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:

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

2) 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 (sample title page)
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Discussion (with subheadings and a concluding summary)
• Literature Cited (References)

For both types of reports, please cite literature/articles/references etc.  A minimum of five references is required.  Websites may be used as references if the article/information is evidently and obviously written by an authority on the topic.

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, nor is a list of the various tasks that you performed.  We are looking for evidence of understanding and insight.

Presentation of data in your reports is welcome (if your work term generated data).  However, some types of work terms do not generate data, and that is also fine.  If you include data in your report, the two standard ways to display data are tables and figures.  Never report data twice, e.g. once in a table and once in a figure; decide beforehand whether a table or a figure makes the most sense (for clarity to the reader) for reporting your particular data.  As well, a table must have an informative table heading and a figure must have an informative figure legend.  The heading or legend must provide sufficient information that the reader can interpret the table or figure without referring to the text of the report.  That is, the table + heading or the figure + legend must be self-contained, and all of the information required for interpreting the table or figure must be in the heading/legend.  Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively (e.g. Table 1, Table 2) and should be referred to in the body of the report, e.g. "Soils with higher concentrations of contaminating cadmium produced less plant biomass over a six-week growth period (Table 1)."

Images are welcome if they add useful information to the report.  These images may include photographs of experimental set-ups or organisms or key pieces of equipment, and may also include diagrams (e.g. line drawings) that help to explain how equipment works or the workflow for a particular protocol.  Images are always labelled as "figures" and should include an informative figure legend.  The images may be generated by the co-op student or they they may taken from other sources.  In the latter case, the source of the image must be clearly indicated in the figure legend.

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.  Sample title page. 

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.

Most people are aware about the nature of plagiarism, which is usually defined as using someone else's work or ideas without providing credit for the source of the work or ideas.  Plagiarism includes:

• Verbatim (word-for-word) use of the words of other people without attribution. (Keep in mind that in science, direct quotes from other works is not usually done, even with attribution).
• Use of the ideas of other people without attribution.

However, many people are not aware of the issue of self-plagiarism (i.e. plagiarizing your own work).  Self-plagiarism is the re-using of text, data or analysis in your own subsequent work without acknowledgment, and many scientists have fallen afoul of this type of plagiarism.  In the context of Biology Co-op work term reports, if you do more than one work term in the same place (company, institute etc), the second work report must be original and not contain text from the first work report.  All written/submitted work must be original.  On the other hand, your first report may contain information that is relevant to the second report. It is perfectly acceptable to:

• Present the relevant information in an original way (new text).
• Present an abbreviated summary of the relevant information and then citing your first work term report.

Unfortunately, simply re-using (copying pasting) information from the first report into a subsequent report would constitute self-plagiarism.  There is a lot of available information about plagiarism and self-plagiarism. One succinct source (of many) is: https://www.scribbr.com/plagiarism/types-of-plagiarism/.

References are used in two locations in a report:
1) In the body (text) of the report.
2) In the dedicated References or Literature Cited section at the end of the report.

In the body of the report, an abbreviated system is used (author(s) and date), while the complete reference information is provided at the end of the report. For Biology work term reports, please use a modified Harvard referencing system (https://dkit.ie.libguides.com/harvard/citing-referencing). This is a commonly used system in many Biology journals (e.g. the journal Botany published by Canadian Science Publishing).

Inline (within text) citations
1) Journals Articles and Books with:
One or two authors: list all the authors, and the year:
“Recent research has provided evidence that penguins really like blue cheese (Patel 2024).”
“Recent research has provided evidence that penguins really like blue cheese (Patel & Procházka 2024).”
 
Three or more authors: use “et al.” and the year:
“Recent research has provided evidence that penguins really like blue cheese (Patel 2024 et al.).”
(et al. is an abbreviation of “et alia,” which in Latin means “and the others”)
 
2) Websites:
“Recent research has provided evidence that penguins really like blue cheese (Penguin Diet Research Institute).”
 
3) No Author:
List the organization that produced the document and the year -
“Recent research has provided evidence that penguins really like blue cheese (Penguin Diet Research Institute 2023).”

Literature Cited/References (at the end of the report)
1) Journal Articles:
List all the authors (surname and initials), year, article title, journal name, volume, page numbers, DOI.
Patel J, Procházka PW, Thieu RT, Torkornoo LAE (2024) Importance of blue cheese in the diet of penguins. Journal of Animal Research. 18: 45-52. doi:10.1045/1746781a0.
 
2) Books:
List all authors, year, title of book, publisher, and place of publication.
Patel J, Procházka PW, Thieu RT, Torkornoo LAE (2024) On the Feeding of Penguins: A History of Penguin Use of Blue Cheese and Other Snack Foods. University of Regina Press, Regina, Canada.
 
3) Websites:
Include the date viewed and the URL.
Penguin Diet Research Institute (2023) PDRI recommendations for feeding penguins in Antarctica, viewed 13 January 2025, (http://www.pdri.ca/food recommendations/).
 
4) No Author (typically non-refereed materials):
Indicate the source of the information, the year (if indicated) and the title.
Penguin Diet Research Institute (2023). Recommendations for feeding penguins in Antarctica.

 

Additional Notes

• The DOI is the Digital Object Identifier (see https://www.doi.org/) and is a unique identifier for a piece of work. The great majority of journal articles have a DOI, although older articles might not. Please include all the available DOIs for your Literature Cited section.
• Your Literature Cited section should list all the sources of information that are cited in your report. However, do not list any sources that are not directly cited (e.g. do not list background reading that you may done unless it is directly cited in the report).
• The abbreviation et al. is sometimes italicized (et al.). We do not have a preference or for italicized or not for the Biology Work Term Report.

It is important that all writing in a work term report is original and produced by the student. While spell-checking and grammar-checking tools are certainly allowed (and are in fact encouraged), use of generative AI to produce text is not permitted. This prohibition includes:

• Using AI to write text.
• Using AI-based paraphrasing tools to produce text.

The U of R uses Turnitin to check for originality of work.  Turnitin not only checks for plagiarism but also provides scores for AI use in written work. 

Also keep in mind that AI is known to sometimes “hallucinate”; it may fabricate facts and even fabricate references.  Please do not use any generative AI in your Biology work term reports.