Do you feel like you have so much information to share that you need to make the most of every moment when you teach financial education classes? Research has shown us that how we teach may be more important than how much we teach. Here are five tips to get the most bang-for-your buck when you only have an hour or two to make your points.

1. More fun, more learning.
   When adults and teens are actively engaged and enjoying themselves, they literally take in more information and retain it better. It doesn’t have to always be laugh-out-loud fun, but it can’t be boring, negative or judgmental. For a start, minimize lectures, PowerPoint and worksheets. Maximize humor, conversation and engaging activities.
2. “Just-in-time-learning”
   At the Florida Prosperity Partnership Conference, president/CEO Kaye Schmidt suggested only offering what is immediately relevant to the participants. What can they do today and tomorrow? They’ll be more likely to come back when they are ready to focus on next week and next month.
3. Sacrifice content
   It’s only natural to want to cram in as much as possible when you get people into the room, but it’s the law of diminishing returns. If it’s too much and they are not enjoying themselves, they won’t take in as much, retain what they heard, and they won’t come back.
4. The environment makes a difference
   A dark windowless, bare room with uncomfortable chairs and dreary surroundings sets a very different tone than a well lit, attractive room with comfortable seats. Being uncomfortable and in a depressing environment is actually distracting and leads to less learning.
5. Set a positive tone
   Avoid starting off the class with a pre-test, assessment or a worksheet. Likewise, don’t ask people to write down their money mistakes or fill out a budget worksheet with their income and expenses. If they’re already feeling down about money, it just takes them to bad place. Instead, use humor and start with an ice-breaker that focuses on a positive experience when people made good choices and experienced a success. Think about what would make it easier for students to learn rather than on what you want to teach.

A credit board game is included in The Good Credit Game, a credit curriculum kit. The Road to Good Credit is a credit board game that helps make credit classes fun and hands-on.

Teach a credit class with a credit board game

The credit curriculum is divided into two major sections. The first section helps people learn about credit reports and credit scores. The credit board game can build on the first lessons. It is typically done as the second half of a credit class. It may also be used as a standalone class or activity. (You could also use the credit board game as a first and last activity in a sort of pre- and post-test manner. This helps people understand what they don’t know and then shows them what they’ve learned after the class.) The credit board game and the other credit games and activities teach students about credit scores, credit reports and credit cards.

An educational credit board game

The credit board game is a mix of Trivial Pursuit and Chutes & Ladders. As the teacher, you can choose which question cards to use. You can also emphasize harder or easier questions. And you can choose from the 39 different credit topics. (These topics include bankruptcy, payday lending, credit history, etc.) So it’s accessible to all audiences, the credit board game is written at a fifth-grade reading level or below.

The credit board game in practice

The Good Credit Game’s activities are all designed to be done in small groups of 3-5 people. Credit classes are more fun, collaborative and engaging with this small-group format. As with Money Habitudes, we’ve seen how important it is for students to be able to laugh, talk and be active in financial education classes.
We advise allowing an hour to play the credit board game. It’s appropriate for credit classes for adults and young adults (including college and military classes).

Building on the popularity of Money Habitudes, we’ve just released The Good Credit Game. It’s a credit curriculum kit that makes it fun and easy to teach credit classes. The Good Credit Game covers credit reports, credit scores and credit cards.

A credit curriculum that’s fun to teach

One of the things that financial educators like about Money Habitudes is that it’s fun and hands-on – so we built those important parts into this new credit curriculum. We wanted it to be a credit curriculum that financial educators would want to teach. But we also wanted students in financial education classes to find it fun to learn about credit reports, credit scores and credit cards.
The Good Credit Game uses a variety of hands-on credit games and activities. That way, you don’t have to rely on lectures, PowerPoint and worksheets. And because the credit curriculum was designed to be collaborative and use group activities, students find it engaging.

A credit curriculum that’s flexible and adaptable

The Good Credit Game was designed to be a flexible credit curriculum. There are six main modules. Each of these units can be used on its own or combined with other units. Doing the entire credit curriculum and all of the credit games takes about 2 hours, but a financial educator may choose to omit some or shorten others. For example, you can choose to just use the credit board game for an hour. Or choose to just use the Cost of Credit Calculators for 10 minutes.
The credit curriculum is designed so that you can teach credit classes that are more basic. Or you can choose to teach a credit class using more advanced questions and topics. Choose from 39 different credit topics.

Teach credit classes with an easy credit curriculum

A big challenge to teaching credit classes is that credit is a complicated topic. Therefore, The Good Credit Game takes a “teach-out-of-the-box” approach. This means you don’t have to be a credit expert to teach credit classes that are fun and effective. The teacher’s guide has complete financial lesson plans that are easy to read, set up and understand. Within the credit curriculum you’ll find pre-written explanations about credit reports, credit scores and credit cards that are easy to use. You can teach yourself or read the explanations to the credit class when necessary. Also, the activities largely run themselves.

An accessible credit curriculum

Participants in a credit class can be very diverse. The Good Credit Game’s student materials are all written at 5th-grade reading level or below. We’ve also included a glossary of the bigger, more complicated financial terms that you may run across in a credit class. It’s also applicable to people with a range of experience using credit – it can even be used as a training tool for credit educators.

Money Habitudes is used by colleges and universities in to promote financial literacy for college students. It may be a student financial aid office running a financial aid workshop or using the tool in financial counseling sessions. It’s also used in a number of colleges’ peer financial counseling programs. And it’s used in residence life programs on financial literacy. This is, of course, in addition to financial planning and family & consumer science classes that use the materials in financial classes.

Typical ways the cards are used on campuses for student financial aid:

1. To hook people and get them into financial education classes. Using the Money Habitudes cards for a standalone class is an easy, fun, low-stress way to engage with college students for the first time. It may be something you can do at another event, as part of a student financial aid program, or in residence halls. Although this is an example from military dorms, it’s a similar idea.
2. As the first class in a series. Often student financial aid offices teach a series like: Budgeting, Getting Banked, Credit Reports and Scores. Now, many organizations just bolt on Money Habitudes as the first class (so the budget class becomes Class #2). Using the money games, they focus on habits, attitudes, values and behaviors in Class #1. It also builds camaraderie in financial aid classes and sets a tone of fun and open sharing. And it helps people understand why they do what they do with money and allows people to set better goals.
3. As an icebreaker and get-to-know-you tool to be used by financial peer counselors. In short, Money Habitudes helps people talk about money. There are a number of colleges that have financial peer counseling programs like this; a great example is work being done by Red to Black at Texas Tech. This is a similar financial peer coaching case study.
4. Finally, Money Habitudes cards are used a lot in financial aid training and financial literacy training sessions. This may be either for financial coaches, financial counselors, volunteers and peer coaches. It’s partly as a training to help people talk about money — always a difficult topic — relate better to clients and be more sensitive to different people who see/use money differently than they do. This relies on the money personality aspect of the cards which helps people better understand themselves and others when it comes to money.