University of Michigan

This fall the University of Michigan (UM) was one of the schools selected to participate in the Reimbursement Program, in which we reimburse up to $1,000 for specified expenditures involved in promoting CashCourse. The financial aid department at UM decided to promote CashCourse by running a contest for students to win a $200 gift certificate to their computer store. The contest was the CashCourse Challenge, an online scavenger hunt where students submitted their answers via Survey Monkey.

The University of Michigan promoted their CashCourse Challenge in several ways to encourage students to participate:

• Handed out CashCourse chocolate bars to students who came to the Office of Financial Aid, and at meetings with groups of students on campus. The chocolate bars advertised the URL and details about the CashCourse Challenge. They also passed out flyers about the Challenge at the financial aid office front desk and at other offices in the building.
• Placed a notice about and link to the CashCourse Challenge on the C-Tools website, which is the university website students use for communicating and collaborating online for their courses.
• Ran a digital ad about the CashCourse Challenge at 23 locations on campus for two weeks.
• Sent out two emails to all enrolled students. The emails contained a link to the CashCourse Challenge and encouraged students to enter. The emails generated the greatest amount of traffic to their CashCourse site.
• Held a drawing for the computer showcase gift certificate from among the students who answered all 10 CashCourse Challenge questions correctly. After the winner was announced, they sent another email to all of the students who had entered the CashCourse Challenge and included a link to their custom tab page, where the correct answers to the Challenge questions were posted.

You can download the CashCourse Challenge from here. It is also available to all enrolled schools in the administrative section of CashCourse.