Biology Co-op Program

The Biology Co-op Work Term courses (BIOL 051, 052, 053, 054) are graded on a Pass/Fail basis. Work terms must receive a grade of "Pass" in order to count towards the Co-op designation.  For the Biology Co-op Work Term Report, please use of the two formats described below (these formats are designed for Biology students, and are different from the formats outlined on the U of R Co-op website).

Due dates for reports are set by the U of R Co-op Office (due dates are early in the semester immediately following the Co-op work term).  Please submit the report electronically as a Word (or equivalent) file; please do not submit PDFs.  Send the completed report to Harold.Weger@uregina.ca.

All students must submit a work term report early in the next semester after completion of the work term.  The report will be 8-10 pages of text (not including references or title page), double-spaced, and printed 12 point font, on standard letter-size paper and using 2.5 cm margins; this is equivalent to approximately 2000 - 2500 words.  Figures or tables are welcome if they add important information or provide context.

Reports will be graded according to the following scale: Pass, Requires Revision, or Fail.  Reports graded Requires Revision will be returned to the student and must be revised and re-submitted within three (3) weeks.  The revised report must receive a grade of Pass for the overall work term to receive a grade of Pass.  Reports with a grade of Fail will not be re-written, and the associated work term will not receive a Pass.

 For a double work term, two work term reports are required: one at the end of four months (completion of the first half of the double work term), and a second report at the end of eight months (after completion of the second half of the double work term).

The Biology Dept. asks for work term reports that are written in standard scientific formats; these formats are slightly different from the standard U of R Co-op format (please feel free to ask questions about the formats).

There are two possible formats for the Biology Co-op work term reports.  If you undertook a specific project during your work term, or if a specific project was substantial part of your work term, your report can describe this project, including a description of the hypothesis that was tested.  The format of such a report would follow the format of a scientific paper or a lab report, and contains the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion (may be combined with Results into a Results & Discussion section)
• Literature Cited

Alternatively, if you were not involved in a specific project, but rather took part in various tasks/projects, then your work term report can focus on one aspect of the work that was undertaken.  For example, you might describe the technical and theoretical bases of one of the techniques/methodologies that you employed.  This type of report would include the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Discussion (with subheadings and a concluding summary)
• Literature Cited

For both types of reports, please cite literature/articles/references etc.  A minimum of five references is required.  An article from a website is eligible as a reference only if the article/information is evidently and obviously written by an authority on the topic or if the article is a reprint of a peer-reviewed journal article. 

Regardless of the type of report that you write, a day-to-day account or log book of your work activities is not the goal. We are looking for evidence of understanding and insight..

Before starting work on your work term report, please check with your supervisor that it is acceptable for you to write about the proposed topic.  There are occasions when experimental results are considered to be confidential, and the supervisor/employer may prefer that you don’t incorporate the results into your report.  Alternatively, we have occasionally arranged for the work term supervisor, rather than the co-op coordinator, to grade the work term report when confidential information is used in the report.

When describing your proposed work term report topic to your supervisor, indicate that any results/data incorporated into the report will only be used for the work term report (no other dissemination will occur), and that the only reader of the report will be the Biology Dept. co-op coordinator.

Title page - The title should be informative, indicating specifically the subject of the report.  Include your name and student number on the title page, as well as the location (including company or organization name) and dates of the work term.

Work term reports will be graded on the basis of both content and style.  In terms of content, the student is expected to demonstrate that he/she has a genuine understanding about the work performed or the technique described.  This understanding encompasses both why the work was performed, and why the work was performed in a particular manner; i.e. what is the theoretical basis?

In terms of style, the report must be clearly and concisely written, and organized in a logical manner.  As many people have pointed out, there is no point in having brilliant ideas if they can’t be communicated.  Communication is an essential skill in science, and in most other careers as well.

It is a good idea to start working on the report early during your work term.  Do not leave the report writing until one or two days before the due date; this is a recipe for a poorly-prepared document.  As well, many people find that once a document is “completed”, it is a good idea to delay submitting it.  Instead, hang to the document for a week (but do not think about it) and then re-read it.  This distance in time will provide a fresh perspective on the document, and will allow to you read what you actually wrote rather than what you meant to write.  Take this opportunity to do the final editing of any sections whose meaning is not instantly clear.  THEN, and only then, hand in the report.  This method of will lead not only to improved work term reports, but also improved lab reports and term papers in your course work.

Furthermore, for those students who have troubles with writing, there is a lot of help available.  For example, the U of R’s Student Success Centre has a Writing Service (http://www.uregina.ca/student/ssc/) that can help you learn how to proofread, and evaluate and edit your own work.  As well, there are numerous websites and books devoted to the basics of writing (e.g. topic sentences, paragraph usage, grammar, punctuation) and also about scientific/technical writing.

Additional writing and formatting tips for the work term reports are available in a separate document on this website.