Current students

Between 2020 and 2022, the University of Waterloo rapidly hired and trained over 1000 undergraduate co-operative education (co-op) students as part of the Online Learning Assistant (OLA) Program, to support faculty (i.e., course instructors) in the transition to online teaching. Our research findings suggest that these co-op hires were incredibly beneficial to many faculty, with their efforts ultimately leading to improvements in teaching and learning.

This study explores how students’ gender and work experience are associated with the amount of time they spend working together on tasks with supervisors during their co-operative education (co-op) experiences. We also examine how the time spent working together on tasks with supervisors affects students’ self-reported learning.

This research study explored the kinds of friendships co-op students make on work terms and how they are impacted by remote work. We also examined the impacts of these friendships on outcomes that are important to both students and employers.  

To examine how co-op programs can create value for students and employers, this study examined whether work-integrated learning (WIL) job seekers are more attracted to jobs that signal a student-oriented opportunity than to those that do not.

Two previous co-op students designed a study to explore the emotional well-being of engineering co-op students during their first recruitment term to develop a better understanding of what aspects of the co-op process are particularly stressful for students.

Definitions of talent are changing to address work-related challenges (e.g. aging workforce, increased globalization), as are the practices used to manage talent (e.g., recruit, develop and retain it).

With partners at Macquarie University in Australia and Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, the principal researchers developed a framework for the factors that are critical to sustainable partnerships in work-integrated learning (WIL).

Designed by a previous co-op student, this study explored how students perceived the relevance of a co-op role by reading a job description.

Despite the challenges and hardships individuals experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, these unfortunate circumstances presented a unique opportunity to study widespread organizational change in the context of co-operative education.

The Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning (CEWIL) Resource Hub is a website developed for all stakeholders involved in work-integrated learning (WIL): students, practitioners, employers, and educators.