Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

Shecky · August 2011

never2late wrote: »

Not at all. I completed the TWA1 and CPW4 in three weeks, so I think 4 weeks is ample time to finish these two classes if you put in the time. Complete the BOV1 first and then finish the other two. I believe the latest to turn in an objective is the 25th of the month but ask your mentor.

Thanks never2late. That's great news to hear. I've been stressin' trying to time manage everything so I can finish before my first term and graduate. Yeah, you're right about the objective assessments being due on the 25th of your last month. Not quite sure about the performance assessment due dates, though.

Here's another one: I'm in the Networks Design & Management Program. I have NO clue whatsoever on what to do my capstone on, much less what to write about for my technical paper (TWA1). Can anyone in the ND&M program toss me a few ideas? I checked out the sample capstones and everything. They cover all the other programs, i.e. Networks Administration, Databases, Security, Software, IT itself, etc. but no ND&M capstone examples. Need some ideas! Please help!

Thanks so much guys!

sheckler · August 2011

How about the design and management of a network?

hiddenknight821 · August 2011

Sorry. I gotta bump here. I wanna know if you two (Shecky and Sheckler) are related.

I will bet Shecky is the younger one.

Rappeller · August 2011

I have my CLC1 exam scheduled in a couple of hours - the highest I have gotten on my pre-assessments is an 80. Think I can pass it? I admit to slacking off the last 2 days due to getting diagnosed as a diabetic on monday. (No more coke or arizona sweet tea) has absolutely ruined my year. But now i am back on track as a degree means even more since if I have type 1 I will be kicked out of the Guard and will lose my technician job.

KeithC · August 2011

Rappeller wrote: »

I have my CLC1 exam scheduled in a couple of hours - the highest I have gotten on my pre-assessments is an 80. Think I can pass it? I admit to slacking off the last 2 days due to getting diagnosed as a diabetic on monday. (No more coke or arizona sweet tea) has absolutely ruined my year. But now i am back on track as a degree means even more since if I have type 1 I will be kicked out of the Guard and will lose my technician job.

You should do fine I failed my first attempt yesterday. My pre score was 70% and my assessment was 63%.

Jourdsh · August 2011

First objective test failed, for GAC1, by one question. Now even though I have passed 14 assessments in 3 months I have to jump through hoops again with my mentor in order to get assessments scheduled.

jmasterj206 · August 2011

Jourdsh wrote: »

First objective test failed, for GAC1, by one question. Now even though I have passed 14 assessments in 3 months I have to jump through hoops again with my mentor in order to get assessments scheduled.

That is the only one I have failed too Jourdsh. I was pulling 90 percents on the preassessments and ended up getting a 68 or something on the test. I passed it the next time easily.

hiddenknight821 · August 2011

Guys and gals,

I have a confession to make here. I just took my very first pre-assessment for ORC1 at WGU yesterday, and I intentionally failed miserably after giving the first four questions a try then abruptly quit. I panicked. I was only curious about the difficulty of the test. I read the entire chapter 4 before starting, and I have to say the book is a complete BS, because I felt it's not applicable to us IT students. I told my mentor that it's pretty much a liberal arts course, and it seems to gear toward psychology or sociology students. The pre-assessment seems to have questions that came straight from the book.

Now I want to know how the heck did you guys manage to pass this class by just taking the pre-assessment???

I just finished my 12-week internship at a Fortune 500 company. We work in the financial industry. I thought that experience enough would help me with the class, but it probably didn't. What really caught me off-guard is the unfamiliar terminology that I would have to learn from the book. In my opinion, the questions was sophistically structured with wordings that startled me. Man, I would hate to read 10 chapters with approximately 30 pages each on the screen for the next few days just to pick up 4 CUs that you guys didn't have to work for. Shecky was probably right. Some of you guys must be genius.

Now I had no idea I had to get my second pre-assessment attempt approved before I can take it. I hope this three-time limit is just a soft requirement, but can anyone here refute this?

themagicone · August 2011

It's common sense I think. Just read the questions and find the best answer. I like 3 times is the limit so need to get it in 3.

Jourdsh · August 2011

On the ORC preassessment, I just powered through it, even though a lot of the questions were mumbo jumbo to me. The cutoff is so low, that I still passed with a 69% without even knowing what I was clicking half the time. Taking the pre-assessment and then reading the book helps me not to glaze over too much, as everytime I see something that was on the test I perk up.

Three times is a hard rule on pre-assessments, they had something about it in the student handbook.

hiddenknight821 · August 2011

Jourdsh wrote: »

On the ORC preassessment, I just powered through it, even though a lot of the questions were mumbo jumbo to me. The cutoff is so low, that I still passed with a 69% without even knowing what I was clicking half the time.

Thanks! Now that's what I need to hear to keep me motivated. By the way, you may want to update your sig.

I don't even know how others can say it's common-sense stuff. I think you guys may not realized you learned this stuff already in your sociology/psychology classes in the past. I took the classes when I was in college for AAS, and only few of the stuff I learned before are found in the book.

While I plow through this stuff, I need to know what should I do next in order to quickly knock-off the other courses. I know I have MCG1, LET1, and Project+ leadership/managerial courses left to finish, and I want to know what's the best order to take them. I plan to take MCG1 next, but it's nowhere related to ORC1, except that some of you claimed it's another easy guessing game as ORC1. I hope this remains true.

From my understanding, ORC1 = LET1. MCG1 = Project+. I want to know if I am wrong here, so I know I didn't waste time overpreparing since I am hoping my study will eventually help knock out the next related course relatively easy.

Jourdsh · August 2011

All I can add is that LET1 and ORC1 use the same book, so if you are studying, ORC you may as well do LET1 at the same time, it will help cement your knowledge of at least those chapters that overlap.

JoshD779 · August 2011

A few of the chapters read for LET1 are also covered in ORC1, but ORC1 is more broad. There were some Project+ related questions on ORC1, too. I haven't taken MGC1 yet so I can't comment on that one.

instant000 · August 2011

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I don't even know how others can say it's common-sense stuff. I think you guys may not realized you learned this stuff already in your sociology/psychology classes in the past.

That is a very valid point.

Some WGU students get discouraged by others who seemingly fly through this stuff, when, truth be told, in a lot of the cases, they have years of experience in the stuff already, so they can basically glance over the book and then take the test, versus someone going in from scratch, they're going to have a lot slower go at it.

There's a thread about it I was reading in the school forums. While you hear about the guys who do it oooh, so fast, to a good measure, how fast you finish is related to two things:
1. How much you knew before you started.
2. How hard you push once you get in

For a lot of IT people, you're used to learning new stuff all the time .... compare that to someone who doesn't have that work experience, and it'll be a lot harder on them, if they're not in the mindset to learn.

I read an article yesterday, and at first WGU was designed to be like a community college, but one thing they quickly realized is that a lot of the people who went to community colleges didn't have any life experience/education behind them already, and weren't suited for the style of education that WGU offered, and they had pretty bad rates. After WGU shifted to be focused more towards trying to pull in students who may already have a little more experience/filtering to make sure students are really ready for the type of education they offer, they did a lot better.

The average age of a WGU student is 36 (i.e., someone with years of experience already, and hungry to do better for themselves)

ehnde · September 2011

I'm ready to escalate/complain concerning issues about the admissions process that I previously posted about in this thread. I've requested information 2 days ago to my enrollment counselor and the admissions team lead and have not received either an acknowledgement of my email or an explanation as to why my admission was delayed.

I don't want to fault the school for this failure (and it may have somehow been my fault at least in part if not entirely, but that is impossible to determine because they won't tell me what went wrong and how to rectify the problem).

tl;dr: At this point I just want to get past the admissions brick wall. Anyone know a good contact? Or should I just call the enrollment counselor?

themagicone · September 2011

PM Sent. I'll see what I can do.

Hypntick · September 2011

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

From my understanding, ORC1 = LET1. MCG1 = Project+. I want to know if I am wrong here, so I know I didn't waste time overpreparing since I am hoping my study will eventually help knock out the next related course relatively easy.

That's pretty much the way of it. If you read the chapters/books you'll knock out the tests easily. Also having a few years work history in a large corporation, some project experience etc. will set you up to easily pass those 4 classes. I think I did all 4 of those over 2 weeks, but I do have previous management, corporate, and project experience YMMV.

hiddenknight821 · September 2011

Hypntick wrote: »

That's pretty much the way of it. If you read the chapters/books you'll knock out the tests easily. Also having a few years work history in a large corporation, some project experience etc. will set you up to easily pass those 4 classes. I think I did all 4 of those over 2 weeks, but I do have previous management, corporate, and project experience YMMV.

+1. Thanks for the advice. That's exactly what I need to hear. I really need to stay focus on the book and plow through as much as I can. This shouldn't be hard since I'm currently unemployed, living with my parent, but I find it distracting to stay focus after an hour or two. So might take me a while to finish the reading.

ehnde wrote: »

Anyone know a good contact? Or should I just call the enrollment counselor?

ehnde, please keep us update on your issue. I just PM you as well with a name that I believe would help you. Thanks.

veritas_libertas · September 2011

Anyone else been frustrated by the briefness of the comments on papers that are bounced back? Taskstream has now bounced back a paper of mine twice and the comments are nearly identical from last time!

themagicone · September 2011

Geez... Anyone see the post on facebook from WGU? 1900 new students started today. That is a lot of bodies! $5,700,000 just from new students.

CompuTron99 · September 2011

themagicone wrote: »

Geez... Anyone see the post on facebook from WGU? 1900 new students started today. That is a lot of bodies! $5,700,000 just from new students.

Does that mean that only 418 will finish?

hiddenknight821 · September 2011

themagicone wrote: »

Geez... Anyone see the post on facebook from WGU? 1900 new students started today. That is a lot of bodies! $5,700,000 just from new students.

I bet this has something to do with the recent partnership with Texas, and by the way it's September. That's when school-year is suppose to start, but we know this isn't applicable to us.

petedude · September 2011

CompuTron99 wrote: »

Does that mean that only 418 will finish?

Ha ha. I think the next round of stats should improve greatly now that WGU has tightened their admissions requirements.

alathea · September 2011

demonfurbie wrote: »

ive noticed it isnt very helpful

what ive done is ripped all the labsim r2 videos to mp3 and listen to them in the car and printed out all the notes sections and read them in a study lab with no computers around ... i get distracted

how are you ripping them? I was under the impression that Labsim was a webbased thing. Are you just doing them one by one, tedious like? That would be great if I could listen to those in the car on the way to work like you do.

demonfurbie · September 2011

alathea wrote: »

how are you ripping them? I was under the impression that Labsim was a webbased thing. Are you just doing them one by one, tedious like? That would be great if I could listen to those in the car on the way to work like you do.

one by one as i listen to them for the first run

i have them all saved but the file is to big to email (800 meg)

here are the steps (for all the labsims and or any other training vids ya want the audio from)
download WavePad Sound Editor - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

1. turn off all system sounds
2. set the program to record from your output (speakers)
3. make sure when you safe it save it as mp3

Jack2 · September 2011

ORG1 is done via the online proctoring for the first time, on to MGC1 and Project +

hiddenknight821 · September 2011

Just passed my second attempt on ORC1 pre-assessment with 62%. This is my first pass, finally!

It was brutal to read the book on the screen through CourseSmart, when it either make you lose focus or put you to sleep. Ugh, now I don't feel like reviewing this stuff, especially when I have to take the actual assessment sometimes next week. There is no way I will be able to retain the stuff I learn, but I really need to hold on to it until I finish LET1.

Reading the books tremendously helped understand the questions on the pre-assessment. Although, I only read 6 out of 10 chapters (4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 17). I'm sure my score would be higher if I continue to read the last 4 chapters, but reading is not really my stuff when it's not technical-related. I'm not competing with anyone here but time and myself.

Now, it's time for me to go straight back to the book, so I can be more confident when I take the test next week.

Jourdsh · September 2011

Just passed ORC1 on Sunday with an 81%, read a lot of the chapters looking for bold terms just to know the definitions, that helped a bit. LET1 just passed today, did need to do one revision, seems like task 4 is the only one they care about APA citations.

sheckler · September 2011

Task 4 of the 2nd java class makes me want to cry. This is way too hard for a non-programming degree.

So close to being able to start on capstone but have to get past this somehow.

Don't know how you did this one, themagicone!

erpadmin · September 2011

never2late wrote: »

Passed the Capstone tonight with a 3.92. Only have CCNA-Secuirty left to graduate. According to themagicone the class is not that difficult so still on course to graduate by Oct 1.

As far as the "extra" LR's available after graduation and before term end, I'll talk to my mentor.

A little belated, but congratulations!! I definitely have no problems picking up the first round....LOL! In the beginning, I really tried to get this paper done ASAP, but my schedule made that endeavor impossible.

I just handed in the Tech Writing paper this morning. Between some

named Irene, getting ready for the beginning of the semester at work, working on two projects, running around, plus volunteer work, I was amazed I had gotten the paper done at all. The Gantt chart was nonsense, but was very easy to do.

Of course I haven't passed yet, but I figured I would get a quick response if I handed my paper before the 15th. If I have any revisions to do, it will be cake to rectify.

In the meantime, I will get Capstone ready as well as passing 70-642. I'm going to schedule it for this Saturday. (I was gonna do it the Saturday of Irene.....even though it wasn't that bad, we had to prepare like it was and transportation (public or personal driving) was shutdown anyway...)

Hopefully TaskStream lets me know soon, but this will be the first time I don't stalk Taskstream.....I'm just too busy for it. LOL.

Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

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