How to Best Support Students
We hope you will consider yourself a co-educator as you engage students in placements and projects. External partners play an important role in helping students clarify their goals, develop and use their disciplinary skills, and gain industry-specific competencies. We encourage you to work closely with the University instructor or staff member coordinating your experiential learning opportunity to determine how you can best support students.
Accessibility
The University of Toronto is committed to upholding the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and the University of Toronto’s Statement of Commitment to Persons with Disabilities.
We encourage our partners to offer experiential learning opportunities that are accessible for all of our students. You may wish to review the following items:
- Ontario’s Accessibility Laws
- The Government of Ontario’s guide to creating an accessibility plan and policy
- The Integrated Accessibility Standards (O. Reg. 191/11)
- The Government of Ontario’s guide on how to comply with the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation
Equitable & Inclusive Hiring, Onboarding, Retention, & Engagement of Students
The thoughtful design of an experiential learning opportunity must go beyond the design of the experience itself, and account for the full cycle including, the recruitment and onboarding processes, as well as effective retention and engagement of students. While some experiential learning opportunities may be less structured or formal in nature, there is still deep value in formally considering your recruitment, onboarding, and engagement to best support student learning, meet your organizational goals, and build retention within your workplace.
The Hiring & Engaging Diverse Student Talent: Employer Toolkit focuses on how to centre equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in the experiential learning cycle, particularly as it relates to hiring, onboarding, and retention and engagement practices. The intended audience for this toolkit is employers or professionals who hire for experiential and work-integrated learning (co-op, work study), and into their organizations more broadly. It can be effectively utilized by these individual organizations or integrated into the programs, services and resources of post-secondary institutions and career centres.
External Resources
Propel Initiative
Propel helps your organization access Ontario’s student talent network through experiential learning partnerships with universities. Learn about funding supports, get useful templates and sample resources, and an overview of roles and responsibilities for your organization, students, and the university.
Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning (CEWIL) Canada
CEWIL Canada offers an Employer Tool Kit that may be helpful as you consider how to hire students for co-op opportunities and other work-integrated learning placements within your organization. They also provide an overview of the employer’s role in work-integrated learning opportunities and other resources.
Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO)’s Work Integrated Learning page provides resources and reports related to experiential learning and work-integrated learning opportunities.