I received a request from a stakeholder to incorporate a course on budgeting within our new hire curriculum. The course will deploy as part of a larger Financial Fundamentals program for all new bankers. New hires come in at varying levels of knowledge and skill on topics such as balancing a checkbook, transactions, budgeting, understanding how banks work, etc. Leadership believes that if everyone has a solid foundation in these areas, it will help us better serve our customers.

I recommended an eLearning simulation that helps our new bankers masker the techniques needed to help customers use the 50/30/20 rule. Learners are able to practice in a risk-free zone and see the real-life consequences of their choices.

My Process

After receving the assignment, I started researching budgeting and read up as much as I could. I then created prompting questions for the SME. Once I recieved the completed questionnaire, I continued my research on the topic using the links provided by the SME. I then created a course outline and learning objectives that served as the blueprint for the project creation . Because of the quick turnaround time, I jumped right to creating a style guide. I used a font and color identifier on bmo.com to determine the correct brand guidelines. I tried to match buttons, fonts, and colors used by BMO. This was followed by a lot of quality assurance checks.

Subject Matter Expert Questionnaire

Research

Once I recieved the completed questionnaire, I continued my research on the topic using the links provided by the SME. I spent about 30 minutes reading and taking notes. The links are below:

https://www.bmo.com/en-us/articles/savings/50-30-20-budget/

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-budget

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/budget-calculator/

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/022916/what-502030-budget-rule.asp

https://www.ramseysolutions.com/budgeting/budgeting-myths

Learning Objectives

After analyzing the SME Questionnire, I created learning objectives and identified the high-priority areas. The main goals are to help new BMO bankers:

• Learn about budgiting using the 50/30/20 rule

• Understand why it's important to know

• Use tools and techniques including a custom 50/30/20 calculator

• Teach BMO customers how to use the 50/30/20 rule in their personal budgeting

• Find further resources to learn more and grow

Course Outline

Next, I created a course outline based on the learning objectives. The course outline served as the blueprint for the entire project. It helped organize and guide me through creating an engaging elearning experence.

Visual Mockups

I crafted a style guide to ensure uniformity of color, font, and spacing across the project using BMO fonts, colors and styles found on bmo.com.

Interactiveness

I created some engaging learner interactions including a drag and drop pie chart focusing on what the 50/30/20 percentages represent. A drag and drop activity encourges learners to practice placing where each type of expense goes. I also created a set of multiple choice assessment questions with a results page using triggers and variables to determine the learner's total percentage and points.

For this project I created a custom calculator in Storyline using variables, text entry fields and triggers (see example below).