A Summary of My Exploartion into Open Learning

For this inquiry, I wanted to understand how open and distributed learning can help people build financial literacy. Money management is so important, but a lot of traditional learning still feels confusing, expensive, or inaccessible. Over the weeks, I explored different free resources and paid attention to how they teach, how they keep people engaged, and who they actually support.

What I Explored

I focused on three types of platforms:

Khan Academy: Very structured, with lessons that build on each other
Wealthsimple Learn: Short, friendly articles with a Canadian focus
YouTube channels: Especially The Plain Bagel, which explains topics visually and in simple terms

All three cover the same basic ideas like budgeting, saving, and investing, but they each approach the material in their own way. Seeing these differences helped me understand how wide the world of financial learning really is. Different teaching styles work for different people, and having a variety of options gives learners more ways to enter the topic instead of forcing everyone down one path.

What Works Well

Khan Academy is great if you like things organized. Lessons are broken down into small steps, and you get a sense of progress as you move forward. It feels like someone guiding you through the topics in a clear and steady way.

Wealthsimple Learn feels more like a friend explaining money in normal language. It uses real-life examples and keeps things simple without talking down to you. It’s really good at answering the question “Why should I care about this?” which is something a lot of financial resources miss.

YouTube creators make the learning feel more personal. The Plain Bagel uses visuals and everyday explanations to make tricky concepts easier to understand. It also just feels more human, because you’re watching an actual person talk through their thought process. It makes the whole experience a lot less intimidating.

Even though these platforms are pretty different, they all share one thing, which is that they try to make learning about money feel less scary. A lot of people avoid financial topics because they feel embarrassed or overwhelmed, and these platforms do a good job of making the material more welcoming. This is based off of How Money Changes the Way You Think and Feel by Carolyn Gregoire.

What Keeps People Engaged

I noticed that:

Some platforms use progress bars and small rewards. For example, Khan Academy has badges, streaks, and mastery points that give you a little boost of motivation and help you build a routine.
Others rely on stories, visuals, and personality. Wealthsimple and many YouTube creators keep people engaged by making the content feel relatable and easy to connect with, not by offering points or prizes.
Real-life examples matter a lot more than I expected. Big ideas in finance only start to make sense when they relate to decisions people actually have to make, like whether to pay off debt first or start investing, or how much emergency savings is enough.
Feeling supported is important when a topic feels intimidating. When a platform uses a friendly tone, shows empathy, or simply acknowledges that money can be stressful, it helps learners push through confusion instead of giving up.

In the end, engagement is not just about game-like features or clever design tricks. It is mostly about lowering the emotional barrier around learning about money. Financial education needs to teach the concepts, but it also has to recognise the emotional side of money, because for a lot of people the fear or shame is the biggest obstacle.

Who Might Still Be Left Out

This dimension stood out as the most critical finding. Even though everything I used was free, meaningful access requires much more than zero cost. People still need:

A reliable device: Smartphone, tablet, or computer capable of streaming video and running modern web applications
Stable internet connection: Sufficient bandwidth for video content, which many rural and low-income communities lack
Basic digital confidence: Ability to navigate platforms, evaluate source credibility, and troubleshoot technical issues
Time and schedule flexibility: Self-directed learning assumes learners have discretionary time not consumed by multiple jobs or caregiving

Accessibility is still a major issue across platforms, from weak captioning and poor screen-reader support to layouts that make navigation hard. Even when platforms try to use simple language, financial jargon like compound interest or diversification can still feel overwhelming, and a lot of content assumes a middle-class lifestyle with steady income, which does not speak to people who are struggling to get by. Most resources are also English-only and reflect Western financial norms, which can leave out immigrant communities or people with different cultural expectations around money and family.

All of this means that free resources are not automatically inclusive. These may be available to everyone, but they often end up serving the people who already have some level of financial stability. True openness requires designing with these differences in mind, not just removing a price tag.

What I Am Taking Away

Open financial learning has a lot of potential. It gives people a chance to learn at their own pace and without judgment. However, it is not perfect, and not everyone can access it equally. Overall, this project helped me see that making financial literacy open is not just about cost. It also depends on design, language, support, and meeting people where they are.