Work Term Report Ideas

By the end of the second month of each work term you should select a topic for your work term report. If the work you have been assigned does not lend itself to writing a work term report, the onus is on you to explore potential topics and ask your supervisor if he or she has any topics that would be useful for you to research.

Choosing a topic for a workterm report is sometimes difficult. You are not required to work on something directly related to your work (especially, if your job is not particularly interesting or conductive to such a report). You can pick a different CS topic in any area (e.g., artificial intelligence, computer animimation, computer game design, computer graphics, databases, hardware, programming language design, software engineering methodologies, etc.). Where possible, you should tie the topic to your work experience. For example, if you don't like the operating system used it at your place of work, you might devise a list of useful features for an operating system and then compare the operating system you used to other available operating systems. However, if you are working (say) on a Help Desk and you cannot think of a topic related to your job that is interesting to you, you may choose to write on any technical topic in Information Technology instead.

Remember, the workterm report cannot be something that you're recycling from another class, which would be a violation of the University's academic integrity rules. The workterm report also should not be a day-by-day or week-by-week account of what you did at the office.

If you are still unsure about a topic or how to approach your report please take the following measures:

• Review the work term report section in your co-op student handbook.
• Look at the Computer Science homepage under the "Research" and check out some of the research areas of our faculty members. Might any of them relate to the job you are doing? If so, dig in and learn some more of the background for this type of research.
• Contact the department Co-op Academic Coordinator.

One last reminder: don't leave the report until the end of the work term or start of the academic term. You will find you will not have enough time to complete it.