A Study of the Correlation Between Three Instructional Methods and Short-Term Knowledge Gain of Credit Card Debt Among College Students

Abstract

Consumer education, specifically information focusing on credit cards, is needed at all levels of society including students attending college campuses. Because financial decisions made can impact students’ progression to obtaining college degrees, delivery of information to these students is both timely and important. Several instructional delivery strategies are available to faculty teaching consumer education. Three instructional methods available to disseminate this information include the traditional classroom lecture, use of multimedia clips, and the use of case studies. With the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and a combination of Tiers designed to track gain in short-term cognitive knowledge involving the most basic concepts up to the most complex issues relating to personal credit card debt, a quantitative study was conducted to see which teaching strategy was most effective in helping students gain that short-term knowledge. Overall, students gained knowledge after exposure to credit card information. No single teaching strategy when analyzed individually was significant however in providing that knowledge. When looking at co-variants such as exposure to consumer education in high school or motivation to apply for a credit card in the future, the lecture method did provide significance within certain tiers. The findings drawn from this study reveal that the specific instructional delivery method in providing consumer education to students is not the key factor but the fact that somehow making that learning opportunity available to college students is the critically important component. Implications from this study impact not only students, but their parents, consumer education instructors, credit card companies, and policy makers as the next generation of fiscally responsibly community members are educated.