Online financial literacy training that works: Making lessons stick

Online financial literacy training that works: Making lessons stick

Chansone Durden, TG Account Executive Team Manager

Online financial literacy training is an efficient and helpful way to teach important concepts if — and this is a big “if”— the lessons actually stick with the students. What strategies can boost the “stickiness factor” in online financial literacy training?

Background

Malcolm Gladwell coined the term “stickiness” in his now-classic book The Tipping Point. Gladwell, writing about educational television shows like Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues, was referring to the qualities that make messages better understood and remembered. Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers who are both experts on communication, took the term as inspiration for their 2007 book Made to Stick. Whether it’s political communication, classroom teaching, or urban legends, the Heath brothers argued, there are common elements to messages that catch on.

Of course the best teachers, through years of trial and error, and through the immediate feedback of being in the same room as their students, know when to shift strategies to enhance the lesson’s stickiness factor. One concern that skeptics have expressed about online learning is that it lacks that feedback loop, as well as the expert teacher’s understanding of students.

Skepticism aside, online learning isn’t going away anytime soon. For any number of reasons — budget, scalability, desire to engage technologically-inclined 21st-century learners — online learning continues to grow in popularity. A September 2010 study by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) — Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies — found that online learning is one of the fastest growing trends in education. Not only that, the review reports that online learning was slightly more effective than face-to-face learning under some circumstances, and that a blended approach (online and face-to-face learning) was more effective still.

Given the potential suggested by those findings, it’s worth asking: what are ways that online learning can be most effective? If we’re going down this road — since we’re going down this road — how can we get the best results? How can we best apply what we know about making messages stick, as well as research into educational best practices, to online learning? Here are some tips to make online lessons stick.

1.      Keep it active

ED’s review found that when learners are prompted to take control of their interactions with media, there is an increase in reflection and achievement. These moments of learner activity or learner reflection are especially effective at boosting understanding when students are pursuing online learning individually. That makes intuitive sense if we speculate that active engagement disrupts the tendency to skim along the surface of the material. At the same time, it’s worth noting that online learning — particularly with interactivity — is highly conducive to expanding learning time. When the student can keep at the activity as long as attention lasts, better learning outcomes can be expected.

How might this apply to online financial literacy training?

For online financial literacy training, it might be a good idea to break content into short chunks, with frequent opportunities for assessment, and some student control of navigational paths. When students are regularly coming to natural stops, answering questions, and clicking on meaningful navigation choices to determine what comes next, better outcomes are likely. When game-like activities with fun interfaces are part of the training, brain switches are more likely to be in the “on” position.

2.      Ask thought-provoking questions

A recent study by Dr. Sylvie Kerger from the University of Luxembourg shows that girls are more interested in learning science lessons when the scientific concepts are presented in terms the students might think of as more feminine than typical boy-oriented science instruction. For example, “How can we make the colors in tie-dye shirts look brighter?” might frame the lesson in a more girl-friendly way than “Today we’re going to learn about ph and water solubility.” The effect isn’t specific to online learning, nor is the gender issue the salient point for our specific purposes. The point is that material that is dry and difficult in the abstract can be made interesting when presented in concrete, student-adapted terms. Online learning, like face-to-face learning, must prepare the way by provoking thought and curiosity on the topics at hand.

How might this apply to online financial literacy training?

It’s easy to see how relevant financial literacy content could be made concrete for students. For example, getting students to understand the differences between a defined benefit retirement plan and a defined contribution retirement plan may seem daunting at first. Not only is the material inherently unflashy, retirement is far from the thoughts of most college students. However, job offers are very much on students’ minds, so framing that information in terms of choosing the best job offer creates pedagogical leverage in gaining and holding student attention.

3.      Appeal to the eye

Dr. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, writes that it’s obvious that vision is our dominant sense, but what’s surprising is how far the other sense lag behind. For example, on hearing a piece of information, a typical human being will remember only about 10% of it three days later. What’s the effect of adding a strong visual component? Retention moves quickly northward, with most people remembering 65% or so of the message!

Good visual design, including animation, charts, motion graphics, and appealing colors and fonts, can go a long way toward helping the brain learn and retain concepts.

How might this apply to online financial literacy training?

An under-designed, text-heavy lesson isn’t going to carry the day. Conversely, it’s just as true that an overly busy design will be distracting, confusing, and cluttered. The recipe for likely success is consistent use of appealing fonts, clear page design, and engaging visuals that carry through different course elements. This component of effective online learning is why many subject matter experts can’t just put their ideas online and effectively attract students. The way things look isn’t just ornamental. It’s an important pedagogical factor to which good attention should be paid.  

 
4.      Make connections with internal summaries

In 2003, scholar Robert Marzano published a paper analyzing 395 experimental studies and looking for classroom practices that research could confirm led to a boost in achievement. Some were among education’s all-time greatest hits. Not many readers will be surprised that the following all boosted achievement:

·         applying compare and contrast as a thinking tool,

·         getting positive reinforcement from teachers,

·         practicing new skills to attain mastery, and

·         having a teacher who made the learning objectives very clear.

Perhaps less predictably, teachers who regularly use internal summaries get better results. One reason is that summaries orient the students, helping them map new information onto what they already know. Another is that this practice models that particular thinking skill for students, getting them in the habit of synthesizing information (one of the higher order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy).

It’s all about helping the students add the new knowledge to their cognitive maps. Internal summaries secure the learning that has just happened, and prepare the way for the learning to come. In Made to Stick, the Heath brothers talk about how high-concept movie descriptions (“Aliens is basically Jaws in outer space.”) use what’s already known to make new information more accessible and memorable.

How might this apply to online financial literacy training?

Online learning offers many opportunities to use internal summary to model that thinking skill for students. With financial literacy lessons, for example, transitioning from credit reports to credit scores offers the opportunity for this internal summary by analogy: a credit report is like a teacher conference, getting into the details of your credit history, whereas a credit score is like a grade, distilling those details into one number.

All these strategies (and this just scratches the surface) help to make solid online learning courses effective. With this kind of approach, the advantages of online learning are available in conjunction with best educational practices to help make financial literacy lessons that stick.

Chansone Durden is an Account Executive Team Manager with TG serving schools in SASFAA. You can reach Chansone at (800) 252-9743, ext. 2513, or by email at chansone.durden@tgslc.org.