New App from BECU and Slalom Consulting Promotes Financial Literacy

SEATTLE, May 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Some Seattle-area high school students have a new app on their mobile devices, created to help teenagers better understand how to manage their personal finances. Seattle's Slalom Consulting has partnered with BECU to develop a custom "gamification" application, which uses games to create entertaining experiences for learning, training and business activities.

BECU, Washington's largest community credit union, is leading an effort to find new and innovative ways to enrich financial literacy education in schools. BECU strives to empower young people with financial knowledge in order to better prepare them for their future. BECU engaged Slalom to develop a financial literacy application for the classroom via PC, smartphones, and tablet computers for students across Seattle.

Slalom customized its own mLevel game, hosted on the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform, to gamify financial literacy lessons. With BECU, they developed three games; "Banking 101," "Car-Buying Basics," and "Give Me Some Credit" that augment the learning experience and reinforce the importance of making responsible financial decisions. With the app or website, students are able to demonstrate their prowess in the personal finance arena, applying the knowledge they gain in the classroom to compete with peers. The students are encouraged to continue to play all of the games outside of the classroom to improve their personal score. A leader board aggregates scores across the nine participating classrooms from four area schools.

The app can be downloaded to a range of devices including on the Windows Phone, iOS, and Android platforms.  A web based version is also available for use on personal computers. Each 90-second game contains 30 true/false and multiple-choice questions where students earn points for each correctly answered question.

"The BECU mLevel Challenge combines two topics that are meaningful to many high school students: competition and smartphones," noted Slalom Consulting Practice Area Lead Justin Jarrett. "Students love to compete and, as many parents know, they spend a lot of time with their smartphones. Slalom is gratified to be able to combine our technology expertise with the financial education experience of our partner, BECU, to help improve the financial literacy of students."

A survey by Capital One found that 45 percent of high-school graduates are unsure or unprepared to manage their own banking and personal finances. A National Endowment for Financial Education study discovered that only 12 percent of K-12 teachers have taken a workshop on teaching personal finance. The app from BECU and Slalom, combined with lessons taught in the classroom by BECU educators, is designed to help teachers bridge that gap.

"Our goal with our financial education efforts is to help individuals make more informed financial decisions," said BECU Senior Vice President of Member Strategies Tom Berquist. "By using technology that students are comfortable with and adding an element of competition to make it fun, we see this app as a unique and innovative way to engage high school students on the subject of financial literacy."   

The BECU mLevel Challenge games are being piloted in several Seattle area high schools over the next two weeks.  Given a successful pilot, the program will be rolled out to more Puget Sound-area schools in the fall. Slalom and BECU will analyze metrics and document the lessons learned from students, teachers and administrators using the app to enhance the game for the coming school year.

About Slalom Consulting
Slalom Consulting brings business and technology expertise together to help companies drive enterprise performance, accelerate innovation, enhance the customer experience, and increase employee productivity. The firm delivers award-winning solutions in such areas as business intelligence, mobility and cloud through a national network of local offices across 11 North American cities.

Founded in 2001 and based in Seattle, Wash., Slalom has rapidly grown to more than 1,500 consultants. The company has earned recognition from Microsoft as the "United States Partner of the Year" and "Online Services Partner of the Year," as well as one of the "Top 10 Best Firms to Work For" by Consulting Magazine.  For more information, visit www.slalom.com

About BECU
Governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, BECU is a not-for-profit credit union owned by the members. Profits are returned to the members in the form of better rates and fewer fees. With more than 750,000 members and more than $10.0 billion in assets, BECU is the largest credit union in Washington and one of the top five financial cooperatives in the country. BECU currently operates over 40 locations in the Puget Sound region.  All Washington state residents are eligible to join.

SOURCE Slalom Consulting