STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON UTILIZING THIS FINANCIAL LITERACY TOOL Navigating Financial Avenue Created by the Academic and Career Engagement Center of Northwestern State University of Louisiana May 2013

What is Financial Avenue? Financial Avenue is an online learning environment that empowers students and their families for a lifetime of success. It emphasizes the role of financial literacy education and default prevention services in achieving that goal.

Getting Started Go to: Click: “Sign Up”

Getting Started Click: “Sign Up”

NSU’s Access Code Enter the access code for NSU: mh6y6d Click: “Submit Access Code” mh6y6d

Entering Your Personal Information Enter the required information Click: “Create my new account” Note: It isn’t necessary to enter your student ID.

Your Confirmation After submitting your information, you’ll be taken to a screen notifying you that you have been sent an at the address you provided. Click: “Continue” Check your and click on the link provided.

Exploring the Courses and Mini-Modules After clicking on the e- mail link, you will be taken to this welcome page. You are now ready to begin. The menu on the left of the screen shows you the many “Courses” and “Mini-Modules” available to you. You simply need to click on whichever topic you want to explore. For this tutorial, we will go through the “Budgeting” course. Click: “Budgeting”

Starting the Budgeting Course Because much of the information on Financial Avenue is presented in audio format, it is important that you have the sound enabled on your computer or mobile device. After listening to the instructions, click “Next” to begin the course.

Course Navigation Before beginning the actual course, you will be given information on navigating the courses/mini-modules as well as the website in general. After reviewing the instructions, click: “Next”. Note: Pay particular attention to the toolbar at the bottom of the page, as you will use it on a regular basis.

Course Overview After carefully reviewing the “Course Overview”, click: “Next”.

Assessing Your Budgeting Knowledge Each Financial Avenue course has several lessons. And, prior to each lesson, you will be asked a couple questions to “find out what you know about…” that particular topic. Once you answer the questions, click: “Submit”.

Checking Your Answer Once you submit your answer, a dialog box will appear letting you know whether or not your answer was correct. If the answer was wrong, it will give you the correct response. To move to the next screen, close the dialog box by clicking the “X” in the top right corner.

Course Content After responding to the initial questions, you will then move to the actual content of the course. As you will see, you’ll be an active participant of this course. For instance, on this screen, you must click on each box to access the information for that particular category. Upon reviewing all the information, click: “Next”.

What to do When You Complete the Course Once you have completed all the lessons for the course you’re working on, you will be taken to the “Course Summary” page. Review the summary and then click: “Exit”.

The Next Step At the completion of each course (Step 1), you will be taken to the “Course To-Do List” screen. You’ll then be encouraged to take the course assessment, evaluate the course, and print your completion certificate (Steps 2 – 4). By taking what you learned in this tutorial, you are now ready to do just that!

Academic And Career Engagement (ACE) Center 239 Kyser Hall Questions?