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Co-operative Education | SoCS

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An Opportunity to Extend your Learning Beyond the Classroom

As a co-op student, you’ll gain relevant work experience, build professional networks and develop the essential interpersonal skills needed to succeed in the workplace, all while getting paid and earning your university degree. We offer a co-op option with both of our majors. You can apply to enter your program with co-op or apply to it in your first year. Guelph’s co-op program is unique due to the exceptional level of support provided, including an in-class preparatory course, access to senior student mentors, and a personal connection with a co-op coordinator to assist you during the employment process.

University of Guelph Advantage

  • Students complete 2 years of their degree before their first co-op term
  • All co-op positions are full time paid employment opportunities
  • COOP*1100 Introduction to Co-op, a mandatory semester-long course designed to prepare you for the job search
  • At Guelph, computing students have the unique opportunity to study an "Area of Application." These elective courses, drawn from another academic discipline, allow for both specialization and diversity. As such, a student can combine their degree with a variety of disciplines (business, math, physics, music, psychology, etc.).
  • Our co-op process responds to your needs. Employers can post, hire and interview throughout the semester and our students are available for 4 or 8 month work terms.
  • The strong focus on collaborative, team-based design coursework (agile methodology), results in students who are able to integrate well in a conventional workplace
Co-op Student Information
CS Co-op Academic Calendar
Jump to Section
  1. Career Services
  2. Success Story
  3. Work Term Report Guidelines
  4. Helpful Resources

Career Services

The Experiential Learning Hub offers services for co-op students, including career advising, resume building, interview preparation, and job opportunities through Recruit Guelph. Participate in workshops, career fairs, and networking events to enhance your career development.

Experiential Learning Hub
Mia Kilborn balancing on top of a mountain.

Co-op Success Story: Mia Kilborn

Mia sure is one busy Gryphon! In addition to being an active member of the Guelph Coding Community & the Society of Computing and Information Sciences, she volunteered as the financial coordinator for Guelph Queer Equality, participated on the hiring committee for the “Go for Gold Search Committee”, and helped organize the Ontario Conference for Women in Computing at the University of Guelph. Mia has truly has a diverse co-op experience, having had the opportunity to work in province, out of province & out of country.

Degree: Bachelor of Computing

Major: Software Engineering

I chose to come to Guelph because I liked the atmosphere compared to other schools. I recognized that it's extremely important to choose a school which has an environment that sets me up to enjoy life both inside and outside of my academic studies. If I can’t be happy, I’m not going to succeed. Guelph is just a lovely town.

Specifically, I chose to do co-op for a couple reasons. First and foremost, the job experience. Coming from high school, I had no experience in computing and really wanted to graduate with real work experience under my belt. Secondly, university is hard and stressful. There’s no way around that. Co-op provides you with the opportunity to take time off school, destress and get excited to return back to your studies when it’s time. Additionally, doing a co-op program really helps you out financially.

So I started out by completing my first two co-op placements in Guelph. The first was with the Government of Ontario, cleaning up some data quality and organization issues they were having as well as helping design a “Knowledgement Management System”. After that, I worked for a company called Trans Plus Corp. There, I worked on migrating their flagship product from VB6 to VB.NET.

For my third co-op position, I moved out to Montreal to work for Morgan Stanley Financial. I worked in cloud security, developing a prototype for a new method of integrating multiple third party cloud systems (both software as a service and platforms as a service) with in-house security enforcement systems. My proof of concept, CELT, was later presented at the Morgan Stanley Tech Expo in Montreal.

For my last two co-op placements, I was out in Seattle, Washington, USA working at Amazon.com’s headquarters. I worked in the customer behaviour department for a team that measures changes in the behaviour of amazon’s customers against changes to the website. I worked primarily in web development (front and back end), specifically using Java, Javascript, JQuery and Groovy.

I remember being in first year, looking at the listing of coop jobs. Specifically looking at the list of technologies they wanted you to know. I was overwhelmed and convinced that there was no way anyone was going to hire me - I didn’t know everything that they wanted me to. I would strongly encourage students to apply for any job that sounds interesting to them, regardless of what experience they have compared to what the listing is asking for. Don’t lie on your resume, be honest about what you don’t know, but don’t let it hold you back when applying.

My second piece of advice is learn how to take a technical interview. This is extremely important. The COOP*1100 course that you take in second year will not prepare you for our interviews. There are some great resources out there, like the book - Cracking the Coding Interview, for example. Whenever you work through practice questions. don’t cheat. Sit down with nothing but paper and a pen, or stand at a whiteboard. Code like that, it’s exactly what you can expect when you go in interviews. Sometimes, SOCIS - The Society of Computing and Information Sciences occasionally puts on mock interview sessions. If possible, go to them!

Co-op Work Term Report Guidelines

All co-op students must submit a Co-op Work Report at the conclusion of every 4-month work term. Please refer to B. vi. of the Co-op Policy Agreement for specific details on Co-op Work Report requirements.

The report is in the form of a website or blog, and you should keep adding to it as you gain co-op experience. It is a portfolio of your capabilities and experiences. Please submit the URL of your report on CourseLink.

Report grading

  • Outstanding is a report with great writing (reflection) and images with some creativity that makes it stand out.
  • Very good is very well written with some images, very good writing and reflection.
  • Good is a good coverage of the work term but not much reflection.
  • Satisfactory is a brief report with little reflection, mostly covering work term goals and who the employer was.
  • Unsatisfactory is even less. In this case the student would need to improve the report or be dropped from Co-op.

Web Pages: Style

Create a nice, clean website. Unless you can do better, using a framework such as Bootstrap or a template in WordPress or Blogger is highly recommended. Test your website on a variety of browsers and operating systems to make sure it looks good and nothing breaks.

Web Pages: Content

The website should reflect on aspects of your work term experience, highlighting what you did and what you learned, including referencing your goals/learning outcomes and reflections. Please review the Elements of Work Term Report below.

Please note: These are guides and not strict requirements.

Abstract/Introduction

Introduce the reader to your work by telling them what you hope they will take away from the website. Make this short and to the point.

Information about the Employer

Briefly describe your employer and the area of computing science that is related to this company or agency. Include interesting facts about the employer (people, location, products, etc.).

Goals

What were your goals/learning outcomes for this work term?
Did you develop goals relating to your job tasks?
What skills did you want to learn? How will these tasks benefit your next work experience?
What technologies did you want to work with and why?
Reflecting on your goals/learning outcomes, what goals did you complete? What goals were you not successful in completing and why?

Job Description

Give an overview of your job or project. Highlight the most interesting or unique aspects of your job. What skills did you need for the job? Did you learn them in class or on the job?

Conclusions

Review what is important. If your audience were asked to describe the contents of your website, what would you want them to say?

Acknowledgments

Is there something or someone that needs acknowledgement?

Helpful Resources

For more information on the University of Guelph's Co-operative Education, visit the Recruit Guelph Website or email Recruit Guelph. For help finding a job, posting a job, or work-related questions, please contact the Bachelor of Computing Co-op Coordinators, Laura Gatto, Kate McRoberts, and Anne-Marie Zawadzk at socscoop@uoguelph.ca.