Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone, I'm Kennedy. And I'm Vasiles. We run Changemaker -Z, a student -run initiative that aims to empower, educate, and connect Gen Zers interested in entrepreneurship. We interview teenagers with impactful projects and create resources to help you change the world. If they can't do it, so can you.
Speaker: On this podcast, we discuss the logistics of creating different types of projects with Gen Zers who have already done it. We will leave our social media and website information in the description.
Speaker: Welcome to another episode of Gen Zers to Rise podcast. Today, we're talking about reimagined education with Luke Nefterclef, one of the co -founders of Let's Level Up. Their goal is to build an education that enables individuals and companies to thrive in the future of work. We are so excited to have you on the show. Welcome, Luke. Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be on this podcast today, talking everything, education, my journey, and whatever other questions you have in store. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker: Yeah, we're so excited to have you. You know, you already started off, but can you tell us a little about yourself, you know, how you got started with Level Up? Yeah, for sure. So my entrepreneurial journey started actually when I was about 12, to be honest, I needed to raise some money for a school trip. And my dad said you need to, yeah, you need to raise some of this money. So
Speaker: A skill that I had was making cakes actually. So I started making cakes in my local area, go around knocking on people's doors, selling these cakes and I just really fell in love with
Speaker: running my own projects, sort of being my own boss, I guess, and just making a little bit of money as well to pay for the school trip. So I managed to raise enough and kept doing that for a couple of years actually. And I never really saw it as a business, but now like when I look back on it and reflect on it, I guess that was my first sort of entrepreneurial endeavor. And then a few years went by and I got to university a couple of years ago
Speaker: And yeah, I started some other businesses. We had ones where we were using food waste and we turned it into delicious curries and fruit salads, which we sold at university. I ran a company where we're selling bags and backpacks and using the money to fund education classes for refugees. And then I did another podcast itself, the Human Entrepreneur podcast.
Speaker: which was all about talking about the mental health of entrepreneurs. And I learned so much from all of those things. And I knew that when I graduated from university, which I did in July, that I wanted to be running my own company. And me and my co -founders are reflecting on our journey in the education system, what we liked, what we didn't like.
Speaker: and we found that really university is great to an extent but it doesn't necessarily provide you with the skills that we need for to thrive in our work and actually professionals who say want to change career there's limited options to really succeed
Speaker: and have the skills because most courses online, most online learning is done through things like platforms like Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, which is all just pre -recorded videos.
Speaker: There's no interaction with the teacher, there's no interaction as a community, and there's often a learning by doing through projects. This is something that's often very common, say, in schools and universities, but isn't so common in an online space.
Speaker: We wanted to build what's called cohort -based classes and yeah that's what really what we're doing is building these courses and working with industry experts to deliver them. That's really interesting and you know you're kind of touching on this but your whole thing is reimagined education.
Speaker: you know and I kind of just want to ask like what does that mean for you you know you kind of answered it talking about like the the cohort classes and whatnot but what is reimagined what are you guys doing to reimagine education? Great question I think if you go to the gym say say you went to the gym for three years straight or four years straight and then
Speaker: you stop going to the gym and say if you were to look in 10 years time those three years of going to the gym 10 years ago isn't going to mean that you're still fit then and I think that's one way in which we want to reinvent education is that we adopt this mindset of lifelong learning say you go to university for three years or four years after those four years your your journey in education hasn't ended there
Speaker: it should be a lifelong process and that's something that we're really passionate about at Let's Level Up. I think reimagining it from an online space, I mean I talked about like recorded videos, I think also the community element is so important that we don't learn in silos often, we learn
Speaker: in groups because when you learn in communities it's so effective because there's like peer -to -peer learning where you can learn from people with different experiences, different skill sets. Everyone has their own like lived experience which they bring to education. It holds you accountable because
Speaker: Udemy courses have a completion rate of about three to six percent, one study found. But actually through having community based courses, it holds you accountable because you build friendships and networks in those courses itself. So it encourages you to stay right until the end. So yeah, those are a few different ways in which we want to do it is through lifelong learning and through community based learning as well.
Speaker: I love that there's such an emphasis on lifelong learning. And it's kind of interesting because we're all based like three different, like three different places. We've got America, Greece, and UK, right? And like, it's all like, there's all kind of the same problem with the education system. Like the, for me personally, I hate, I understand test obviously, but I hate that. Most of the time students are just studying to get a grade. But like this lifelong learning, it's like,
Speaker: actually learning skills that you're going to remember, not just for the test. So that's like my favorite part. Yeah, I think we've, like when I look at the education system and actually a lot of kind of society in general, we're kind of in this like signaling, we're in a signaling education. People go to say a top university, often just because it looks good, not because they know that they're going to get the best education.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the fundamental problems with the education system at the moment, is it's purely about signals to the labour market, not actually genuinely wanting to learn for the joy of learning or wanting to learn a specific skill. To me, this whole thing reminds me of when someone is doing self -education, but at the same time, you have people that guide you through the
Speaker: correct and real process of how to learn specific things in the end to achieve more and more important stuff. I'd like to learn what is the vision and the mission of Let's Level Up.
Speaker: Just going on, touching on self -guided education. I think there is definitely a place for that. And I think platforms like Udemy or Coursera, which I mentioned earlier, I think they are great in some sense because it allows you to do it whenever. But actually, for a lot of people, and like for myself, for example, I like to be held accountable and actually to be guided on a journey with industry experts and with other people.
Speaker: But yeah, to talk about where we want to go to in the future, we want to keep empowering industry experts to build cohort -based courses. That's how we want to, we're creating a platform that will enable them to
Speaker: do all the marketing, they can have all their content on it. It really takes all the admin and the hassle out of building their cohorts and through doing that we want to upskill. We've said 100 million people by 2030 is where we want to get to in the next I guess nearly eight years now. We've got to reach that mission so
Speaker: That's what's keeping us driving is seeing how many people can we upskill for our courses and how many instructors can we work with and empower to reach those people. Thank you so much for mentioning and doing this comparison with all the other
Speaker: the platforms that you mentioned, because I think that let's level up content is like more delegate, it's more specifically created for a specific type of people. And it reminds to me, I don't know the monthly service that has some master classes with specific people that they are in the arts industry.
Speaker: I think that this is less level up, but not for the arts, but part of technology and marketing stuff. Yeah, so we have three main buckets that we're focusing on. We have design, so we have courses on graphic design, UX design, we have business, so we have leadership, sales, digital marketing, podcasting actually.
Speaker: And then we also have ones on technology. So at the moment we've just got two on how to understand data and how to visualize data as well. So those are the three main buckets that we're doing and it's really focused on
Speaker: What are the skills needed in the workplace? So we work with industry experts who are working, who are actually in the industry, so they know what knowledge is needed. What are the soft skills? What are the hard skills that are required for those industries to ensure that, yeah, it's really actually applicable now.
Speaker: and it will be in the future because I think often when we're taught by professors, for example, I think they can be incredible academics, but sometimes it can be a bit out of touch with what the world of work looks like. So I think trying to get that is something that we're really trying to emphasize. Yeah, and I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up. So like, because you offer like fellowships and master classes,
Speaker: it's kind of bringing up the graphic design and stuff in your workshops. What is a fellowship? Because I never really heard of that. A fellowship is at the moment, it's a three to 12 week course on a specific skill. And we called it a fellowship because yeah, we thought it's
Speaker: It really encapsulates what we want to do. We want people to be fellows. We want them to be individuals that are part of this cohort. I guess it represents that you're
Speaker: Yeah, you're on this journey, you're on this experience with people. So I guess it's just another word for a course. But the difference between a fellowship and a core, sorry, a fellowship and a masterclass is that masterclasses are one to two days long. And then a fellowship is, yeah, three to 12 weeks, so significantly longer. All right.
Speaker: During our research, we discovered that you're using a unique methodology to engage with listeners. Would you like to share more? Yeah, for sure. So we use something called a flipped classroom, which is basically where you have recorded videos that you watch, say, for at the start of the week.
Speaker: And then you take all of that learning that you've done there and you take it into live workshops and mentoring sessions. And what that means is you've really downloaded a lot of the content already so that when you go into the workshop itself,
Speaker: It can be purely focused on discussions, asking questions, clearing doubts. Rather than in the live interaction with the teacher, they're just doing a PowerPoint presentation just talking at you. It's more of a two -way conversation. So for people, at least in the UK, we call them seminars. And it's sort of like this workshop sort of environment. Because
Speaker: When I think about where I see education going, it really needs, the student needs to play an active role in the education, in the lessons. And if they're just playing a passive role, I don't think there's gonna be much development to that student, much learning to take place. So yeah, the flipped classroom is all about, yeah, taking that away, that unconventional approach.
Speaker: And then the final part for really how we want to do it is learning by doing. So for most of our courses,
Speaker: there's real world projects which they can do. So in sales, they can do practice sales calls with other participants or in the graphic design one, they can create a portfolio of work and they can use that to demonstrate to potential employers if they're looking for a job or even if they're not looking for a job and say their company has sent them on our course, it means that they've actually practiced things and got their hands dirty.
Speaker: Because it's one thing me just telling you, if you do XYZ, when you're selling a product, it's going to be really effective. But actually, if you put that into a real world situation, it's actually going to ensure that you've learned that skill. So, yeah, learning by doing is super important for us, as well as learning by community, which I mentioned earlier. I love that because I know for myself, personally, like,
Speaker: Like you already, you kind of mentioned this, but like I cannot, I'm not going to learn the best while I'm just sitting down and teachers talking at me. Like I need, I learned the best when I'm getting involved in the work. So that's just, I think that's most people honestly. Yeah. I think the way education systems have traditionally been created is as this real hierarchy.
Speaker: um which kind of places all the centre of attention on the teacher and that's just giving information to students and how we really also want to reimagine education is putting that student at the forefront empowering them as a leader and really yeah transforming them but and ensuring that they
Speaker: know that they're valued and they can help their other peers. So that's really where the peer -to -peer learning side of things comes into play. Well I don't know about y 'all but I want to know how I can get involved. I know you're in the UK, is this based internationally or
Speaker: Yeah so we have we've had students from so many countries which I guess is what I love and really why one of the reasons why online education is incredible because yeah I mean we're always looking for new teachers to get involved and that we've had teachers in Washington state, we've had teachers in Paris, we've had teachers from the UK, teachers from India
Speaker: So, yeah, literally all over the world. And the same for students. We've had students from nearly every continent now. We just... Yeah, I don't think we've had anyone from Australia yet. So if you have any Australian listeners, please come along. But yeah, I guess that's the beauty of online education. Obviously, there can be challenges for time zones sometimes.
Speaker: But, yeah, if anyone wants to get involved, check out Let's Level Up on all social media or just type my name in on Google and hopefully it should come up. My question is, how do you find people to post your master classes and fellowships? And do you tend maybe to localize the content based from the different teachers, like you mentioned, that you are from India? So maybe create content
Speaker: for India specifically? So I guess in terms of finding people, we do a lot of scouting through LinkedIn. We look at people who are creating existing recorded courses and maybe want to create a cohort based course. And yeah, we're looking for industry experts who have already some sort of following or community already, and we can help them provide them with the tools to build their own course.
Speaker: So the teachers do most of the marketing itself. And then in terms of localizing content, it isn't something that we've done so far, I guess.
Speaker: It hasn't really been necessary because so far it's mainly been general skills in general like work environments, say like how to use Adobe Photoshop. It doesn't differ depending on environments, but I think it's definitely saying that we probably might do in the future, especially with time zone challenges is
Speaker: Yeah, maybe have certain courses for certain geographies. And especially say, if we're doing a course on language, for example, it would have to be specific to a certain country. But yeah, at the moment, we're just really trying to give access to our courses to as many people as possible. So yeah, really trying to ensure that if anyone wants to join, they can.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. And I do just want to mention that I know the fellowships and the master classes cost money, but they do have free workshops as well. Yes, definitely. So we have lots of free workshops. We'll be launching many more come the new year. We're not going to be doing any more for 2021.
Speaker: because yeah we want you guys to take a break if you want to and we want to break and prepare for the new year also but yeah we've got lots of free workshops that we're running and if you attend one of our workshops you'll get access to the let's level up community as well which is
Speaker: growing significantly at the moment through our courses and the fellowships that we're running. So yeah, we have lots of different offers which is accessible to everyone. And I'd also just want to like point out that although our courses are paid, something that's really important to me is
Speaker: making access, bringing access to education by making it as inclusive as possible and at the moment for the last couple courses we've ensured that we've offered free places for individuals who can't afford it given their personal circumstances, the background that they come from
Speaker: And yeah, so we also have application forms for people who can't afford it. And also working with individuals who might be interested in donating or sponsoring seats for people. So we're really trying to find innovative business models that ensures that
Speaker: While we can pay our teachers and pay ourselves so that we can support ourselves, we also ensure that there's inclusive access to our courses. Yeah, so there's so many ways to get involved with Level Up, guys. Well, I think that another episode has came to an end, and we learned and discussed about remote education and the importance of skills in today's hiring world.
Speaker: I would love to say a huge thanks to Juknadrifliv for being part of this amazing conversation. Thank you guys, it's been so much fun. I've really enjoyed being on this podcast, sharing my thoughts. Thank you everyone who's listening. I guess thanks for having me, asking such great questions and I look forward to staying in touch with everyone. If I can help anyone in any way, please do reach out to me. The best place to find me probably is
Speaker: on LinkedIn or Instagram is where I'm active most. So yeah, if I can provide any individuals who want to also make a change in the world, please do reach out. I'm more than happy to help and yeah, check out Let's Level Up if you want to learn some new skills also. I think that this is how we get connected to LinkedIn. Yes.
Speaker: Networking, networking, networking. That's all you hear. This is your opportunity to network. Yeah, I guess LinkedIn is a great place to network, but also I've made lots of great friends as well, so you never know who you're going to meet. But LinkedIn is great, but Instagram is also fantastic for meeting random people.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's incredible, I guess, because you can use it to create a space that can inspire you if like it can be toxic as well. But yeah, these sort of different spaces. Yeah, definitely. Well, I will also add that great things are coming soon, including updates to our mobile app available both on App Store and Play Store. So if you haven't done it already, there's a link in the description below, download the app and give
Speaker: exclusive access and personalized experience only for you. And of course, you can find the Let's Level Up website and links on the description below. And don't forget that we have created a unique channel discussion for this episode with Luke, where you can post your questions and then we will direct them to Luke so that you can receive an answer. And until next time, don't forget to change the world.
Speaker: Thank you guys for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. We had such a great time. Make sure to leave us a review. If you want more Changemakers content, you can follow us on Instagram at JinsearsToRise and on Facebook at ChangemakersE.
