A Computational Thinking Approach to Teaching Financial Literacy

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Abstract

Financial literacy among young people in the US has been persistently low leading to many ill effects such as increased borrowing cost. This study investigates the effectiveness of using computational thinking to teach financial literacy to undergraduate freshmen. A quasi experimental design involving two sections of a freshmen level financial literacy course was used. One section was given programming exercises for each unit in the course so as to induce computational thinking, while the other section did not work on programming exercises. The results show that, compared to the control group, the computational thinking group showed significant increase in their financial knowledge. The effect size was large at 1.5. Thus educators should consider using computational thinking to teach financial literacy.

Authors

• J.D Jayaraman, New Jersey City University

• John B. Black, Teachers College, Columbia University