EdTek Services is a company helping schools, universities, government agencies, and other companies move employee training from face-to-face delivery to online. They provide a full-service package (course design, course builds, the learning management system, and LMS support services) to help transition training online. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies and institutions were rushing to get their courses online and EdTek Services was ready to take on the work! But that left little capacity to improve their own website and online presence, which needed an upgrade.
Through the Level UP remote internship program, EdTek Services Founder and President, Paul Jacobelli, partnered with Luigi Bozzi, a student at the University of Toronto Mississauga studying statistics and computer science, to work on rebuilding EdTek Services' outdated website.
As he was enrolled in a computer science program, Luigi was ready to undertake a project that would broaden his skills and give him a better understanding of the aspects of the computer science career he planned to pursue. Working closely with Paul and other Level UP collaborators, Luigi was able to do exactly that.
From the start of the project, it was clear Luigi was a natural leader. “He asserted himself in a leadership role. He became my ‘staff sergeant,’ so to speak. He helped other students get up to speed and helped us with the thinking and planning of projects,” Paul shared.
Luigi worked on three projects that served the overall larger project of completing the EdTek Services website’s build and design. He laid the groundwork for the website project by brainstorming ideas with Paul and his fellow students and then started on the more technical aspects of the project: building and designing the website in WordPress.
This project did more than help Luigi put computer science theory into practice; he also learned the valuable skill of how to communicate with Paul and his teammates. “That really helped. Being able to talk to an employer and knowing how to make deeper connections.” Luigi also shared how this experience helped him gain insight into what possibilities are out there in implementing machine learning into websites. “This opportunity gave me extra skills I didn’t learn in the classroom.”
Paul was so impressed with the work Luigi did on the initial projects that he invited him to stay on to help with other projects and help new Level UP students get up to speed on project progress as they joined the team.
Paul feels indebted to Riipen and the Level UP program for providing such amazing talent. “If we didn’t have Level UP students, we wouldn’t be nearly as far along in the process as we are. We’d be 6-12 months behind without them,” Paul shared. In fact, Paul has recommended the Level UP program to other business owners with similar project needs as EdTek’s and there are now three to four more companies collaborating with Level UP student talent based on Paul’s high praise of the program.
Luigi is grateful to have worked with Paul on the EdTek website project and to have learned valuable skills in communication, collaboration, machine learning, and design. “Every student should do Level UP. Not only does it help with your skills, you also get more connections. That’s exactly what everyone needs, more connections. A degree only gets you so far.”
Thank you to Luigi Bozzi for sharing his experience on Riipen. To learn more about how you can get started with the Level UP remote internship program as a student or employer, visit the website here. Stay up to date with the latest in higher education, experiential learning, and the future of work, subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, The Riipen Report.
Riipen Level UP program is funded by the Government of Canada's Innovative Work-Integrated Learning (I-WIL) Initiatives program. The opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.
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