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Rachel Finley
574 TNRB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3598
prspecialist@byu.edu

Online Finance Tutorial Gets a Facelift

Recent changes to an online personal finance tutorial offered through Brigham Young University and the Rollins Center for eBusiness are right on the money.

Bryan Sudweeks, an associate professor of business management and chartered financial analyst, has directed the development and refinement of the tutorial.

“I’ve been the ‘head guy’ on this, but no one sees all the students and faculty who have helped out,” Sudweeks says. “If there are mistakes, they’re mine, if there are good things it’s because we’ve had a lot of help. We’re all so excited for these new changes.”

The online personal finance tutorial began almost five years ago when Sudweeks, a regional welfare agent for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California, began toying with the idea of developing a personal finance web site that church leaders could use to assist members of their congregation.

Because of his financial advising experience, when Sudweeks came to teach personal finance at BYU, even though personal finance is not his main area of expertise.

“The combination of what I was teaching plus what I had done before in California pointed me in the direction of creating the tutorial,” he says. “We’ve since expanded it, bishops use it, we use it in university classes, spouses of students in my class can use it; it’s becoming church-wide and world wide.”

After a year of use within the university, the web site is being changed over to include a more user-friendly layout and design.

Armando Gutierrez has worked with Sudweeks since 2004 on the project as a student assistant and has worked recently to implement the new adjustments to the site.

“Most of the changes are invisible to the user, which means previous users will not be too confused about it,” he says. “The new site runs on an ‘engine’ that has been thoroughly tested; it should handle thousands of visitors without major issues. We also improved security, meaning there will be a smaller chance of people defacing the page.”

Sudweeks also took the opportunity to fine-tune some of the tutorial content. Originally, the tutorial comprised one, fifty-hour course. Instead of one, fifty-hour long course, the tutorial has been divided into twenty shorter sections and ranked by complexity: beginning, intermediate, and advanced.

The ten-class course lays a foundation for those beginning the journey to managing their personal finances by advising beginning to intermediate finance students about investing, insurance, understanding credit reports, financing education, taxes, debt, and debt reduction.

The newer version of the tutorial also includes all the teaching tools used in the university classes, such as lecture presentations, and financial plan assignments complete with explanations of how they are used and why they are used.

“We tried to make it an application framework like the complete college course,” Sudweeks says. “The class is a financial plan based approach, and the purpose is to determine where you are now, where you should be, and what you have to do to get there.”

Response to the tutorial has been overwhelmingly positive.

“The web site is meant to help those both inside and outside the university get their financial houses in order,” Sudweeks says. “There’s a lot going on. We’re still in the process improving and adding more to it.”

The updated version is now available online at personalfinance.byu.net.