"Hello again! Here is another section from my text that students have found helpful. It is the section that focuses on writing internship and co-op reports. Just like the guidelines from the previous page, this information has been adapted for the web below. Read along and be sure to print out a copy of the "" for future reference. Once again, enjoy!"

Internship / Co-op Report Guidelines

General Considerations

Typically, you are required to write a report about your work at the completion of an internship or co-op. The internship report provides a great way for you to report to your faculty supervisor on both the content and value of your work assignment, and, more importantly, it gives you a chance to reflect on the work you have done in both a personal and professional manner. You should think of your report, therefore, as both a formal academic assignment and as a personal opportunity to use and enhance your skills as a communicator. Just as successful people thrive by blending their formal education and experience with critical self-assessment, you can use your report to:

• review what you have learned,
• detail what you have accomplished, and
• gauge your personal growth.

Also, especially if you produce a professional product, you might offer your report as a writing sample to a potential employer.

Frequently, you will be given guidelines for writing your report from a faculty supervisor, and it is critical that you follow these guidelines to the letter. It is also important, though, that you treat these guidelines as starting points rather than ending ones. For instance, if you are posed with three questions to consider in a particular section of your report, your responses to these questions should be thoughtful and expansive rather than just simple one-sentence answers. Further, you should see these questions as starting points that will lead you to other related questions of your own design. The bottom line is this: any report guidelines you are given should be viewed as a substantive framework that awaits your interpretation and elaboration, not as a simple Q-and-A or fill-in-the-blank exercise.

One important note about your report: Before being turned in to your faculty supervisor, it should first be reviewed by your employer. Your employer's role here is proprietary; i.e., the employer should be considered the "owner" of the report content. You must be certain that your employer will allow the content of your report to become public, and you should also view the employer's review of your report as standard practice just as a project manager reviews and endorses the written work of his or her team members.

As you begin organizing your thoughts to write a report about your work experience, read through the Internship / Co-op Report Guidelines. These guidelines will aid you in generating detail for your report, making your report readable and stylish, and treating it as both a personal and professional product.

This web page is adapted from Joe Schall's book, Style for Students, Effective Technical Writing in the Information Age, © 2002 by Joe Schall, used here with the author's permission. The original book is available from Outernet Publishing at 800-328-1452.