Introduction

FinLit for Life ensures diversity, equity, and inclusion by selecting sources and pedagogical practices based on a critical financial literacy lens. This critical point of view considers social, historical, and ideological forces and structures and associated historic inequities as they affect personal financial literacy. A recent study reported a widening gap in financial capability that is leaving younger Americans, those with lower incomes, and African Americans behind. It also argued that “financial education matters” and is correlated with fewer problem behaviors such as overdrafts (Lin et al., 2019, p. 2). FinLit for Life was created with the help of LaGuardia students to ensure that it reflects their lived experiences. The annotated lists of resources in FinLit for Life will make users aware of such materials as StudyMoney.us, the website developed by the Pennsylvania Assistive Technology Foundation to help people with disabilities and their advocates learn about managing money. Each listing will feature a meaty annotation differentiating it as much as possible from other resources in that category. FinLit for Life:

• considers the financial and/or investor education of students making $25,000 or less a year, of people of color or Hispanic, and of women whose financial literacy is limited because of their cultural background;
• focuses on investing in the stock market, the risks involved, and the risk tolerance students are willing to take, avoiding the exclusivity that exists around the stock market since it is often considered only for the already wealthy;
• looks for resources whose authorship reflects who LaGuardia students are, such as possibly undocumented or not regarded as being able to conduct their financial affairs successfully;
• helps individuals avoid uncontrolled debt in areas such credit cards; teaches students how to identify predatory loans and social security fraud; and helps them understand how interest works;
• aids in the preparation of financial aid applications, overcoming the fear of providing personal information because of predatory threats;
• provides tips for people starting an entrepreneurship and becoming an agent of change in their community by controlling their own destiny; and
• provides interactive maps of local community banks and other financial institutions with contact information.

The Goals of FinLit for Life 

The primary goal of those who worked on developing FinLit for Life was to create a personal finance OER that has budgeting and investment resources selected based on a critical financial literacy lens. The team of faculty, staff, and students engaged in FinLit for Life reviewed the online materials considered for inclusion in the textbook and the bios of the authors of those materials to ensure that the latter represented a diverse group of experts assembling financial literacy content suitable for our diverse student population, 45% of whom identify as Hispanic, 20% as Asian, and 16% as Black. The team also created a checklist to gain input, from about five faculty members outside of the Library on campus and about five others knowledgeable in personal finance (college staff, administrators, and local community members), into the value of the materials in the OER. The eight students on the project team reviewed the materials, using a Likert-scale questionnaire asking what they thought of the text and illustrations, whether the materials were easy to use, and whether they grasped the FinLit concepts, plus a five-question, open-ended reflection by which students could provide additional feedback. 

Faculty, instructors, and staff at LaGuardia, or anywhere else, can use FinLit for Life to teach students about investment and budgeting, in workshops or classes. The FinLit for Life team will assess student understanding of selected personal finance topics by asking five faculty members to administer quizzes. They will also track the number of classes using FinLit for Life and the number of students reached. Lastly, the team developed before-and-after instruction surveys to discover changes in attitudes and actions around personal finance reported by students as a result of using these educational materials. All surveys utilized will include demographic indicators in order to gauge effectiveness across the targeted demographic groups, such as First Year Seminar (FYS) student, Adult and Continuing Education (ACE) student, gender, ethnicity/race, income level, etc. (Questions about income level, race, etc. will be voluntary, since the survey cannot require people to answer.) 

Any original content created or resources suggested in the annotations follows the principles of Universal Design (UD), making the content inclusive and accessible, especially for those with physical or psychological disabilities. According to UD principles, products and environments should accommodate “a wide range of individual preferences and abilities” and be “useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities” (Burgstahler, 2015, p. 15). In addition, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was developed by the organization CAST (formerly Center for Applied Special Technology) as a framework for curriculum that is accessible for all, including students with and without disabilities. It considers the needs of students at the margins of the educational system. A central premise is that the curriculum, rather than the learner, needs to change because there is no “average” or “typical” learner and all learners have varied abilities, strengths, experiences, and preferences. Two fundamentals are (1) to address learner variability, and (2) to reduce barriers in curriculum and instruction, with the goal to develop expert learners (Rao, 2021). 

Topics covered in FinLit for Life include tracking expenses, budgeting, and investing. The material include a glossary of financial terms, annotated lists of resources on specific topics such as student loans, and interactive maps of local banks and other financial institutions, with contact information. The OER is freely available and accessible online to all students via CUNY Academic Works, a service of the CUNY Libraries dedicated to collecting and providing access to research, scholarship, and creative and pedagogical work by CUNY faculty and staff. As a sustainable project, the OER will be housed indefinitely on the platforms of CUNY Academic Works and Pressbooks and updated when needed. 

The Audience for FinLit for Life 

Since FinLit for Life will be freely available on the web, it can be used by anyone, anywhere, giving it a large target population. Web traffic to the resource can be calculated as well as content downloads from Academic Works. For example, in calendar year 2021, Academic Works had 19,832 downloads of OER material across the OER collection of 110 items. Created with the help of student voices, FinLit for Life will provide resources at the grass roots level in their communities. Resources selected for FinLit for Life represent the needs of community college students and their families.