Co-op placements and internships, some unpaid, have long been the only way for many university students to put what they’re learning in classrooms into practice. These opportunities provide students with the chance to do a sort of taste-test of their chosen career path before graduation. If they enjoy their experience, they are all the more prepared for graduation and entry into the workforce, having made valuable connections and laid the foundation for a professional network.

This workforce preparation is why in June 2016, a ‘highly skilled workforce expert panel’ put together under the direction of then-premier Kathleen Wynne, that all postsecondary students engage in at least one work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunity before graduation. In an effort to make new graduates more employable in their fields, the panel recommended that all students be required to participate in things like co-op placements, internships, practicums, field education and community service-learning, all of which fall under the umbrella of work-integrated learning.

Whether or not work-integrated learning becomes a focus for premier-elect Doug Ford remains to be seen, however, the national trend points to an increase in these experiences for students, with the 2017 federal budget that the Canadian government will help fund 60,000 paid student work placements over five years. And, according to an article in , both the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia governments have also considered how to integrate more experiential learning opportunities for postsecondary students.

“When Canadian students get on-the-job education, they’re getting the experience they need to succeed,” said Patty Hajdu, the federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour in a .

While work experience in their field can add value to a student’s education and to their resume, finding placements for the more than two million post-secondary students in Ontario comes with its own challenges for both faculty and employers. CFICE has put together a brief list of what faculty, community organizations, and students should expect from this new provincial policy. Much of this information is based on 2012 surveys conducted by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, in which employers, students, and faculty were surveyed.

What faculty can expect

• Additions to your workload
  • Incorporating work-integrated learning (WIL) into course requirements will require a lot of time and resources for matching employers with their students, for instance. As reported by academic faculty with experience in coordinating WIL experiences, finding enough placements is one thing, but finding quality placements where students can thrive is another. found that “half of faculty respondents who taught a course with a WIL component reported performing 11 or more” tasks in addition to their typical duties per term.
• Balancing course expectations with WIL timelines
  • This pertains primarily to those faculty who will be incorporating WIL into their courses, or, who might have students who are engaged in WIL while simultaneously enrolled in their course. The report mentioned above found that students often struggle with time management when engaged in WIL experiences, and the demands of an academic semester can sometimes clash. Further, managing WIL placements with large class sizes can be additionally challenging.
• Establishing your own connections to the community
  • Through the organization of WIL opportunities for students, faculty can learn more about the work going on in their own community, and perhaps lay the foundation for a more involved relationship with industry players in their field. This could result in something as simple as having access to relevant guest speakers to attend your classes for the benefit of students.

What community organizations can expect

• An influx in requests for placements
  • With this new mandate, post-secondary institutions will likely be on the hunt for partners in the community sector and elsewhere to place students. Don’t forget that in this situation, the institution’s objective is to ensure students fulfill their learning requirements. But, with planning and effective communication both with the student and with the liaison at the institution, community organizations can put the extra capacity to good use.
• Trained and engaged new-hires
  • After the placement has come to an end and the student(s) has graduated, the community organization may have the opportunity to continue its relationship with the student, who is already familiar with the work, the organization, and can start their job further ahead than a brand new person would. Of course, this may be challenging for smaller community organizations with lower budgets, however, even if the student does not continue their work with your organization, you may still have a relationship with someone in the field who has developed an interest in the work your organization is doing. Perhaps the student goes into academia—down the road you will have an existing relationship with a researcher, something that could flourish into a community-campus partnership.
• Developing closer relationships with institutions
  • When post-secondary institutions reach out to your organization to arrange WIL for their students, it could be the first time they are encountering the work that you do. Establishing a relationship with the institution could lead to a future partnership, which could mean future funding and collaborative research.
• Managing short-term and special projects
  • Students engaged in WIL are short-term. For any organization, it could be a challenge to find sufficient work for these students to do without the additional work of having to manage them. Being creative with what students are assigned, and engaging them in short-term projects can be an effective capacity builder for your organization.

What students can expect

• Different types of Work-Integrated Learning
  • Fulfilling a WIL requirement can take many forms, including a co-op placement, an internship, an apprenticeship, a clinical placement, experiential course learning, a field placement, community-service learning, or an applied research project. What type of WIL you experience will be dependent on your program, courses, or the availability of options at your post-secondary institution. You may have the opportunity to engage in more than one of the above experiences.

The Benefits ��

• Building skills
  • Work-integrated learning is believed to enhance learning outcomes. By applying theory and concepts students are learning about in classrooms, they can deepen their understanding and retain more information.
• Building connections
  • Work experience in a students’ desired field is an important step to developing a professional network. Often, students find post-graduation employment with the organization or company they worked with.
• Shaping career goals
  • A done on graduating post-secondary students across Ontario found that both college and university students found value in their WIL experience. The benefits identified included clarifying career interests and influencing their career goals.
• Developing personal maturity
  • The same study found that students identified personal growth as a benefit of their WIL experience. Additionally, exposure to a professional work environment increased their confidence when it came to their career prospects.
• Increasing earning potential
  • Employers consistently offer higher starting salaries to new graduates who have WIL experience on their resume.
• Nearly half of university students are already graduating with some form of WIL experience
  • You may be involved in a work-integrated learning experience already! Do you find it to be valuable experience?

The Challenges

• Financial barriers
  • Financial barriers are one of the biggest barriers to students participating in work-integrated learning experiences, as not all opportunities are paid. Often, this means that students who can engage in unpaid placements are privileged enough to have financial stability, something not all students have. Additionally, in some situations, a work-integrated experience could add to a students’ anticipated degree completion date.
• Extra demands on time
  • Student life is busy enough, and post-secondary students are often juggling part-time work with full-time classes to get by financially. The 2012 report found that nearly half of the students surveyed reported difficulty managing their work-integrated learning experience with the rest of their demands.
• International students and visas
  • International students have the added barrier of requiring a work visa in order to participate in paid placements. If they cannot get a work visa, their only option may be an unpaid placement, which, as noted before, can be a burden on a student who is already in a financially precarious situation.

Taking a community first approach to community-campus engagement (CCE) is a cornerstone to the work CFICE does, but it’s impossible to be community first without the input and participation of community organizations.

Community-based organizations (CBOs) such as non-profit, non-governmental, or charitable organizations, representing either the community-at-large, or a particular concern or segment of the community, are vital to community first research, learning, and fostering positive change.

CCE occurs when members of academic institutions and members of the community come together with a shared goal and the intention of accomplishing more together. Shared resources, such as funding, time, space, and labour, are an added benefit of CCE.

If you are a CBO considering a CCE partnership with an academic institution, here are a couple different types of CCE partnerships you might pursue.

Symbiotic partnerships: Community-service learning

(CSL), also known as service-learning or community-based learning, is a practical educational tool involving students in community service work as a part of rounding out their education. By making connections between what they’re learning in the classroom and their practical experience in the community, the goal is for students to develop a stronger sense of social responsibility, improve their critical thinking skills, and actively reflect on their connection with the community.

�Ӱ�ԭ��’s definition of community service-learning points out that this model differs from volunteerism in that volunteerism suggests a “charity model,” whereas “service is about mutual learning…[and] a reciprocal relationship between participants and the community members they work with.”

Members of the GottaGo! team, including students ©GottaGo!

The premise is that while students get the added benefit of learning practical skills, networking with potential future employers, and further self-reflection, community organizations receive extra helping hands where they are needed. That said, community service-learning requires a lot of collaboration on the part of academic faculty, community partners, and students themselves.

Stephen Hill, an academic co-lead with CFICE’s Student Pathways for Community Impact Working Group, sees the value of community service-learning, even when it means a lot of extra work for himself: Every year he organizes service-learning placements for more than 300 students in his first year environmental science course.

In a blog post for CFICE Stephen wrote that the partnerships “emerged organically over the years with different partners gradually joining the mix.” The benefit for the students, he said, is having “the opportunity to learn about and work with the community in their first month of university…[which] is so important for building student engagement in the course and with the material.” As the partnerships progressed, he also stressed that “the community partners absolutely depend on the students in their projects.” In addition to providing needed human resources to different community partners, students can also contribute new and innovative ideas. This sort of symbiotic partnership is exactly what CCE is meant to be about.

Community service-learning vs Work-integrated learning

To clarify some terminology (since it can get confusing in the CCE world), community service-learning also falls under what the Ontario government is calling work-integrated learning (WIL). Work-integrated learning, also known as experiential learning, involves the integration of academic curriculums with workplace experience.

Recently, the Ontario government has recommended that all postsecondary students engage in at least one work-integrated learning opportunity before graduation, as part of . Work-integrated learning encompasses all experiential learning, whether that be through systemic training such as apprenticeships, a structured work experience like a co-op placement or internship, or institutional partnership, like community service-learning.

Community-based research: With the community and for the community

In addition to working with students through programs that facilitate community service-learning, community-based organizations can also enter into a CCE partnership by participating in community consultations, or community-based research.

, also known as participatory research, is conducted in the community with active participation from community partners. The end-goal is to benefit community partners and have a positive impact on the community. While community service-learning can be primarily about improving and enhancing student education, community-based research provides a space for community-based organizations to speak directly to academics on issues that are practically relevant to the community.

In the context of community-based research, community members actively participate in all parts of the research process, from defining the research question to interpreting and writing up the research results. While their level of involvement can be negotiated to meet the community’s needs, this type of deep engagement ensures the most beneficial outcome for the community can be achieved. Additionally, embedded research assistants, working closely with the community partner, can often act as liaisons between the community and academic partners in community-based research. Ultimately, this approach is collaborative rather than unilateral.

Collaboration is a constant at the Trent Community Research Centre! ©Elizabeth Thipphawong

Some community partners might be wary of being the subject of academic research due to previous experiences where power dynamics damaged relations between the academic and the community members. However, if both academic and community partners prioritize community first engagement, then power differentials in the research process can be discussed and negotiated in a respectful manner.

One example of community-based research within CFICE’s Poverty Hub occurred with the CCE partnership between the and McMaster University. This research project assessed barriers to implementing a living wage experienced by small- to medium-sized business. By conducting the research in a community first way, this partnership successfully developed strategies for encouraging businesses to pay a living wage, and even had some research subjects already committing to being living wage employers by the end of the study.

Students engaged in community service-learning might contribute ideas to ongoing projects with CBOs, but within community-based research, the intention from start to finish is to develop practical and action-oriented results for positive social change in the community.

A positive result of CCE: Mobilized knowledge and enhanced networks

An important aspect of any CCE partnership’s success is sharing the knowledge that was learned through the process. Knowledge Mobilization is the process of creating knowledge that is useful and used by the public, communities, and policy makers. Within the context of CCE projects, knowledge mobilization is the process of sharing the results in ways that benefit the community—even if it’s a matter of learning what not to do in the future. This can include making sure the research findings are curated into final products that can be shared with new and existing partners.

Knowledge mobilization is key to the ongoing success of partnerships because it provides a foundation of knowledge that future community partnerships can then build and improve upon. As well, it helps ensure that community-generated knowledge is shared with other stakeholders, including governments, local businesses, and other institutions. Having access to this knowledge helps stakeholders and networks respond to community needs more effectively.

Ultimately, CFICE has found that engaging in community first CCE can bring out the strengths of all participants, particularly when considering how the skills and capabilities of academic partners and community partners can be different, but complimentary. These partnerships also build lasting networks that extend beyond the partnership itself, which ultimately has the added benefit of connecting knowledge with practice and vice versa.

On Tuesday January 19th, 2016, the �Ӱ�ԭ�� University community with the support of every �Ӱ�ԭ�� faculty and the Office of the Vice-President (Students and Enrollment) plus numerous campus ��institutes, departments, associations, and centres was invited to a screening of the documentary “The Hunting Ground “. The campus was a fitting setting for the screening as the film provides an “exposé of rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families”. Over 100 people, primarily students, attended the event. A panel discussion of current issues related to sexual violence on Canadian University campuses, and more specifically �Ӱ�ԭ�� University, ��followed the screening of the film. GSA’s Leigh-Ann Worrell and ‘s Tara Henderson contributed as panel members, as did Dawn Moore and from the Department of Law and Legal Studies.

The event raised interesting questions about community and about the nature of partnerships. As members of the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project, we often question what constitutes a community. When we refer to community in an academic setting, do we actually mean the community outside the University premises? What about the campus community? Similar issues of access and power apply to internal partnerships within the campus community and haunt academic/community partnerships. Do the current legislative initiatives on campus violence offer an opportunity to build a strong university- campus community partnership through the development and implementation of a campus sexual violence policy? And what is the potential to extend that partnership to work with off-campus activists and survivors to strengthen the movement against sexual violence?

In recent years, we have witnessed highly publicized incidents of sexual violence at Canadian universities (for example the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University).�� These incidents and the responses to them highlighted the entrenched problem of on campus sexual violence and campus rape culture. Consequently, universities across Canada and Quebec are looking to develop or revise campus sexual violence policies. Through Bill 132 – Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act (Supporting Survivors and Challenging Sexual Violence and Harassment,) –��the Ontario Government is seeking to make stand alone campus policies on sexual violence mandatory for Ontario universities and colleges. In her panel remarks following the film screening, Diana Majury, the Academic Co-Lead for the of CFICE, spoke to the potential and the concerns with this proposed legislation. She raised questions about the definition of sexual violence, about how to entrench transparency and accountability, and how to ensure that the expertise of campus activists and survivors is used in developing and implementing the policy at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University.

Majury made a number of recommendations for revisions to the legislation and the content of the �Ӱ�ԭ�� policy. She pointed out that the legislation currently only refers to sexual violence involving students and recommended that coverage be extended to include faculty, staff and visitors who are also at risk. She emphasized the need for public input into the Bill and the regulations, and the need for an intersectional systemic approach to the issue and to the development of the policy. Majury raised a number of matters that need to be addressed, noting the importance of avoiding tokenism in fulfilling the requirement of student input into the policy. This process opens up an opportunity for a student/administration partnership that could be a model for addressing campus issues.

In thinking about policy content, Majury raised questions about who would be appointed in the roles of investigators and decision makers and what training would be provided to them. She noted that, if imposed, a mandatory reporting requirement might be counterproductive and actually inhibit survivors from seeking support and advice. She raised the possibility of anonymous reporting, recognizing that many victims are understandably reluctant to report because of stigma, fear of reprisal and because complaint processes often re-traumatize the victim. These concerns were dramatically demonstrated in the cases covered in The Hunting Ground.��Decisions will have to be made about the investigation and adjudication processes – whether formal or informal. Majury warned against processes dominated by lawyers. The questions of what sanctions should be available and on what basis they would be imposed are central. The policy will need to be clear on the purpose of the sanction and how to ensure the safety and support of victims. And importantly, the policy will need to address the underlying rape culture. Majury advised that �Ӱ�ԭ�� seriously consider adopting a system of oversight over the implementation of the policy by external community experts on sexual violence as is in place with respect to sexual assault complaints to police in some cities in the USA. This would be an opportunity for a productive and unique campus/community partnership that would put community expertise first.

Important issues were also raised by �Ӱ�ԭ�� community members who attended the event. The film depicted the many incentives for universities to deny, cover up and down play the level of sexual violence on their campus. Concerns were raised about these issues on our campus. Students raised the need for faculty to get more involved in these issues — to stand up against sexual violence and to support sexual violence survivors. The suggestion was made that the development of, and compliance with, campus sexual violence policies should be tied to government funding.

The film and the discussion were an effective call to action. Within three days, �Ӱ�ԭ�� graduate students had organized and submitted recommendations on Bill 132 to the Standing Committee on Social Policy where the Bill is under review.

References

Gilbert, D., & Sheehy, E. (2015). “Responding to Sexual Assault on Campus: What Can Canadian Universities Learn from US Law and Policy?” (Forthcoming, in Elizabeth Quinlan, Andrea Quinlan, Curtis Fogel & Gail Taylor, Eds Sexual Assault on Canadian University and College Campuses (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) Retrieved from ����������

Ontario Government�� (March, 2015). It’s Never Okay: An Action Plan to Stop Sexual Violence and Harassment.