WatPD is a series of online courses all co-op students must take during their co-op terms to develop professional skills. Both PD20: Developing Reasoned Conclusions and PD21: Developing Effective Plans must be taken by engineering students during their first two work terms, respectively. PD20: Developing Reasoned Conclusions is an introduction to critical thinking and communication in the workplace. PD21: Developing Effective Plans is an introduction to workplace problem formulation and problem solving strategies. After the core PD courses are completed, students will be able to choose three additional PD courses, out of seven options. These options are:
PD3: Communication
PD5: Project Management
PD6: Problem Solving
PD7: Conflict Resolution
PD8: Intercultural Skills
PD9: Ethical Decision Making
PD22: Professionalism and Ethics in the Workplace
These courses are designed to improve students’ employability and their workplace productivity. For example, PD3: Communication covers many types of communication from proper behaviour during team meetings to effective email writing. PD5: Project Management introduces students to basic management science concepts. Topics in this course include basic project management techniques and practices such as planning, proposing, scheduling, budgeting, supervising, delegating and setting priorities. Full course descriptions can be found at uwaterloo.ca/professional-development-program/.
Since these courses are to be taken during the work term when students have full time jobs the work load is very light. Every course is a little different but they typically consist of weekly readings, audio, and/or video presentations with an associated quiz or assignment. Each week’s work can typically be completed within two hour. Most PD courses also offer a set number of late days which can be used to submit assignments past their scheduled deadlines.
The entire course will be available at the start of the term and working ahead of the set deadlines is not uncommon. Some students opt to complete the entire course in a single weekend and forget about it. In order to pass most PD courses, a student must achieve a final grade of 50% or greater. This may not be true for all PD course, you can check the passing requirement with the course’s staff during your work term. These courses are pass/fail and will appear as CR (credit) or NCR (no credit) on a transcript. Engineering students have six work terms and have to complete five PD courses, so in the unlikely event that a student does fail a PD course, they will have another chance to make it up.
These courses try to be very broad in their scope and thus will apply to a variety of work environments. PD courses augment the transition from the classroom to the workplace. A majority of the topics can be naturally picked up after long exposures in a professional environment; these courses accelerate this appreciation.
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