse work-places. Over the course of four or five work terms, your reports will document and analyse increasingly complex and sophisticated skill-sets, knowledge bases, and career stages. You will also develop self-knowledge – about your competencies and their value in the workplace, as well as a clear picture of your related career objectives.
Format:
a) Title page: Include your name, ID number, academic year/term, current academic program, and work report number.
b) Length and format of the work-term report
The body of the work-term report should be double-spaced, no more than 5 pages (excluding the title page) in length, and written in accessible language devoid of acronyms or jargon.
Please use the following headings as a template:
Description of my work term experience: give a specific and concise description of your work experience
- What organization did you work for? Which department/division? Where were you located?
- What were your roles and responsibilities? Did your job title reflect your role and responsibilities? If not, what job title would be a better fit?
- Were you part of a team? What role did you fulfill within it?
- What aspect(s) of your role does this work-term report focus upon?
Perception of my work term experience: respond to those questions below that are of relevance to you to relate your perception of the work experience?
- How did your work experience make you feel (anticipating it; during it; afterwards)?
- What about the experience did you enjoy?
- What did you dislike or enjoy least?
- Were you surprised, unsure, disappointed, worried, excited (any other emotion-words) by aspects of your experience?
- Did your work experience go as anticipated?
Evaluation of my work term experience: respond to the prompts below that are of relevance to you; focus on one or two important/representative aspects if a lot happened; it’s expected that you will have had both positive and negative experiences and perceptions/reactions.
- What went well during the work experience?
- What did not go well?
- Were you able to develop new competencies? Were these the ones you had hoped for?
- What choices did you have to make and what were the consequences?
- What elements of your work experience were new? What elements had you experienced before?
- What qualities do you admire in your teammates or supervisor?
Analysis of my work term experience: Do answer the last question; and respond to those other prompts that are relevant to you; this section is not descriptive as those above are; it is analytical and prompts you to answer “why” questions about your work experience
- You wrote above about what went well during the work experience and what did not go well. Why you think aspects went well or not? What factors affected this outcome? What was your role and/or what choices did you make that made an impact? Would you do anything differently to affect outcomes in the future?
- Think about your contribution to the experience and say how useful it was and why it was useful (did a previous experience help you? Can you compare it to a previous experience?).
- What impact did other perspectives or people have on your experience?
- How were your beliefs acknowledged, questioned or challenged through this experience?
- How did your enjoyment or lack thereof impact your experience and the outcome?
Connections between my work term experience and my academics
Please note that for all of the above - If you are writing a report for a second work term with the same employer: Please try to emphasize any differences between the first and second term whenever possible. Did your perception of your duties and experiences change by the second work term e.g., the way you understood them to fit into the larger context of the company or your major? How did you benefit from having more than one work term with the same employer?
These guidelines for the History work-term reports are adapted from Graham Gibbs, Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. (Oxford, 1998); David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Prentice-Hall, 1984); and the Humanities Work Term Guidelines at the University of Victoria.
