CIW Certification Difficulty

tkerber

Hey everyone so I recently enrolled in WGU and start classes soon. I spoke to my mentor and we looked over my classes and kind of structured things. What scares me the most is the CIW certs both JavaScript Specialist and Web Design Specialist. I have always been a networking / infrastructure guy and my programming knowledge is not great. I've taken web design classes in high school and for my AAS Networking degree I had to take an intro to programming class and a very basic HTML class.

From others who are in the same situation as me or for those who have taken these classes and got these certs, how hard are they? My mentor seemed to make them sound very challenging and I'm worried and wondering if I should be brushing up before I take them in my second term. What do you guys think?

markulous

Hmm...To my knowledge they've gotten rid of the CIW certs in their courses. I'd double check with the school to see if you have the option to take an in house exam. Their learning resources aren't the best.

That being said, I took the CIW: WDS cert and passed the first time. I spent all of 2 weeks studying for it. It's an entry-level cert, so don't get too intimidated because it's not something you're versed in.

I haven't taken the other one as they dropped that from my degree plan altogether (I'm in the IT Security degree).

tkerber

That's what I thought as well because when I enrolled a couple of months ago I saw that there were no CIW certs in the BS-IT program. Now they recently changed their website and now I see CIW certs in the BS-IT program. I also see they got rid of CCNA in the BS-Networking degree. I really wish I didn't have to take these certs because from your feedback and the feedback I got on reddit everyone seems to agree that CIW certs are not great.

markulous

You can always change your degree plan too. If you want the CCNA and no CIW certs, go with IT Security.

devils_haircut

I'm in the IT: Security track, and I still have to do the CIW: Web Design and CIW: Database courses. I started my degree back in August 2014, and I know things changed recently with several of the IT tracks, but it didn't change my program. I'm still stuck doing those two CIW certs.

The Web Design one was definitely a joke, though. Hopefully the database one is more useful (and interesting).

markulous

devils_haircut wrote: »

I'm in the IT: Security track, and I still have to do the CIW: Web Design and CIW: Database courses. I started my degree back in August 2014, and I know things changed recently with several of the IT tracks, but it didn't change my program. I'm still stuck doing those two CIW certs.

The Web Design one was definitely a joke, though. Hopefully the database one is more useful (and interesting).

You can change the CIW Database course without changing your program. I actually just did that last week. The material is way better and it's an in house exam. My mentor did all the legwork, only took a couple days for it to change. If you don't care about the cert, I'd recommend going that route. There is an assignment however.

devils_haircut

What does it change to? Just a regular WGU class? Does it still cover databases? I might run it by my mentor, but although he's a nice, helpful guy, he's very slow to respond to me.

techfiend

I'd ask to switch to the inhouse couses. Web development is a decent learn albeit the study guide is kind of dated. The test was pretty easy and the project isn't overly difficult and a good experience, it took me about 30 hours total.

The python course was interesting but the study material goes much deeper than the test. This distracted me making the fairly basic test complicated. It's useful info even for infrastructure careers, took me about 60 hours but it could have been about 40.

The java course was brutal especially the project. Asking for a recorded cohort was the best thing I did, talking to course mentors while in the debugging stage was a close second. It took about 60 hours but could have easily taken 100+ if I didn't reach out the course mentors.

How was the database courses? I have those coming up in a few weeks. I notice it's uCertify, which was really good for project+.

markulous

devils_haircut wrote: »

What does it change to? Just a regular WGU class? Does it still cover databases? I might run it by my mentor, but although he's a nice, helpful guy, he's very slow to respond to me.

It's still a database course just better material and no cert. I'm about a third through it and hoping go be done next week.

devils_haircut

Nice. I test for CCNA: Sec next week, so I'll probably start on databases August 1st when my new term starts. If I pass this cert, I'll have 20 credits done this term, and only Database, Technical Writing, and Capstone left.

markulous

devils_haircut wrote: »

Nice. I test for CCNA: Sec next week, so I'll probably start on databases August 1st when my new term starts. If I pass this cert, I'll have 20 credits done this term, and only Database, Technical Writing, and Capstone left.

That's pretty much where I'm at after the CCNA: S. I'm sure you're as antsy as I am getting this all completed.