Show 79 - How Game-Based Learning Transforms Financial Education with Susan Meredith
In this episode, I talk with Susan about using game-based education in the classroom specifically to teach financial literacy and what she has learned about financial literacy from doing this.
4/2/20251 min read
Financial education is often presented in a boring way (in fact, a lot of education is presented in a boring way), but it doesn’t have to be. Making it a game, while a bit of effort, pays for itself again and again in the amount of actual learning that takes place. Susan Meredith, an expert on game-based education in financial literacy, and I talk about using games to teach today.
Show Notes
Attend a financial power hour for free with the code: MMFriend
If you have questions about MentaMorph click here
My episode with Becca Andrews where we talked about money moments
Recommended Books (Amazon Affiliate Links)
How to Adult: Personal Finance for the Real World
Key Ideas
The power of games is that you can practice in a low stake environment and the discuss what you did and why to really get at the heart of the issue (and learn from peers!)
Games engage multiple modes of learning which makes it go deeper. This is especially important with something as hands on as personal finance
Money often comes with emotional baggage and associations with our worth. Making it a game helps people get over that.
No matter what you teach, if you make it a game it will help you move forward and learn.
Bonus Tip
Here is a bonus tip I didn't get to in the episode.
You can even turn normal games into game-based learning without inventing your own game. For example, I would change the rules to monopoly to help explain the differences between Capitalism and Communism. But keep in mind, this isn’t gamifying. An example of gamifying would be something like “If you answer a question you get to shoot a basket”. In game-based learning the game actually teaches you!