MassEdCO: Creating an Interactive Resource for Teaching Financial Literacy

Project Description

Too many students graduate college with thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of student debt. MassEdCO and our team found that there is a lack of education around financial literacy which leads to students making poor choices out of high school putting them in so much debt. Therefore, we developed a new resource to help equip the MassEdCO advisors with a new tool to help teach students about financial literacy and finding a post-secondary education. By educating students, we hope that we can steer them towards more affordable options or at least ones that they’ll be able to easily pay off later.

Our Sponsor: MassEdCO

Student Researchers

From left to right:

Lucas Sicard – a junior at WPI going for a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. Lucas has been a big fan of computers all his life and is quite skilled at computer programming. He loves all sorts of games whether they be on the computer or on a tabletop setting. He also graduated from Quinsigamond Community College with his Associate’s in Computer Science in order to transfer to WPI.

Nick Gronda – a junior, third year WPI undergraduate studying Management Engineering with a focus in Civil. Aside from his studies, Nick enjoys spending time working on his educational technology startup company with his co-founder and staff members. Extracurricularly, Nick is the former treasurer and rush chair of the Zeta Psi fraternity, and was on the varsity wrestling team freshman/sophomore year but was forced to quit because of a neck surgery.

Jacob Ewen – a junior at WPI studying Aerospace Engineering. Outside of school, he fences with the WPI fencing team, as well as volunteering as the team armorer. When not in school or fencing, he can often be found playing video games with his friends.

Keston Holohan – a junior at WPI studying Mechanical Engineering. When he is not studying, you can find him playing for the school competitive volleyball team, or playing any other sport at the Rec Center. On top of that, he participates in Army ROTC and plans on commissioning in Spring of 2024. He loves to spend time with his friends and enjoys spending time outdoors.

Project Goal and Objectives

Goal: The goal of our project was to create an interactive resource to assist MassEdCO in helping students improve their financial literacy skills.

Objectives:

1.) Our first objective was to find out what students should know. We sought out financial advisors from MassEdCO & other organizations like them, like MEFA, and we also met with a few advisors from colleges in MA. We had interviews with about 10 advisors to see what they believed students should know.

2.) Our next objective was to find out what students already know. We spent a day at North High School in Worcester, MA, meeting with about 5 classes of students between 10th and 12th grades to find out what they knew about financial literacy based on what we heard from our interviews.

3.) Our third objective was to put all of our information from our background research and objectives one and two to find out what we need to teach students. Seeing as we learned what students should know and what they already know, we were able to determine a list of things that needed to be in our financial literacy resource.

4.) Our final objective was to create and pilot a new financial literacy resource which came in the form of a card game. We found what we thought was the best way to engage and educate students in high school about financial literacy and seeking an education after high school and that seemed to be through a card game.

Final Report and Deliverables

Here is our final report on what we learned and our development process. We also uploaded our rule book for our card game so that you can see our final product as well.