Real Adulting 101 - Project management and content creation

Real Adulting 101 is an online learning platform for adult education focused on content that helps young adults thrive. 

Through the Level UP remote internship program, CEO and founder of Real Adulting 101, Brittany Clough, partnered with Alexandra Stancato to work on educational content creation and project management. 

A master’s student at Yorkville University, Alex created courses, resources, and marketing materials for Real Adulting 101.

While this experience was pivotal in helping Alex obtain a career change, her soft skills, such as communication and organization, helped her experience tremendously. “There were a lot of moving parts. It was working with a team of designers, writers, and marketing people doing outreach. It was a lot of communication.”  

Her new skills in educational content creation helped her land her post-Level UP teaching job. She had an opportunity to create a course for Real Adulting 101 and mental health resource guides. “One of the biggest skills I learned and hadn’t been able to explore yet was creating educational content, specifically how to create courses and lesson plans. I knew I wanted to teach, which was helpful for my next steps.” 

Brittany valued Alex’s contribution. “Alex was great. She took ownership. She asked questions when she needed clarification. She hit all of those deadlines and sometimes even went above and beyond the project and suggested how to expand it beyond what we had set as those kinds of final deliverables.”

Overall, Brittany appreciates the support working with Level UP students has done to advance her business. “The growth we want to see is hard without extra support, so if we can take a student and say, ‘here's what I'd like you to do. Here are the deliverables. And let them run with it.’ Then, yes, this program is invaluable to us as a startup. Level UP takes so much time and energy off our plate and allows us to grow and create faster.”  

Brittany sees this opportunity as a win-win for her business and the Level UP students. “You can learn something for four years and still have no clue how to implement it. So getting these short-term opportunities to implement their skills is truly incredible.” 

Alex couldn’t agree more. “I firmly believe in hands-on experience. We don’t get enough of these experiences in the education system, especially in the formal education system. It’s a nice way to transfer your learning in school to the workplace. It’s also difficult to balance work and school as a student, so the opportunity for payment helps.” 

Thank you to Alex Stancato for sharing her 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 updated with the latest in higher education, experiential learning, and the future of work, and 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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